Romney and Obama

The American political process has become a degenerate feedback loop in which technicians of the irrational tell candidates how to lurch from one nonsensical position to another, with each lurch compounding errors of policy. That is why Romney and Obama regularly reverse themselves to placate the whim du jour of an increasingly irrational public (e.g., Medicare recipients opposing “Government handouts”).

At some point, the cumulative damage inflicted by leaders reacting to to the prejudices, fears, and superstitions of a propaganda-addled electorate will become so great that a wave of reform and good governance will ensue. Until then, to follow American politics is to make a study of absurdity.

It seems possible that they have similar ways of going about finding the right answer in areas where they’re not experts.

IIRC there was a fair amount of corruption and self-dealing among members of Romney’s gubernatorial administration, especially among his close associates, involving their governmental jobs, to a higher degree than would be “expected.”

Romney also refused to take his salary (and I think pressured his Lt. Gov. to forgo hers), since he had enough on his own.

I would expect there to be some significant differences, and I’m sure others can come up with some.

it’s hard to see a choice between Obama and Romney making a big difference

Supreme Court nominations.

One more like Roberts/Alito/Scalia and we are undone.

boston resident comments:
as a very liberal boston (newton actually) person resident and voting in the romney elections…
his dem opponent was just bad. my memory is thatMassachusetts State Treasurer Shannon O’Brien put more energy and fire into her speech acknowleging romneys victory then she put into her entire campaign

a lot like dukakis and kerry and coakley: they grew up in what is, essentially, a polite one party state; they thought they were tough pols, but when they ran into someone who was really tough, someone from a state with real tough politics, they got chopped into little bits (although dukakis was just an idiot; he didn’t realize that being an ACLU member is not a plus in parts of the USofA….)

Nothing will break the hypnotic trance of American presidential politics. But for those of you who think it makes a difference, consider the differences between the Bush and Obama administrations.

Amazing. It’s like the Supreme Court doesn’t exist.

At some point, the cumulative damage inflicted by leaders reacting to to the prejudices, fears, and superstitions of a propaganda-addled electorate will become so great that a wave of reform and good governance will ensue fascist regime will take over.

FTFY. HTH. HAND.

Amazing. It’s like the Supreme Court doesn’t exist.

The current Supreme Court gave us the “Citizens United” decision, which opened the floodgates to unchecked corporate political contributions. The current Supreme Court did nothing to halt illegal wars or punish war crimes. The current Supreme Court did nothing to stop Obama from targeting American citizens abroad for summary execution. How much worse would a court full of Scalias be?

How much worse would a court full of Scalias be?

I dunno. Maybe you could do some research on this. Here’s a start: police are free to torture confessions out of suspects again. Scalia doesn’t believe we need Miranda anymore. And don’t think you’d ever get a civil case going against either the officers or their departments.

There are plenty of decisions Scalia is (thankfully) in the minority on. And part of the point of appointments is that these things could get better. With a liberal court, Citizens United would probably be reversed.

The American presidency has surprisingly little power to act without the consent of Congress, appointments to the bench and Supreme Court being among its most important and influential duties , as already mentioned. The Republicans probably will have control of Congress even if the Senate stays as it is with a bare majority in the Democratic caucus because there are enough “centrist” Democrats to support much of the Republican agenda except for the most radical items – maybe. So the question becomes: where would Romney draw the line against a radical right agenda.

Bad things that could happen depending on the makeup of Congress and Romney’s mood of the moment:
Invasion of Iran or support for Israel’s invasion of Iran
Privatization of Social Security
Vouchers instead of Medicare
Repeal of Obamacare
Privatization of many government functions
Deregulation of everything
Right leaning Supreme Court appointments (as noted above by Joel Hanes)

@16: You’re right. Might as well let the country degrade into full blown fascism.

The Supreme Court bogeyman will not distract informed voters from the moral bankruptcy of the Democratic Party. Eventually, a party like the Greens of Europe will come to power in the US and pick up the pieces of our ruined nation. No sane liberal or progressive should ever cast a vote for a Democratic politician again. They are absolutely dedicated to war, plutocracy, and the arbitrary exercise of power. They are distinguished from their Republican counterparts only by the rate at which they advance pernicious policies. It was Obama who introduced cutting of New Deal programs to the budget debate. It was Obama who asserted the right to kill American citizens abroad at will. It was Obama who continued proxy torture through renditions. It was Obama who just overruled new EPA anti-pollution regulations.

Choosing the slower ride to Hell is a false choice. Enough of this two-party charade.

No, but it stops them from torturing suspects into giving confessions that can be used to convict those suspects. This is quite a strong motivation when you want to get a conviction! I wasn’t around at the time, but my understanding is that this was quite a common tactic, particularly effective against minorities, back in pre-Miranda days.

Scalia would never actually endorse such tactics. He would simply work to create a legal environment where is was impossible to effectively limit them.

Really, is the old Supreme Court thing the best that Democrats can do? It’s wearing mighty thin.

I mean you’d think a President’s sole power was to appoint justices to the Supreme Court.

Yep, you know things have come to a pretty pass when this administration’s apologist are telling Democratic voters not to vote based on quid pro quo.

Which, funnily enough, is never advice given to voters on the right. They vote quid pro quo with a vengeance and that strategy seems to work just fine for them.

Eventually, a party like the Greens of Europe will come to power in the US and pick up the pieces of our ruined nation. No sane liberal or progressive should ever cast a vote for a Democratic politician again.

