Which is exactly who he said he was. I don't understand why so many of my fellow progressives made the mistake of assuming any differently.
I made the choice to support Obama early in the primary season, right after Edwards dropped out. Yes, it was "settling" for an electable moderate candidate, but, after 8 years, that was a choice I was willing to make, and it's one I'd make again: he's governed better than the electable alternatives would have.
Folks have said that there are lots of things they wish the president would have done when the Democrats were in the majority, but they forget that health care reform sucked all the air out of the room. This was the greatest legislative accomplishment of any Democratic president in my lifetime, so I'll "settle" for that.
There was a fake memo from Karl Rove circulating recently that encapsulates nicely what is going on:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/08/27/1... I believe this e-mail to be a complete and total fraud (he says some things that would never be said even in a "confidential" e-mail, including "Anybody but that grotesque, hideous beotch from the Klondike!", "Look, we suckered all those nutjob Christian fundies out of their votes and their money. LIberals are almost as easy to fool!" and "Mmmwahhh" Even Karl Rove does not bother to actually type out an evil laugh, much as a dying man would not write "Castle Aaargh.") Nonetheless, it is true, eve if its attribution is false. Just look at the join date of the loudest of the complainers: you'll find few who were here before 2008.
Despite the claims of the right, I did not expect Obama to hike the top marginal tax rate to 90% and confiscate the wealth of the capitalist class and give it to working people. And he has done some things that i strongly disapprove of, such as trading the investigation (not the prosecution, but the mere investigation) of the crimes committed under Bush to secure the confirmation of Eric Holder (it's nonsensical to trade away the principle of the rule of law to secure the confirmation of the attorney general).
NONETHELESS
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You simply cannot underestimate what the value of having Obama in the White House has been. For those of you who thought he was going to govern like Noam Chomsky would have, I'm sorry. Meanwhile, back in Realityland:
President Obama has appointed 96 federal judges. I am willing to bet that all of them are better than any of the judges we would have seen from McCain.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_feder... Obama is siccing Eric Holder on the banksters. Why did it take so long? Because these cases are complex. Maybe you don't do complexity, but that's the fact, Jack.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-1477442... He promised to end the war in Iraq, and he's ending it. The worst-case scenario is that we will have 3-4,000 troops in Iraq after the withdrawal deadline. You know damn well McCain would have found a way to keep us there forever.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0911/... It's not "ponies and unicorns": these are real differences. Should we try to push this administration in a more liberal direction? Absolutely. But any activist Democrat who does not see what this president has accomplished is worse than the Republicans.
