Does President Obama Deserve Re-Election?

Status
Not open for further replies.
Well, you decribe the....

underlying historical context with admirable precision. But, the discussion was about electabilty. He was not elected under the only circumstances that actually presented an opportunity for him to be elected and he was not. This being the real world, he was not electable as it turned out. It does no good to say that if such-and-such circumstances had not prevailed or if other circumstances had prevailed then he would be electable-that would simply be saying that under the circumstances in which he would be electable then he would be electable. Even amongst circular arguments this one looks pretty round. Add to which the very notion of 'electability' is suspect logically. Barring a legal impediment, any candidate is electable if the circumstances are aligned in his favor at the very moment of the election, every candidate is equally unelectable if the circumstances are aligned against him at the very moment of election. But these statements are mere truisms-they don't really say anything and they merely point out that 'electablity' is just question begging.

I share your assessment of LBJ's role in the quagmire of Vietnam. But that is an irrelavancy with regard to his pounding of Goldwater.
 
Let it be lesson...

to you to read my post correctly before giving me advice. I put a question mark after my comment about the drubbing-meaning I wasn't sure and didn't think it mattered enough to check.Had I thought it mattered I would have checked, but didn't and don't now. First place?, fifth place?-what difference does it make in the frame of reference under consideration. It's not like he got beat by one vote or as Gore did, got beat by some indeterminate number. He got creamed and nobody who knows that election thinks anything else.
 
You naively pretend that there wasn't a special set of circumstances at play in 1964.

"It's not like he got beat by one vote or as Gore did, got beat by some indeterminate number."

There you go again, with the hyperbole. Just about every bit of research on the 2000 election results (e.g., NYT, Miami Herald, Wash Post) validated GWB's victory. Gore got beat, fair and square and then - after conceding the election - chose to prolong the uncertainty.

Understand the way the game is played... when a Democrat loses an election by less than 5%, one can almost always bank on the election results, vote counting methodology, etc., being challenged by most of the MSM and in court. 2000... 2004... notice that all of the alleged voting discrepancies and voter disenfranchisement magically disappeared in 2006 and 2008. What was different about those two elections? There were many of the same allegations made immediately after November 0f 2010... SHOCKA!

There will never again be a determinate number... ever.

"overacheiving hopped up housefrau like Bachmann"... "We hate Nixon... We Hate Bush... We Hate Hoover as you say... Half of us hate Reagan... We could care less about GHWB... We hate Obama
Half of us hate Clinton... We don't care much about Carter-he was a weeny... We hate Johnson"

Hate... vitriol... all reminders of the lefty I used to be and of what repelled me about so many of those folks.
 
Last edited:
Ah, nothing like the wrath of a convert...

Old lefty is it?,errors of your ways corrected?, reformed and now baptized in the purifying waters of the one true belief? Do you have to take an oath and all that and wear funny clothes on RR's birthday.
Maybe it's a form of political bipolar syndrome. There is a cure and it is strawberry flavored according Dan S.. I myself took the full treatment and it worked.

By the way, the list of hates were not intended to be mine (I find hating people fatiguing and contempt is usually as far as I am able to push myself and on a daily basis limit myself to bemusement, but only a very small amount), they were a kind of assumed or mock vox populi and intended for effect-theatrical effect, or something equally fatuous or frivolous or both.
As far as Bachmann is concerned-I was rather happy with the description , I thought it had a jaunty beat and the word choice pleased me particularly and you can't accuse me of indulging in any hypocritical unfelt politeness. She's nobody to me and I couldn't care less about her. If she 'raptured' tonight it would be okey-dokey with me. She and all the others are just characters in an ongoing comedy I play internally;it's a bit like the old TV comedy SOAP but the players are much much stupider. It's all just entertainment Colonel. It's all just words on a screen. Scold me all you want-it's fine with me because it's just all part of the fun. But I warn you I am a true blue non-repentant type. I never say what I feel I will have to apologize for later-and in fact, won't apologize later. Or maybe I am a judge-penitent but in a jester's suit!

Also, I do not naively pretend anything, when I pretend it is in full possession of all the important facts and in the burning sunlight of awareness. And you mis-state the case of Goldwater yet again. He lost, the circumstances were what they were and that's all there is to it. It sounds silly to claim that he would have won if circumstances had allowed him to win, but I went through that elsewhere. If you don't get this consult some elementary analytical philosophy books. Strictly speaking I ignored the circumstances of his humiliation, for the immediate purposes of my point it was sufficient that he was in fact snuffed. You are implying that I pretended, but you are just wrong about that. Oh, and I rather liked old Barry-big step up from the haircut models we are getting now.

