Nice goading sir. The bloke's a cock and he's talking shite.
The fact "He appears frequently on Fox News Channel" says it all.
I agree with him Obama is as unpopular as anyone has beem at this point in his presidency, but to make out that it's because of his lefty socialist agenda is Foxtastic madness. It's because he's gone down the middle on all domestic issues and kept making the same mistakes as the right did on foreign policy. This is the problem with his entire presidency, it legitimises atrocious right wing policy as the norm and he refuses to take a stand against any of it.
Me? Surely left-wing dissent is fuel to the fire of the fox-tastic right-wingers?
What pissed me off more than anything was the idea that the principles of the 'founding fathers' should be followed when dealing with the complexity of allocating healthcare resources.
I think the right-wing strategists have played a blinder and by this, i have to assume that Obama would be even more fucked if he had tried to force through a more socialist programme of reform. Calling centrist policy 'socialism' has allowed the right to keep him in the centre.
Agree with all of that. Except Obama being more fucked if he'd done anything he promised on the election trail. The left were apopleptic with what Bush did while in power. It didn't stop him doing any of it. Obama got a majority across the board because of his promises to undo what Bush had screwed up. If he strongly pushed through popular policies the right would be giving him more shit, but his massive support from the left wouldn't be abandoning him altogether like they currently are having been sold a pup.
The saddest part of it is that he'd motivated a whole new generation to vote. Young people went out to vote for him like they never did for Kerry....and his actions since getting into power would have done more to disenfranchise those voters than anything Bush did. Even when the guy they voted for and believed in won he pussyfooted around and catered to a right wing faction that were never going to show any bipartisan spirit whatsoever.
The biggest mistake was trying to push through a leftist-agenda when the country was / is in economic crisis. Unemployment is now at absurd levels in the US and that more than anything is exposing the democrats to severe pressure.
In Tim Harford's fantastic book on economics, he produces some astonishing figures about the US economy. I dont have them to hand but since the 70's the US economy has lost something like 300 million jobs. However, in the same time it created something like 320 millions jobs. A testament to the free market.
This year, new job creation in the private sector is completely stalled and unemployment is escalating out of control. This is the prime reason for his drop in popularity imo. The fox-tastic right winger and salon-esque liberals are small constituencies in reality. 'Average voter dude' was always the target for his bi-partisan approach, he wanted to carry middle America with him. Unfortunatley, the economic situation has effected so many of them, he has lost approval from many who should have been carried with him.
I'm not sure why those numbers are anything to be particularly proud of. There may be 20 million extra jobs, but in the 70's the majority of the 300 million jobs paid enough that a man could support his stay at home wife and their kids.
The 320 million jobs there are now rarely pay enough so that a man and his wife can support themselves and an only child when they both have full time jobs. They're fast food & Wall-mart jobs that pay a pittance but that deparate people have to accept.
It's the shame of the free market that people don't get a fair days pay for a fair days work because the stock price of Wall-mart is more important than it's people....and their workers are forced to take credit at outrageous terms to drive the banks stock-price up.....which leads to financial collapse that the people with slightly better jobs have to pay for.
The wealth doesn't trickle down from the top, the shit piles up from the bottom.
I checked the figure and remarkably its this; between 1993 and 2002 the US economy lost 310m jobs (jobs which are old and uncompetitive and rely on outdated skills provided more efficiently elsewhere) and created 327m jobs.
The point was, given the way the US is set up economically and socially, there are no safeguards for the unemployed, just a system of dynamic economic adjustment that creates more than it destroys. The point now is that this is failing, new private jobs are not replacing the jobs lost during the recession and which continue to be lost. Thats the main problem with Obama's presidency. Your average Joe doest give a shit about whether e.g. his record on human rights is consistent with pre-election rhetoric.
Oh and wealth does trickle down if the wealthy spend it, it doesnt if they save it. Everyone knows that