At least not until these politicians actually start delivering on what they promise. I think this is the bit that’s soured so many voters on Obama: that never in recent history has someone so contemptuously and completely abandoned all those pretty campaign promises. Well, you know what they say: Bust the deal, face the Wheel ;-)

For those commentators who are asking themselves whether or not ‘we’ have reached rock bottom (hence the ‘how could things be worse if’ etc.), I have to remind you of the profound words of Marvin the Paranoid Android in the Hitchhikers Guide.

‘Isn’t it funny that just when you think things can’t possibly get any worse they suddenly do?’

All this of course depends on whether or not the poor will be allowed to vote in the next election.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-gop-war-on-voting-20110830

I can’t believe we’re having this discussion again. Pretty much regardless of how bad you think the Obama administration has done, the idea that Romney Obama would be twiddledy twiddledum is just crazy.
People are dismissing the SCOTUS argument – sure, if this were only SCOTUS, but it’s the entire federal courts system as well as the heads of all major government agencies – if you don’t think that matters just don’t know anything about policitics. Do you really think there is no very real and very tangible difference between, e.g., and EPA headed by Lisa Jackson and one headed by the industry crony that Romney would appoint? After complaining how Reagan and the NLRB have ruined unions in the 1980s, the Obama appointed board suddenly doesn’t matter?

In terms of policy – are you really so hung up on the fact that Obama didn’t get a public option passed that you’re willing to discount the entire HC reform, insuring 25-30mil uninsured people? Do you really think the flaws in the finance reform bill outweigh the benefits, including the Warren designed consumer protection bureau? Do you just not care about DADT repeal and the administration stopping to defend DOMA?

Look, I think there is a good argument to make that it’s not worth donating any money to the Obama campaign or not to volunteer because you’re disappointed and because your time and money on truly progressive goals – but if you’re not going to vote bc Romney v. Obama doesn’t make a difference you’re just completely deluded.

I can’t believe we’re having this discussion again

Yes you can, and you know damned well that the reason it’s happening again is because of the uselessness of the President who got elected after you had the dicsussion last time.

I mean everybody can see what the Republicans are, and what their leaders are. It shouldn’t require any effort at all to get people to back their opponents. What speaks volumes, what speaks volumes upon volumes, is the fact that it does. And the Democrats have nobody to blame for that but themselves.

(Though they do, of course. My word, they do.)

Mpowell, my understanding of the Miranda controversy is that it’s all about requiring cops to recite the well-known phrase to the people they’re arresting. I don’t see how it affects their ability to torture confessions out of them.

Ah, well, the whole point of requiring police to Mirandize suspects is that any testimony that they extract from them is inadmissable in court if the police cannot establish that they have properly mirandized the suspect and respect those rights while the suspect is in their custody. Under the current arrangement you can torture a confession out of a suspect, but the court will throw out the confession. This has been quite effective at improving police conduct. In the old system, it was up to the defense attorney to convince a jury that the admission under torture was unreliable. They were not generally successful.

I love how anyone advising that, no, things will get a lot worse under a Republican president is an Obama apologists. I’m just letting you all know that sticking your head in the sand and hoping for the best is not a strategy for political progress. I despise plenty of stuff this administration has done but I recognize that they are definitely better in the short run than their alternative. And the violent revolution path to progressive governance after we have fallen into a strong man dictatorship is, to put it lightly, not a promising one, imop.

I’m not going to be dragged into this debate again though. You can go read elsewhere about how you can actually try to improve this situation in the United States if that’s what you actually want to do through local political organizing. But yeah, it sucks and you will accomplish very little for your efforts. Much easier to complain about it online, which is most of what I do as well so I’m not going to criticize. I just wanted to point out that any post contrasting R and D in the White House that left off SCOTUS discussion was sorely lacking.

still sebastian made some good points. obviously obama is nothing to get excited about but equally obviously(to me anyway) romney would be worse. think iraq, katrina etc etc.

I would like a Romney vs Obama fight. They will differ in substantive ways in their approach to the economy and the budget, and a public debate on those differences would be a good thing.

In some respects they won’t differ – e.g. Targeted killing program – but personally I likely agree on policies they have in common.

last post is supposed to start with a nested quote:
ejh: ” ‘I can’t believe we’re having this discussion again’
Yes you can, and you know damned well that the reason it’s happening again is because of the uselessness of the President who got elected after you had the dicsussion last time.”

How much worse would a court full of Scalias be?

We’d lose Griswold v Connecticutt, which found a right to privacy in general, and in specific instructed the States that laws restricting sales of contraceptives to disfavored classes of adults (e.g. unmarried women) were unConstitutional.

Without Griswold, the states will once again be free to criminalize disfavored sexual activities (e.g. fellatio, same-sex relationships, anal sex) between consenting adults.

Any chance of voting Democrat to actually get some legislation, rather than it being taken away?

The absurdity of reducing the decision between two plutocracy-approved Presidential candidates to a handful of issues should be apparent. How narrow does the difference have to be before common sense prevails?

Both “parties” are pursuing an agenda of concentrating wealth and power in the hands of their financial patrons. The Republicans are doing it faster than the Democrats, but the goal is the same: rule by the rich. This means dismantling of the New Deal and Great Society programs; a national security state; and continuous warfare.

The only honest way to oppose this agenda is to reject the two-party system. This means repudiating the political propaganda of the commercial media, a task beyond the capacity of most citizens. It will take further deterioration of living conditions in America to break two-party plutocratic rule, but that day will come, peacefully or not.

How much worse would a court full of Scalias be?

