When a friend of mine from the Washington Post visited just before the presidential election in November 2008, she was surprised to find so many Obama signs in our neighborhood. We may live in a red state, but our Montrose enclave is solidly blue. While many in the neighborhood — including my partner — backed Clinton in the Democratic primary, just about everyone I know was for Obama in the general election. Even though I hope to see a woman elected president in my lifetime, his post-racial message of change resonated with me, so I was with him from the start. And, frankly, I suffered from Clinton fatigue. I couldn't imagine four — or even eight — years of Bill Clinton as first spouse.
But now I'm having buyer's remorse.
According to Game Change, Obama based his campaign on the idea that voters were "looking for a president who can bring the country together, who can reach beyond partisanship, and who'll be tough on special interests." His advisers believed that "Obama could embody that change, but Hillary could not."
It sounded too good to be true. And it was.
But I can't help but wonder what might have been. I now suspect that President Hillary Clinton would have had a much faster learning curve about the ways of Washington based on her years of experience and would have fought harder for the things she believes in. Heck, I even bet she would have kept her meddling husband in check.
But perhaps Hillary came out ahead after all. As Secretary of State, she is a respected world leader who doesn't have to deal with contentious domestic issues. Her approval ratings have skyrocketed and are now much higher than the man who defeated her for the presidency. (She got a whopping 75 percent approval rating in a December poll; Obama's rating hovered at 51 percent.)
It's so much easier to believe in someone when he — or she — is not in the nation's highest office.
The excuse? "Everyone else fell for it!" Very popular. "just about everyone I know was for Obama in the general election." Yeah, not me, buddy, and not anyone I know at Hillary's Village/World.
Man, do these people feel like idiots now or what? It's plain from their articles - which I never tire of reading, thank you very much! - that they're grabbing onto any reason they can find to excuse not looking into the background of Barry. If they had, they'd have known better!
I'm saving this to my favorites, as it does a good job of listing why Democrats should think twice about supporting their mess-iah (all in quotes):
During the campaign, Obama accused Clinton of acting like a Republican on foreign policy. But he has increased troops in Afghanistan, continued a strong U.S. presence in Iraq and kept the prison at Guantanamo open.
He promised to be tough on special interests. But banks that were rescued by the taxpayers continue to pay obscene bonuses to their top officers and Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner remain key players in the financial system.
He vowed to televise health care negotiations on CSPAN. But all negotiations have been in private and backroom deals have created a bloated bill that no one understands or can explain.
He promised gay supporters to overturn "Don't ask, don't tell" and repeal the "Defense of Marriage Act." But his justice department filed a brief in support of DOMA before backtracking and thus far he has done little to push the rights of gays to openly serve in the military.
Instead of change, it seems like it's business-as-usual in Washington.
Great comment by Guest (all in quotes): Guest Unfair? I don't think you are being unfair. The man can't deliver. He doesn't seem to want to deliver, either, as he apparently has no strongly held convictions whatsoever.
[snip]
Yet he did such a grand job of convincing Democrats (who admittedly were grasping at straws) that he was a man of substance, and others that he was moderately -liberal- in principle, though predictably reviled by the ultra-right as a Marxist-Leninist bogeyman. Who could have known he would be the second coming of Herbert Hoover instead?
But the bottom line is this -- I didn't have any great expectation of the man, I thought I had tempered my optimism -- but really, I had no earthly idea how dismal he would really be.
Word!
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Barack/Barry: If you're NOT LEGIT, then you MUST QUIT!!