Should Liberals Support Obama?

I don't think Obama has a strong case as to why liberals should actually want to support him on his own merits. Ultimately liberals will vote for him because of how bad the alternative is with Romney, but on Obama's merits, here I will list a few pros and cons from a liberal perspectives. Others go ahead and add on.


Why Liberals Should Not Like Obama:

*Extended Bush Tax Cuts
*Kept Gitmo open
*Sent more troops to Afghanistan
*Signed Healthcare plan conceived by the far right Heritage Foundation

Why Liberals Should Like Obama:
*Supports Gay Marriage





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Seems rather lopsided to me

 

I agree Obama has hardly been liberal on most issues.If anything he is slightly right leaning. Hopefully in his next term we will have a true leftist president.

 

Hardly. The mandate is a product of conservative thought, but the bill also ramps up entitlements and significantly boosts the size of government.



Anyway, here are some other additions to the "Why liberals should like Obama" column:

-Passed a spending-based stimulus package
-Ended the Iraq War
-Ended don't ask don't tell

 

Those things are more conservative then conservatives are willing to admit.

 

The Healthcare Bill was practically written by the health insurance lobby. Hardly progressive. I'll give him credit for Iraq and DADT, but the stimulus bill was insufficient and a significant portion of it was tax cuts.

 

The "stimulus" was a continuation of Bush nonsense, at a time when we needed real revolutionary New Deal-type programs

The only reason Obama ended the Iraq war was because the Iraqi government forced him to stick to the timetable for withdrawal that Bush had signed.

Ending 'don't ask, don't tell' was not a good thing.

 

Obama is not even remotely a liberal.

Not sure what alternative we've got, though.

 

Your points are wrong or pure delusion.
Spending-based stimulus package-"Those shovel ready jobs, weren't so shovel ready."- President Obama

Ending the Iraq war- Not even close dude. President Obama used the withdrawal timeline that was set, before he even got in office. Nice try at history revisionism.

Ended DADT- more history revisionism on your part. He only signed the repeal into law. Congress forced his hand, by ending DADT, not the president.

Lame

 

Meh, beat me to it.
Except your last poi t, doesn't make much sense.

 

It still turned out pretty liberal, with some serious new entitlements providing insurance coverage to millions. Of course, this has a significant chance of being irrelevant: the Supreme Court might strike it down next month.

It was as big as he could manage, and the majority of it was new spending.

What? How?

True, but if Bush were still in office, he would probably screw it up somehow and stay in Iraq even longer. Obama deserves some credit for being competent enough to stick to the schedule.

Good or not, it was certainly liberal.

That just means they weren't created instantly. It took a few months.

Again, he deserves credit for not being a moron.

Plenty of other politicians would have vetoed it if they were in Obama's position.

 

Try Bernie Sanders. I may disagree with everything he pushes forward, but at least he is consistent, and sticks too his guns. Unlike that empty suit you people voted for in 08.

Dennis Kucinich, is another liberal with principal.

Then there's Ralf Nader, not only is the man honest too a fault, but he's done more too improve issues in this county than Obama will ever hope to achieve. Too bad, loud mouth liberal d-bags like Michael "cheeseburger" Moore, and Bill Mahr (*)(*)(*)(*) all over him in 08.

 

A bigger question... should liberals have elected Barack Obama in the first place? Voting for him now is a given... what choice do they have?

If libs hadn't been so blinded by his light, they could've told by his voting record he isn't much of a doer. Instead, they got all swept away by hope & change...

They'll vote for him again. Like one said earlier, "Maybe he'll get better in his second term!"

ROFLMAO

 

I'm not a full-left-lefty myself; I rather like Mr. Obama's policies. Even so, he has leaned further to the left than ANY Republican of late has.

Also, my PRIMARY reason for wanting a second Obama term, is appointment of Federal Judges and appointments to the USSC.

Romney gets in there... and we might as well call America "Oligarch City".

 

Obama said he was in favor of ending DADT and called on congress to repeal it before they did so I'll give him his credit there.

 

Um, seriously? You don't remembered Bush's stimulus schemes?

It's not like the Obama admin didn't try to get to stay in Iraq longer, they just failed to convince the Iraqi govt to go along with them.

Not really. Barry Goldwater endorsed allowing gays openly in the military decades ago.

 

Doesn't look like the Right wants Romney very much; that's for sure.

 

Changing the subject probably won't help, but when it's all ya got...

 

I don't remembered anything akin to Obama's Recovery Act coming from Bush. Bush preferred tax cuts and bailouts.

That doesn't mean it's a conservative position. Most of the support for don't ask don't tell has come from the right, and most of the support for its repeal has come from the left.

 

Bush did things the more showy and politically savvy, though less effective, way, sending out stimulus checks. However neither Bush nor Obama made any real attempts to revitalize the economy with real stimulus.

Says who? I certainly view it as a conservative position, and so did Goldwater. It's definitely not a left-wing position.

 

This is essentially the same as cutting taxes, which is a conservative position.

Whether the Recovery Act was effective or not, spending-based stimulus is a liberal position.

We just went from "open homosexuality is banned" to "open homosexuality is OK" in the military. I don't see how that was a conservative change...?

 

Reasons not to like Obama:
Signed NDAA
Resigned the patriot act
Continues our ridiculous tax code
Allowed bombing in Libya
Gitmo
Allowed a drone strike on an American Citizen, Where was his due process under the law?
Continues the ridiculous war on drugs (didn't we learn from prohibition?)
Signed Obamacare which will force Americans to buy products from a private company or be penalized
Allows the TSA to treat citizens like criminals, what happened to innocent until proven guilty?
Surged in Afghanistan with ridiculous rules of engagement
Voted for Tarp
Passed a worthless stimulus
Over trillion dollar deficits every year

All in all, just like Bush a failure in my eyes, not surprising since they pretty much do the same things policy wise 95% of the time.

Reasons to like Obama
Politically I don't really have any, government shouldn't even be involved with marriage so that whole point is moot, but I have no problem with gay marriage or whatever, its none of my business.
The Iraq war we left on Bush's timeline so Im not giving him credit for that, we shouldn't have been their in the first place.

 

Which is what Obama did with the payroll tax cuts.

Liberals are pretty pathetic then, if they accept that joke as an example of "stimulus".

As a queer leftist, I agree with Cindy Sheehan, that the correct attitude to have toward the military is "don't go, don't kill".

 

You should add drone warfare to why liberals should not like Obama.

But what is the alternative?

 

Like I said, liberals will mostly vote for Obama because Romney is the main challenger.

There will be others, at least in some states, on the ballot who offer a more progressive option, but to vote for them you have to accept you are voting for someone who is not going to get any significant amount of the vote.

 

Oh i don't know they could not legitimatize a lesser evil again just like conservatives could but hell gotta stay status quo.