The last Republican president appointed two justices who are probably to the right of Scalia, particularly in the kinds of cases that seem to get the most attention (e.g. criminal due process). The Republican president preceding the most recent one appointed the right-most justice, the one whose previously unique point of view’s gaining influence was the subject of a recent New Yorker piece. “A court full of Scalias” isn’t what we’d be dealing with.

Furthermore, the oldest sitting justice is Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The next two eldest are Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy. All three will be at least 80 years old if they survive through the next presidential term; it’s at least somewhat possible that the president elected in 2012 will replace all of them. This is not an insignificant basis for one’s vote.

No, that is Eisenstadt

I am grateful for the correction.

I see that Eisenstadt relies on the equal protection clause; may one assume that overturning Griswold will also vitiate Eisenstadt?

This is not an insignificant basis for one’s vote

Would you would vote for any Democratic candidate promising to appoint liberal justices, irrespective of that candidate’s record in foreign policy, economic affairs, or civil liberties? How much sense does that make? Obama is to the right of all Democratic Presidents in this century, and you think his Supreme Court picks are going to make a difference? Obama has declared that he can kill an American citizen abroad that he designates a “terrorist” summarily, without any legal process. Obama has cracked down on government whistle-blowers far more harshly than Bush. Are you going to vote for this man to protect your liberties???

Obama is to the right of all Democratic Presidents in this century

Have a think about that

Would you would vote for any Democratic candidate promising to appoint liberal justices, irrespective of that candidate’s record in foreign policy, economic affairs, or civil liberties?

Where “any Democratic candidate” is to the left of the Republican, not Zell Miller or Joe Lieberman, and polls show no left alternative competing for victory? Yes.

How much sense does that make?

A lot of sense.

Obama is to the right of all Democratic Presidents in this century,

This isn’t even close to being true.

and you think his Supreme Court picks are going to make a difference?

Do I think Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor are better than the people McCain would’ve nominated? Yes. Do I think whoever Obama nominates in the future will be better than who Romney or Perry or Bachmann nominates? Yes.

This post gives a glib and (btw) incorrect characterization of Obama, though from Romney’s political-turnabout-frequency I get the sense it applies somewhat more to him. You may not like Obama’s principles, you may not in fact even recognize them for what they are, but come off it, will you? You could be spending your time on good economics; why waste it on bad psychology?

Where “any Democratic candidate” is to the left of the Republican, not Zell Miller or Joe Lieberman, and polls show no left alternative competing for victory? Yes.

You mean you would sacrifice the Supreme Court to defeat Joe Lieberman? Oh, the horror!

I think that CharleyCarp got at much of the dilemma well.

On the one hand: Obama is better than any possible Republican rival would be.

On the other hand: Obama is disastrous for the country on all of the fundamentals – rule of law, war, the power of the banksters on down the line – and on many of the lesser issues. Reelecting him means recession in perpetuity at best, widening gap between the wealthiest and the rest, infrastructure deterioration, inaction on so many fronts where things must be done and action on so many others where the state ought to leave damn well enough alone…

I suppose that in the general election I’m likely to turn out to vote for whoever the Democratic candidate is, and to discourage anyone who’ll listen to me from voting Republican. But I hope to have some decent primary challenges to actually care about in some of the elections down the ticket.

“I see no reason why Americans will not come to their senses once we have suffered enough.”

This is often referred to as the “handwavium” or the “Underpants Gnomes” method of arguing.

Really?

You’re going to base all of your ideas…………on this? I mean, if you’re right, shouldn’t you, at minimum, be trying to flee the future carnage?

I think everyone’s missing the real point here. Much as we’d rather have a reasonable choice (who would presumably be to the left of Obama), it’s probably much more important that the Republican candidate is not totally insane. After all, unless American politics goes in a drastically different direction than it ever has in the past century and a half, the vast majority of elected officials (and especially presidents) will be Democrats and Republicans, and each party will have at least 40 seats in the senate on most occasions. If we get someone like Romney as the Republican nominee, then that will be a continuation of plutocrats-as-usual. But if it’s Perry or Bachmann or Paul, then future Republicans will all be racing to see who can be the most “Social Security is unconstitutional” and “you have to be a Christian to be an American” and “as long as we can drown the government in a bathtub it’s ok if no one has a job”. I mean, they already have that sort of pressure, but if you think about it for even a moment you can see that many of these candidates are far worse than any mainstream Republican, including most members of the house and senate. It’s much more important that those people stay away from the levers of power over the long run than that we happen to (by fluke) get an actually good president for a single term, who might then be succeeded by these people.

Inveighing against the two-party system strikes me as idle wankery. If you care, get busy with the hardwork of contesting control of one or both of the two Parties. Or invest your efforts in building a mass-membership organization devoted to an important set of issues — the kind of organization, which has always moved American politics thru and despite the two-party system. (Think labor unions, Temperance or Women’s Suffrage, or abolition or Townsend Plans.)

That said, I think progressives face a very hard choice, in 2012. Obama will not be primaried, but he should not be re-elected either. Rejecting him the hard way — meaning, rejecting him, when it means electing a Republican — is the only form of rejection, which will be available.

And, yes, it means “hoping for” a system crash. Obama’s sales pitch is basically one of preservationist competence; and he’s making that sales pitch to people, who want “the system” preserved at all costs. “The system” we are talking about is the petroleum economy of cheap gas and suburbs and driving to a better job, a better house, better schools, and cheaper mass-produced stuff at a bigbox store, imported from developing Asia. It’s also “the system” of de-regulation and globalization, disinvestment and declining wages, and corporate business predation and perpetual, hugely expensive war.

