Which means that in 2012 they will vote for the other guy or gal, who will, undoubtedly, be far worse as a president.
Obama didn't win this time because he was black or because people liked his policies. He won because enthusiasm for a change mobilised volunteers on a scale that has never been seen before in US politics.
His political chances are completely dependent on those volunteers, and he can't afford to lose even 20% of them. His usual 'I realise we're going to disagree about some things' spiel is only going to take him so far - people are going to be expecting real improvements in their security and living standards.
If they get to 2012 and look back thinking 'Actually - that was kind of a Blair experience' he's toast, and the supposed massive national realignment and permanent Democratic majority will evaporate into nothing.
Barack Obama is an establishment politician. I know, I know people do not want to hear that, but he is. He always has been. People can believe what they choose, but the facts are undeniable. Non-establishment politicians are not surrounded by the David Axelrods and Rahm Emmanuels of the world. Obama is an exceptional establishment politician. But he's not grassroots. I'm sorry. He has used the grassroots community every step of the way to achieve his goals, but he's never shown any kind of tribalism or loyalty to them. His entire history is one of disappointing people who thought he was the champion of their cause. He did it at the Harvard Law Review. I have a friend who wrote policy papers for him during his Senate race, and after Obama won, was replaced with Daschle's people.
Also, this support base you speak of is mythical. There is not one base of support. It should be clear from looking at the electoral maps that his support is heterogeneous. It includes leftist progressives and Rockefeller Republicans, the GLBT community, and a homophobic African American constituent, it is grassroots citizens and Washington insiders. He's a human Rorschach test. Everyone except McCain supporters believes they are his base. Now, if you are Barack Obama, how do you please your base? Because your base does not even agree with itself! So instead of cherry-picking ideological tribes to pander to, I think he should make decisions based on his own wisdom and how effectively they will make America a more safe, prosperous and just nation. And that's all he's promised. And that is all I expect from him. "Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.
What matters is that if he doesn't live up to at least some of his promise in an obvious way, his support will crumble and the next cycle will go to whatever foetid creeping thing crawls out from the far right.
He may have screwed over supporters before, but the country as a whole is too big to screw over, and he doesn't have the luxury of doing that again. His charisma buys him some breathing space, but there has to be some delivery and pay off too - he's not going to be able to fool all of the people all of the time.
As for trusting his wisdom - why? Things will get better or they won't. Wisdom isn't the issue - results are.
That said, he owes the GLBT community. His failure to come out more clearly against Prop 8, among other problems, allowed the Mormons and their allies to prey on ignorance of the legislation in minority communities, especially among black folks (and to a lesser extent Latinos). There's clearly an issue of homophobia among them. We've known that for years, and leaders who are minorities have talked at length about it for a long time.
They need to step up and make this the civil rights issue it so clearly should be, so that we can throw this stupid ban out in two years. Obama, Jesse Jack Jr, Bill Richardson, the mayor of Los Angeles, Cory Booker -- they all need to fix this. Starting, like, now. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
Warning : story has about 2000 comments. Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères
If blacks had voted against it in the same proportion as Latinos (53%) or even whites (50%), it still would've failed. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
Obama will do more or less exactly the same things as Bush, except he'll look better and he might do them in a cleverer fashion. That actually makes Obama much worse for the rest of the world than Bush would have been. At least Bush was driving the US right over a cliff twenty years before true imperial decline was scheduled to take the country down.
While I largely agree with the premise, I disagree vehemently with the conclusion. I'd much, much rather have a smart emperor running a nuclear power than a drooling moron. "Desperate, flailing implosion" is not a qualifier that's designed to make me sleep soundly when applied to empires with enough megatons to scorch every major city on the planet five times over.
I think the US just got rid of a Yeltsin and replaced him with a Putin. Yes, it means that the US will be more powerful, just as Putin has made Russia more powerful. But I think you'd be hard pressed to argue that humanity is worse off with Putin than with Yeltsin.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
But I don't think he'll be making life miserable for quite as many people.
Obviously, the world would be a better place without emperors. But until that happy day, I'd much prefer smart emperors over stupid ones.
You'll notice that I have't argued that Putin was worse than Yeltsin for the majority of the citizens of Russia, or even for EU-Russia relations. Indeed I do not think so. But I won't draw a general conclusion from this specific example. I brought up Hitler and Mussolini to counter JakeS's general claim. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Putin and Obama, I would argue are realists by comparison. They have a more sober appreciation of the limits of their own power and the reasons why others might oppose them. They are more amenable to negotiated solutions taking both their interests and those of their competing powers into account. They can build on common interests rather than polarising situations to such a degree that only extreme force - on either side - can resolve the conflict of interest.
Obama may not be a starry eyed idealist who will bring peace in our time overnight. But neither would he start stupid wars, and or re-polarise situations that are starting to find a relative level of stability. That is huge improvement on where we have been, and I will take it for the moment. notes from no w here
OTOH, while being smart does not guarantee that one is not delusional, there is a point where dumb and delusional become virtually indistinguishable.
I think - and at this point a guess is all we have - that Obama has greater mental flexibility than Bush/McCain on the subject of foreign policy. Read: He'll be able to understand and more or less accept when a country has clearly and unequivocally left the US sphere of interest.
Bush/McCain seemed to have no willingness to concede loss of territory. And if you have a major power trying to enforce its will on what is clearly another major power's turf... Bad Things Happen. Think Georgia or Lebanon. Or a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, for that matter.
Yes, a US empire that flails out desperately at a variety of lost causes would weaken itself faster than a US empire that cuts its losses and manages more or less orderly retreats from its former colonies... But flailing about would hurt a lot of people on the way.
See, the rest of the world doesn't want a competent imperial manager for the US. We want an incompetent one, because such people are easier to beat. Bush, being a fool, did immense damage to the US imperium. I hate the US imperium, and I hope to live long enough to see the US itself reduced to the point where it is accorded the same international interest and respect as, say, New Zealand (i.e. pretty much none.
By the logic of this argument, we should all have been rooting for a Palin Presidency. The problem is that if the US is reduced to the influence of a New Zealand, the likelihood is not that we will have lots of New Zealand type countries in the world living in peace and harmony with one another, but a world dominated by China, Russia, Islamic countries or multinational corporations of no particular national loyalty - something which may be happening anyway.
A uni-polar world order leads to unparalleled hubris and arrogance, and I a glad that era is drawing to a close. But a multi-polar world order -in the absence of strong International legal institutions - could be even more unstable. We have to be careful about what we build to prepare the unipolar system - and the cataclysmic decline of the US is not guaranteed to give us a better world. notes from no w here
Agreed. "Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.
I'd never even heard about the guy before he started campaigning, and I always take election campaigns with a largish grain of salt, so I don't think I'm qualified to comment on how much of his program he's actually serious about.
He might surprise us and turn out to be a Gorbachev. He might disappoint us and turn out to be a Bliar. But right now, I think he looks like a Putin.
