“I tried repeatedly to surrender to the House GOP, but they wouldn’t take even my most abject surrender. I have summoned them back to the White House tomorrow morning in another attempt to force them to accept it. If worst comes to worst, and they will not accept my surrender, I am prepared to accept theirs, but I really don’t like it, and will use the opportunity to campaign against Democratic values in the next election.”
A Personal Blog
by Michael Froomkin
Laurie Silvers & Mitchell Rubenstein Distinguished Professor of Law
University of Miami School of Law
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Disappointed? Thought you were voting for a Democrat? Thought (hoped) your candidate would fight for the principles he articulated? Believed he’d end useless wars, look to social needs at home, be fair to ordinary Americans? I am too. If Obama thinks we’ll vote for him again (forget about donating and campaigning for him), I believe he’s really mistaken.
If you go back and look at my post-primary election-related writing, you will see that the very large majority of it was anti-McCain rather than pro-Obama. I stand by that assessment. Obama is not as bad as McCain would have been, and in a few significant ways (e.g. DADT) is much better.
Obama, who never struck me back then as much more than a very tepid moderate, was never my first choice. (Although my first choice — Edwards — also proved in hindsight to be a very weak reed.) I liked Obama better than Clinton on the theory that he was less bellicose about Iraq, and that then-Senator Clinton seemed to have very poor taste in the men she surrounded herself with as advisers.
I will admit that events have proved my assessments of Obama to be somewhat optimistic, but nothing in McCain’s subsequent petulant career has suggested he would have been a good President. Nor does Palin impress as even Vice-Presidential timber.
I don’t think Nader voters did us a favor electing GWB, so I’m going to be a tough sell for a third-party candidate instead of Perry, Bachmann, Romney or whatever. Similarly, a primary challenge would serve mostly to empower the opposition, so I think I’ll just focus on the House and maybe the Senate.
I agree with your analysis, especially about the wisdom of a third party given recent experience. But still, it’s clear regarding Obama that either there’s no there there or he was a weak moderate to begin with, trying to masquerade as something else to liberals. I personally believe his personality is such that he although he himself has few principles for which he will fight, he rapidly takes on those of the people with whom he hangs out. Thus, we hear him mouthing the same silly comparison of the nation’s economy to that of an ordinary family. He is really guided by a deep wish to be liked, to be friends with everyone and to make peace between disputing factions. I don’t think the principles or the policies they manifest are nearly as important to Obama as the need to find a compromise, avoid a fight and have everyone make nice. For terrible qualities in a president, this ranks up there with W’s steadfast ignorance, impulsivity, touchiness and stubbornness. Our politics seems to produce people who are poorly qualified to lead us, but Pogo was no doubt correct: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
In spring/summer of 2008 as well as in retrospect Obama was the least terrible candidate. All of the faults that have plagued his presidency were obvious before the election. But it was just as clear that McCain was a highly dangerous nutter. Never mind his selection of Sarah Palin. How about his eagerness to start a shooting war with Russia after Georgia tried to seize a non-Georgian enclave? Or his crazy plan to replace the UN with a League of Democracies? And the people McCain surrounded himself are so appallingly ignorant, bellicose, and incompetent that they made their candidate look rather better by comparison.
Mr. Broderick, who then will you vote for? Seriously, who? Obama’s presidency thus far has not been all I hoped for, but would you have preferred Sen. McCain? Will you really vote for Romney (assuming the republicans don’t nominate someone worse). The time to be a principled liberal is 2014 during the primary race. 2012 is the time to take your medicine and rally behind Obama whether you really want to or not. Not because the Mr. Obama is a success, but rather because we have no viable alternative.
I had predicted during the Dem primaries that if Obama won, the DC Dems would not hold him to account, that they would fear offending a large part of the base of the Democratic Party or weakening the first black president. I believed that not only DC Dems. but Dem voters and the MCM (Mainstream Corporate Media) would not only hold HIllary to account but would hound her if she broke her promises to the electorate.
Guess what? My prediction was spot on.
So, would McCain have been worse? Well, the Dems would have stood up to McCain going into yet another war, going after Medicare, SocSec, Medicaid, etc., etc.
It’s kind of a toss up right now who is worse, who would have been worse. I mean, with Obama, on wars and aggression, the powers of the unitary executive, civil liberties, we’re either worse off or have Bush III.
We sure kept the Bush Tax Cuts, now the Obama Tax Cuts….
“Mr. Broder” not “Broderick.” That was the work of autocorrect.
“Just me”, there are ways to vote against Obama without supporting the Republican candidate: start a write-in campaign for the democratic primary and choose a candidate who doesn’t like Obama and would be sufficiently vain to accept his own nomination, like Howard Dean. I would prefer Elizabeth Warren as democratic candidate, but I doubt she would stand for that.
How about Bernie Sanders? Since the jackasses have gone center-right, there’s no one on the left except DSA.
Just Me,
Yeah, at this point i would have preferred Sen McCain. If he had decided to cut the social safety net apart, people like you wouldn’t be on the internet telling us to rally behind him.
I don’t know if you know this, but it is possible to cast a vote for someone besides a Democrat or a Republican. I cast a vote for the Communists in 1996 rather than vote for a Republican in Democratic clothing; i’ll do it again if need be.
It has come to the point where if you vote for a Democrat like Obama, then you’re just as much a part of the problem as Mr. Obama. Me, i’d prefer not to enable the destruction of my country, especially for the sake of “rallying behind” someone who hates me.
Thank you for your incredible insight and expression.
I voted for Harry Brown (the Libertarian candidate) in 2000 rather than voting for Bush or Gore. I regretted it almost immediately. As a south Florida voter, I felt personally responsible for the election of W. (although I didn’t like Gore, I felt that electing Bush would be a worse mistake). I decided after that election that I would not make anymore wasted protest votes in a general election.
jawbone: Your prediction was not “spot on” since we have no evidence that Dems would have been harder on Hillary. Indeed, HC’s chief economic adviser was Gene Sperling, now NEC Director, where he has been spouting deficit reduction nonsense. HC would have been as right-wing as the BO from the get-go, and the media and Village Dems would have treated her as displaying “wisdom” just as they do with BO.
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I owe you an apology, Froomkin. You DO have a sense of humor! That was quite funny. (I assume these were your words)