So, sure, if you want “the system” “preserved” — if you think that is so obviously the course of “practical” wisdom and constrained rationality that it appears “inevitable”, as it does to all right-thinking Villagers (read Ezra Klein or Matt Yglesias, sometime) — then, by all means support Obama as the lesser evil, and hope for gay marriage, or something. Each downleg of the Lesser Depression will only increase the unemployment rate a little, and Obama will talk up jobs programs that consist of benefits for giant corporations and insanely rich people, in between Grand Bargains to destroy Social Security. That second trillion in student loan debt, sinking a generation into debt peonage, is still a decade away.

Much of “the system” has already failed. The financial system has been failing periodically and progressively since 1980, and continuously since around 1998. When the financial system “crashed” in 2008, the political left was unprepared. Critiques of the increasingly predatory nature of the financial system were few; our so-called professional economists expressed surprised dismay at “the shock” (their word). Despite previous lessons in the Shock Doctrine, we still responded to the signs of panic, like sheep, herded toward the sheering or the slaughter, as the case may be.

No, I do not know how to make the system “crash”. I’m pretty sure it will continue to fail with progressively immiserating results, if Obama (or Romney) manages to “preserve” it. It’s like a building, which has become structurally unsound, and is very expensive to maintain, in its decrepit condition, and the people in charge are saying, we can’t tear it down, where would you live? And, it is true, when the old structure comes down, for a while, there won’t be a place to live, so to speak. The best we can hope for is the opportunity to tear it down, on a schedule and according to a plan; the second best, it “crashes” to earth in the near future, and we manage to get most people out with minimal injury, and then get on with building wisely to a new design; the worst case scenario is to impoverish ourselves trying repair it, suffering under its increasingly delapidated inadequacy, and maybe, it finally crashes to earth, when we no longer can afford to build something better.

straightwood @68
End the wars (not)

Obama promised in the ’08 campaign to end US combat ops in Iraq. He has ended them.

He didn’t promise much of anything specific re Afghanistan in the ’08 campaign, as I recall. Of course, my recollection on this point may be faulty.

Re Boumedienne v. Bush — true it didn’t have as much practical effect as it might have had, but it was still important that SCOTUS affirmed that detainees could challenge their detentions in the federal courts via habeas corpus petitions. Kennedy was the key vote, iirc. In a court of Scalias, it would have gone the other way. Also what C. Carp said above.

@71
yes, but Ron Paul, at least, has no chance of getting the Republican nomination. Zero. He has a very committed but not expandable base of support. His extreme (and that’s a polite word) positions on the gold standard, the Fed, and other things are anathema to the plutocrats in the Republican party. He’s running to advance his ideas and as an ego trip. He must realize he’s not going to be the nominee.

Perry, on the other hand, is quite scary b/c he could get the nomination. There was a thread at Wash Monthly (Steve Bienen’s blog) a while back, which I happened upon by accident, that discussed Perry’s intelligence (or lack thereof). Hasn’t hindered his career so far but might in a general election. One hopes.

John, I’m not sure what your new premises are. I will tell you that I’m from a smallish town and that due to my age and profession I rub elbows with a fair number of local Democratic operatives. And while it may not be representative of the larger picture, I can reliably report that these low-level apparatchiks are furious about the position they’ve been put into by the national party.

Their fury is redoubled because apparently the party big wheels aren’t allowing them any input into the process at all ; it’s all top down, I-say-you-do sort of directives. At least, that’s what I’ve been hearing at school functions, city council meetings, etc.

And we have a bunch of out-of-touch people, not in the US, not understanding what is happening here, making believe that Obama=Republicans is *&$*)%)$# useful. Thanks for the god-damned anchor; those of us struggling to tread water appreciate the Leninist bullshit.

Tell that one to the voters. You know, the ones who didn’t turn out back in 2010. I’m sure they’ll find you real persuasive.

Like it or not, the fate of congressional democrats is not separable from the fate of Obama.

It just isn’t. The old ideas of ticket-splitting and reasonable republicans are dead and buried. The reasonable republicans vote the same as the crazy ones, because if they don’t they lose primaries to loons. We just saw identical union-busting and voter-suppression bills xeroxed in dozens of state legislatures. So the old regional distinctions (where a liberal could vote for a reform republican) are also erased.

People will not vote for Romney and balance their vote with a democratic senator.

Oh, and Romney won’t be the nominee. It’ll be Perry, or maybe Bachman. The true believers see the chance to give the keys to the Kingdom to one of their own, and there is no recent evidence that they can be stopped in the Republican party of today.

It’s Obama, like it or not, or the deluge.

Marc: Yes I have. But you apparently have missed what the previous congress did, and clearly have no idea what’s happening in Democratic-run states. Hint: it’s not a pro-union paradise around here. Somehow you seem to believe that the laid-off teacher, the union worker whose pension and health benefits are taken etc. should feel better about it if a Democrat does it.

Of course voters in 2010 didn’t miss these things which is why you ended up with insane people in control like in Ohio. Scare tactics didn’t work then, what makes you believe they’ll work next November?

And we’re getting the “not a dimes worth of difference” song anyhow? Good lord, have you seen what the current Congress is doing?

We politically sophisticated types have got a term for what you’re describing, Marc. It’s called “political pressure”. And no, you’re not supposed to like it. You’re supposed to comply, or get voted out of office. Thems your two options.

Funny thing that, but the right votes quid pro quo all the time. And it seems to have worked out quite well for them. What all this distasteful and unbecoming whining on the part of various Solons comes down to is that they don’t like being pressured and they want those populist types to be nice and reasonable and stop using such tactics and let their leaders decide what’s best for them.

Uh-uh. Not going to happen. You do what I tell you to do, you do what you’ve promised you’re going to do . . . or you don’t get my vote. That’s how most people have voted from time immemorial.

It really is just that simple.

@17: “Invasion of Iran or support for Israel’s invasion of Iran”

Israel couldn’t defeat Hezb0llah and they would invade Iran?

Admit. You. Were. Wrong.

Wrong to do what? What were were supposed to have done in 2008? Was the current Secretary of State going to be the great left alternative? Were we supposed to elect McCain to heighten the contradictions?

@92: The current courts have been overturning old precedents with alarming frequency recently.

John, the basic issue that doesn’t seem to have sunk in is that the current crop of Republicans are incredibly reactionary. I’m still seeing nonsense here about “scare tactics” – as if the things that are going on aren’t actually, well, scary.

If you want to talk about disappointments with Obama, fine. But please don’t pretend that the alternatives aren’t extremely dire. Because we have every evidence that this crowd has no limits.

Pr Q said:

Still, as long as the Congress remains divided, it’s hard to see a choice between Obama and Romney making a big difference (of course, I thought that about Bush v Gore, so there you go).

There would be a huge policy difference between Obama and Romney, although there political styles are similar. Both are moderates, but Obama is the leader of a moderate Centrist party. Romney is the leader of an Far-Right party. There is no longer a moderate Republican faction. If Romney were elected he would be hostage to emboldened Tea Party candidates, who would take heart from the fact that they were in the vanguard to unseat the “socialist” Obama.

In 2008 I correctly predicted that Obama’s politics would default to a “canny Centrism, Clinton without the sleaze”, given the large degree of “right-wing ballast” within the US political system. But he was a much more effective Centre-Left legislator than what I initially gave him credit for, versus the counter-factual of a McCain victory. (McCain, likewise to Romney, had a reputation for being a centrist Republican. And who did he choose for his running mate?)

Obama passed major health reform in a Centre-Right nation, in the teeth of a Tea Party revolt. Romney passed his health care reform in a Centre-Left state. Big difference.

Obama also passed a small fiscal stimulus, some mild financial regulations, and at least got a commitment from Wall Street to pay back TARP funds. I doubt if a McCain treasury would have done the same, given the Republican tendency to write blank cheques to Wall Street.

The “divided Congress” assumption is not axiomatic. With a REP presidency and legislature the supposedly DEM Senate would face irresistible pressure to cave in on major issues. Politics tends to “go with the mo” and a Romney presidency would give the Far-Right REPs added momentum against the vanishing breed of RINOs.

I still maintain that Obama will win in 2012, although less confidently given the continuing slump in the employment market. He has to reach out beyond his base and get some jobs action for average white guys. Once he protects his flank on the unemployment front the essential frivolity of the Tea Party approach to public policy will become evident, to even the most disengaged voter.

A lot of the same money, too:

Donors associated with Goldman Sachs have given Romney at least $290,750, according to the Center’s research. Those affiliated with Credit Suisse Group, meanwhile, have donated at least $167,000 to Romney, and people and PACs associated with Morgan Stanley have given him at least $126,350.

Donors associated with Bain Capital, Bain & Co., Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Blackstone Group, UBS AG, and Wells Fargo have likewise already donated tens of thousands of dollars to Romney’s presidential campaign.

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2011/07/first-presidential-campaign-finance-reports-show.html

SoV@88: [1]Anybody remember what Reagan did when 200-odd soldiers were killed in Lebanon by a bomb, and what happened to his poll numbers afterward?

I’m genuinely puzzled by this. Other than poll numbers climbing.
1) Invade Grenada?
2) Give a weasel-y speech mixing a bunch of lies and propaganda about Grenada with excuses for Lebanon with shameless appeals to military honor and patriotism?
3) Or withdraw troops from Lebanon in February 1984 after resisting it for months and giving a speech which justified that action in part by saying we did not appreciate what we were getting into. But not after laying out some crap like this: We hadn’t committed the marines to Beirut in a snap decision, and we weren’t alone. France, Italy, and Britain were also part of the multinational force, and we all thought it was a good plan. And for a while, as I’ve said, it had been working.

79 — I’m not going to campaign for Obama. He has no chance whatsoever of winning my state, and I don’t plan to do what I did in 2004 and 2008 — travel to a state in play and work there. I will, however, work for my incumbent senator. It’s a damn close race, and it’s going to come down to turn out. I’ll thank folks to lay off demoralizing people whose votes we need.

@78

Your point about “populist” voters is dead-on. If liberals/progressives want political power, they’re not going to get it voting for corrupt centrists or conservatives. A political majority for progressive reform has to be an alliance between people, to whom progressive ideas sound appealing, and people, to whom “populist” appeals make sense.

I think many people of a liberal or progressive persuasion find effective populist appeals distasteful, for various reasons. People with the psychological attitudes of authoritarian followers pick up “racist” ideas easily, for example, and that frightens many on the left, which, frankly, it should. But, if you let the Right monopolize the demagoguery, you hand them numbers and power.

104last — This is the conundrum no one has figured out. Youth populism drove out a significant part of the Dem coalition that hadn’t already been alienated by civil rights. Pre-civil rights Dem victories were based on tacit (or not so tacit) acceptance of the Solid South. No replacement has yet been found.

Well, one replacement: having lost white southernors and midwestern ethnics, Dems discovered that finance could be a useful member of the coalition.

The rise of the Greens in Germany is a hopeful indication of what could happen in America after plutocratic rule drives us further into ruin. It will take a long time, but the sooner the process begins, the sooner we will recover. I have changed my voting registration to Green, and I advise all voters with progressive views to do the same. The Democratic party is a fraud, and the Republican party is a monstrosity. We do not have to choose between these evils.

Would Romney or Obama be more susceptible to a Republican push to repeal health care reform?

Would Romney or Obama be more likely to cut higher tax rates?

Would Romney or Obama be more likely to cut social spending, or government support of research?

Would Romney or Obama be more likely to scale back new financial regulations?

Would Romney or Obama be more likely to appoint very industry-friendly individuals to lead key regulatory agencies?

The idea that they’re essentially indistinguishable candidates is nonsense.

And, quite frankly, I don’t agree with some of what Obama attempted to do, but there’s no doubt that he tried very hard to make good on his promises. He is a President faced with a divided Congress, a stumbling economy, and serious concerns about the nation’s fiscal health, all at the same time. I honestly do not understand the bitterness on the part of some on the left.

Well, I do understand much of that bitterness, although you are right: He’s a genuinely — I believe — center-left president who’s leading a center-right party and has to do with a far-right opposition. The combined power of the parties, well-funded interest groups and lobbies ensured that almost anyone he tried to challenge (Netanyahu, for instance) was going to do whatever they wanted with him in the end.

@108: The German Greens are doing well in the polls now, I agree, but they’ve also moved a lot to the center and, on some issues, to the center-right. I’ve seen some Greens criticize their government for being too timid in the Libya intervention, take pro-Israeli positions after the Gaza flotilla raid and link approvingly to Tom Friedman op-eds on their Facebook pages. And, frankly, they’ve benefited from Fukushima and from being in the opposition during a major financial crisis. While they’re still preferable to anything we have in the States, I’d be careful about portraying them as the model for the future.

Andrew F., 111.: but there’s no doubt that he tried very hard to make good on his promises

This is simply, absolutely, wrong, most obviously on civil rights – war on terror issues. There Obama has, if anything, been worse than the Bush administration and this has nothing whatsoever to do with congress, or the economy.
And his breaking promises (invariably deviating from them to the right) says something because he was very careful not to make many promises since it would have damaged his “I’m a foil for people’s hopes” strategy.

The excuse-making and apologetics we see on this thread (and see on liberal blogs every couple years) points to a fundamental problem of lesser evil politics. If it was just about biting your tongue and voting Democrat, that’s one thing. But, invariably, it isn’t. It involves demobilizing for 18 months out of every four years any criticism of Democrats from the left – or even criticism of Republicans from left-of-Democrat positions. So, for example, forces allied with the Democratic party worked hard to tamp down on anti-war organizing during the 2004 campaign – and are thus in part responsible for the complete demobilization of the anti-war movement plain to see for everyone not in ANSWER. Similarly, the huge movement for immigrant rights that erupted in 2006 was infiltrated, taken over, and ultimately basically destroyed by forces loyal to the Democratic party who wanted to ensure “acceptable” protests (American flags, not those of countries of origin; support for crappy reform plans supported by Democrats, not legalization; and so forth) for fear of voter backlash.

Nothing has as pernicious an influence of left politics in the US as this pull of being considerate towards Democratic party electoral prospects. It needs to stop.

OK, I’m bored with this discussion, again, and will check out now. Couple of parting thoughts:

The role a small party can play in a parliamentary system is so different than in the American system that there’s really comparison at all.

Deciding not to vote against someone who has a chance to beat the Republican in your district/state *is* a choice. It is a choice to let the Republican win. Look, you’re free to make that choice. But you have to own it.

You can’t talk about the failure of Boumediene without looking at how the DC Circuit changed in GWB’s second term. The point of separated powers, the point of a post-Marbury/Madison judiciary, is that you don’t have to count on an Executive, subject to various political pressures, to safeguard individual rights. There’s no excuse for the BHO’s conduct — continuing to hold dozens of men that the military has deemed eligible for release, for example — but there’s also no excuse for allowing the branch that is supposed to be a check on abuses like that to be emasculated.

This puts the case:

Obama has learned that no matter how much he rat-fucks you, his base, you will have nowhere else to go. What’re ya gonna do, vote for Michelle Bachmann? Live under President Rick Perry? Or wait, you can always vote for the Third Party Libertarian candidate and hand the entire country over to the billionaires, rather than handing over 99% if you vote Republican, or giving away 98.5% to finance and Big Pharma as the Dems do. Yeah, good luck, suckers! The choice is all yours! Bwah-hah-hah!

A good point, well made.

christian_h, eh, he tried to close certain detention centers, he supported the end of “enhanced interrogation,” and he’s winding down the US role in Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s substantial progress. My view of his foreign policy continues to darken as his administration fails to adequately fund military programs helpful to the strategic challenges of the coming decades; but I think the shift in strategy on global terrorism is wise, and I think de-escalating Iraq and Afghanistan as priorities is wise. Whether you view those moves from an ideologically left perspective or a more centrist pragmatic (sorry, I know this is loaded vocabulary) perspective, I think you have to give Obama due credit for them.

As to the stimulus package, health care, financial reform, etc., he got a lot of what he wanted, and didn’t get a lot of what he wanted. And Republican administrations may make progress on their causes, but they certainly don’t get a lot of what they want either. The American political system is conservative by design.

The right metaphor for an election is pool. The question in any election season for the voter is: what kind of spin are you going to put on the government? Is it going to veer left, or veer right? Towards regulation or away? Towards a progressive tax system, or away? But if you view each election as a chance to run the table and win the entire policy game, you’ll be disappointed, because the American political table isn’t set up for those shots.

SoV@88: [1]Anybody remember what Reagan did when 200-odd soldiers were killed in Lebanon by a bomb, and what happened to his poll numbers afterward?

I’m genuinely puzzled by this. Other than poll numbers climbing.

You mean this, which at the time was widely attributed to be the reason his poll numbers climbed, that famous line about accepting blame:

If there is to be blame, it properly rests here in this office and with this president, and I accept responsibility for the bad as well as the good.

That line?

From what I’ve seen here, it will be a cold day in Hell before Obama or any of his defenders ever admit he/they made any mistakes. Even if doing so would win him the election :-(

Andrew F., 121.: he tried to close certain detention centers, he supported the end of “enhanced interrogation,” and he’s winding down the US role in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He didn’t try to close Guantanamo, he tried to move it. At the same time on his watch a new interrogation and detention facility was started in Mogadishu. He did not, and is not, winding down the US role in Afghanistan (after his planned “withdrawal” there will still be more US troops there than when he took office). Internally, repressive actions against political dissent have, if anything, increased under Obama; not to mention his assertion of presidential rights to assassinate US citizens. His record on civil liberties, an area in which much could have been done without congressional involvement, is atrocious.

Arguably you could say health insurance reform was worth all this (if it holds up). But you can’t argue it away. And yes, I view these things from an ideologically left perspective. If there’s one feature of certain kinds of liberalism I detest it’s the way its practitioners fool themselves into believing they are not ideological but purely guided by “reason” – apparently an entity existing independent of human minds…

I see christian_h is faster on the trigger than me; in case it wasn’t obvious enough, I endorse all of what he said there.

To put the North Dakota size thing (#122) further in perspective, if the entire state were just a county in another state it would only be the 96th most populous county in the US.

There are 15 counties in California alone that more populous than North Dakota. New York has 9 counties more populous. Even a medium sized state like Massachusetts has five counties more populous than North Dakota. It just is not a very big place. Having only one abortion provider that does more than 400 abortions a year just isn’t that shocking.

It can ALWAYS get worse. It is wrong that there is no difference between, say, Obama and Romney. There is always a major difference between a Republican and Democratic administration. Thinking otherwise is just self-delusion and/or rationalization for doing nothing.

>> Without Griswold, the states will once again be free to criminalize disfavored sexual activities

> Do you really think that’s likely?

Likely? I dunno. But I’m sad to report that I now think it’s not outside the realm of possibility.

Before around 2006, I’d have called it impossible outside the Old Confederacy.

But I’m originally from Iowa, and have watched the theocrats take over the machinery of that state’s Republican Party — people whose ideas about sexuality conform to the stereoptype of Victorian attitudes, people who quote (certain parts of) Leviticus without self-awareness, people who really seem to hope to repeal the Enlightenment.

Thank you, Tangurena, for actually posting on topic. As opposed to, say, whining about how Republicans are still worse than Obama whatever he has/hasn’t done and why doesn’t everyone get this.

123: You mean this, which at the time was widely attributed to be the reason his poll numbers climbed, that famous line about accepting blame:

If there is to be blame, it properly rests here in this office and with this president, and I accept responsibility for the bad as well as the good.

Ah, I did miss that–from the press conference after the report on the incident was released in December. Although my distinct memory was that it was the disgraceful Grenada episode that really did it. Gallup:

His ratings moved back above 50% by November 1983 — not only because the economy was picking up, but also in part as a result of rally effects associated with the U.S. invasion of Grenada and the terrorist explosion that killed 241 American Marines in Beirut, Lebanon.

And for some reason this bit of Presidential responsibility did not give Tim Russert orgasms 30 years later.

It was my decision to attempt the rescue operation. It was my decision to cancel it when problems developed in the placement of our rescue team for a future rescue operation. The responsibility is fully my own.

All of it a minor side point, though.

Steve Williams @126:

His proposal to close Guantanamo Bay involved recreating it in Illinois, he emphatically has not ended torture, and his much-vaunted “winding down” of the role in Afghanistan will see more US troops in the country than when he was inaugurated.

Surprised to see someone stating these documented facts in public. Thought I was the only one who’d been pointing this out. Obama has continued the use of “enhanced interrogation methods” as specified in the CIA’s Appendix M, otherwise known as torture.
We have eyewitness testimony that torture has continued at the second secret prison in Bagram airbsae.
For evidence, see “ICRC Confirms Existence of Second Secret Prison at Bagram, BBC Reports Torture,” 11 may 2010, firedoglake, Jeff Kaye.
Also see Red Cross Confirms Second Secret Prison At Bagram Where Detainees Have Been Tortured, same author, 13 May 2010.
Naturally the obots will rush forward with hysterical denials, which requires us to believe that the BBC and the Red Cross are both engaged in a giant right-wing conspiracy to discredit America’s first black president.

Cranky Observer @136 notes:

While sworn US soldiers have been phased out of combat operations in Iraq (although a large number are still based in-country), they have been replaced by equal or greater numbers of Blackwater mercenaries and other PMCs presumably paid on various CIA and State Department black budgets.

Once again, exactly correct. And once again few people seem to have noticed this. The mainstream media certainly haven’t.
And the evidence once again is clear: military contractor deaths now exceed U.S. troop deaths, indicating that there are now more mercs in Iraq than official military personnel.
See “This Year, Contractor Deaths Exceed Military Ones in Iraq and Afghanistan,” T. Christian Miller, Pro Publica, Sep. 23, 2010.
In fact, figures now show that America has upwards of 250,000 mercs in Iraq and Afghanistan. That number dwarfs the amount of regular U.S. military in both countries.
Naturally, obots will hysterically deny these documented facts, since the pentagon reports documenting these figures can easily be downloaded. See this article for links to the official Pentagon pdfs. It’s crucial that obots vehemently deny observable reality, since that reality proves inconvenient to their clay-footed idol Obama.
Meanwhile the Iraq withdrawal date for U.S. troops “may be pushed back beyond 2011.”
Gee.
Ya think?
Back to about 2111, based on recent experience. America is now engaged in Forever War, never-ending, ever-expanding. We can never leave the countries where our troops are losing their pointless unwinnable wars, since this might ‘create instability in the region.’ America must maintain the capacity to lose three major wars simultaneously at distant parts of the world. Nothing else will do.
At this point, questions like “How can Obama get liberals to vote for him?” have become meaningless.
It doesn’t matter whether liberals vote for him, since if elected, Obama will enact exactly the same policies as Sarah Palin or Rick Perry.
This is why the frantic effort by obots to scare Democrats by screaming “But what if Rick Perry becomes president???” fail completely.
If Rick Perry becomes president, he’ll enact insane regressive sociopathic self-destructive policies like torture and the endless expansion of the U.S. military and insane endless unwinnable wars everywhere in the world and tax cuts for the rich and crazy counterproductive austerity policies that contradict the advice of every respected economist in America, along with the relentless destruction of the constitution in the name of infinitely expanding a pointless counterproductive national security state that gobbles trillions of dollars and produces nothing but turning the bill of rights into toilet paper.
But if Obama becomes president, he will also enact insane regressive sociopathic self-destructive policies like torture and the endless expansion of the U.S. military and insane endless unwinnable wars everywhere in the world and tax cuts for the rich and crazy counterproductive austerity policies that contradict the advice of every respected economist in America, along with the relentless destruction of the constitution in the name of infinitely expanding a pointless counterproductive national security state that gobbles trillions of dollars and produces nothing but turning the bill of rights into toilet paper.
So what’s the difference?
Who cares?
What does it matter if Sarah Palin or Rick Perry or Barack Obama becomes president?
The policies will be exactly the same, America will circle the porcelain bowl ever faster, and the suction will continue to draw us down.
So why does it matter how you vote in the 2012 presidential election?

christian_h @125: He didn’t try to close Guantanamo, he tried to move it.

Others have echoed the same idea.

The problem is that Obama did not promise to end military detention. He did promise to try to close Guantanamo, and he certainly attempted to do so. He studied, and reformed, the military tribunal process, and instituted ongoing, periodic reviews of those detained.

So I think you’re upset with him for not doing something which he never said he would do.

He did not, and is not, winding down the US role in Afghanistan (after his planned “withdrawal” there will still be more US troops there than when he took office).

The surge is widely viewed as a necessary prerequisite to a more complete withdrawal of resources, as we have witnessed in Iraq. You may not like his timeline, but responsible withdrawals from occupations can’t always proceed in a straightforwardly linear fashion.

Internally, repressive actions against political dissent have, if anything, increased under Obama;

If by “political dissent” you mean “prosecuting those who unlawfully disclose classified information,” yes. And good for Obama.

not to mention his assertion of presidential rights to assassinate US citizens.

The assertion is that citizenship doesn’t shield one from being a military target in an area outside US jurisdiction where one has voluntarily and knowingly become part of a terrorist organization engaged in ongoing hostilities with the United States. That’s not a new assertion.

Steve @126: he emphatically has not ended torture

There are allegations of abuse at Bagram, for the most part before Obama took office. However there has not been corroboration of claims that the policy at Bagram is one supportive of abuse (as opposed to instances of individual abuses, which have involved criminal prosecution), and overtly at least the policy of the US has been placed squarely against the use of “enhanced interrogation,” which is a shift from a previous administration.

mclaren @139: Regarding private contractors in Iraq, the article you rely upon doesn’t look at changes in contractors over time, and the numbers it uses for a single snapshot are wrong. Looking at the actual Pentagon report which your source cites, there are 62,689 total DoD contractors in Iraq, only 10k of whom are private security contractors. There are roughly 57k military personnel in Iraq.

To make the point even clearer, in August 2008 there were over 162,000 private contractors in Iraq, and around 150k military personnel. The reduction in private contractors has proceeded apace with the reduction in US military personnel – remaining at a roughly 1:1 ratio.

So the numbers hardly substantiate Cranky Observer’s claim at 136 and yours that the US is replacing US ground forces with an army of mercenaries.

John Quiggin, I can’t get beyond objecting to your premise, because it looks like Perry will be the candidate. Or, to put it another way, for Romney to get the nomination, he would have to burst into a ball of light and explain to his own party that the rhetoric of ending the welfare state is childish, that gov’t debt is entirely manageable, and that Perry is a corrupt gladhander like any other. Since this is unlikely, I think that the most interesting political question at this moment in time is how many moderates will leave the Republican Party. The coming Republican debates will be an unusual window onto the divisions and jealousies among the Republicans, Reagan’s 11th Commandment be damned. (“Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican.”) Of course, I thought that there would have been defections by now, so maybe they have all decided instead to drink heavily.

“…people who really seem to hope to repeal the Enlightenment.”

The Enlightenment occurred only after nationalism and industrialism provided the necessary affluence and independence for the evolution of a trans-European middle class, free from the ruling influence of the Holy Roman Empire. The Global American Empire has destroyed the American middle class. Did you expect us to slouch quietly to Bethlehem? Do you expect us to defend your sacred principles of “enlightenment”, even as our families and friends gradually sink beneath the advent of our eventual demise?