You make some very valid points about Gore and vote counts and all but it's pretty boring stuff. I guesss we were all just lucky he didn't get in and drive the country into a hole,huh?!!

When you think you would like to engage in a discussion of more abstract ideas untethered from the marginal personalities of the current cast of boobus politicus , I am at your service. Here is a question to start that leavening- When 'small government' is referenced,exactly how small? By what sort of measure? Against what criteria?

Please do not respond by calling me dyspeptic-you have used it twice already and its tediousness is exceeded only by its inaccuracy.
I am an older person-not that old-but still, so I suppose if you need to flirt with some personal references that's a place to start. :):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):)
 
Since a president is elected by electoral votes, I suppose the best gauge of "margin of victory/loss" would be to look at that figure. GMcG is five spots "worse" than BG.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...dential_elections_by_Electoral_College_margin

It is amusing but somewhat secondary to see the results of the popular vote. (click on the % of pop vote margin header to stack 'em up....GMcG is "next worst" after BG)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_elections_by_popular_vote_margin

Interesting in that in just two presidential election cycles, the parties swapped the dubious distinction of having virtually unelectable candidates.
 
Wow, what a the turbulent period...

Simply unmatched since WW2 in sheer political energy and potential and in the midst of it Kevin Phillips gives the 'Southern Strategy' its useful form and Nixon exploits it and the galvanic rift that had opened up between the 'two Americas' to realign and the electoral picture for the next 40 years at least. Brilliant long game strategic thinking and execution. Nixon and Vietnam, the common thread from 1960 to 1974, amazingly interesting time in our politics and culture.
 
He's on a roll...

"The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up the national debt from 5 trillion for the first 42 presidents — number 43 added 4 trillion dollars by his lonesome, so that we now have 9 trillion dollars of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic."

- Barack Hussein Obama on July 3, 2008

President Obama has jumped that up by another $4T all by himself and he did it In only 2 & 1/2 years. That works out to nearly $47,000 for every man, woman, and child. Draw you own conclusions about his personal responsibility and his patriotism.
 
He did not jump it $4T....

all by himself; that is simply false and impossible under our system of lawmaking. It is also not true that all of that debt is the result of anything done at all by Obama except to fail to produce a balanced budget in the first year of Presidency-all the money in that year was already committed. Congress refused to sunset the tax cuts that they had passed under 'emergency' conditions and against the pay-go laws.
They continue to fund the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan which is not required of them to do. Obama has not and cannot spend money on his own authority-nor can he refuse to spend the money approved by Congress-so at minimum he has several score of help.
 
and to think the liberals used to

bitch and moan about Nancy Reagan raising money from private donors to replace the White House china... :whistle:

 "The Obamas' summer break on Martha's Vineyard has already been branded a PR disaster after the couple arrived four hours apart on separate government jets.
 But according to new reports, this is the least of their extravagances.

 White House sources today claimed that the First Lady has spent $10million of U.S. taxpayers' money on vacations alone in the past year."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...used-spending-10m-public-money-vacations.html
 
On-going disaster

Misguided economic policies, the business community's lack of trust in this administration, financial chaos in Europe, a level of incompetence that has heretofore seldom been displayed by any previous administration, market uncertainty fueled by a tone-deaf president... all of these continue to impact families and individuals, and black families have arguable been hit the hardest.

Peter Kirsanow poses some interesting questions to the president:

"The overall unemployment rate is 9.1 percent and the Congressional Budget Office projects that the rate will remain above 7.4 percent until 2014.

The unemployment rate for black Americans is 15.9 percent. Perhaps more relevant, the black employment/population ratio (i.e., the percentage of non-institutionalized black civilians who are employed) is a mere 50.8 percent.

Rep. Maxine Waters called the black unemployment rate “unconscionable” and criticized your recent bus tour for neglecting black communities. Jesse Jackson has referred to black unemployment as a “state of emergency.”

Just last year, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights gave you a report detailing the commission’s finding that illegal immigration has an adverse impact on the employment and wage rates of low-skilled American workers of all races. The report emphasized, however, that the negative impact of illegal immigration upon black workers in a number of occupations was “significant.”

Nonetheless, upon the conclusion of your bus tour, your administration implemented a policy that effectively grants amnesty to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants.

Did you take the Commission’s report into consideration when you were crafting your new illegal-immigration policy? If so, do you consider amnesty for illegal immigrants more important than jobs for Americans?"

Read it all here: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/275548/todays-questions-president-peter-kirsanow
 
And then there is another less...

histrionic view from a paper serving a community that one must assume includes a significant African-American population.

http://www.freep.com/article/201108...umanely?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|FRONTPAGE|p

Gosh, after decades of opposing anything that could be remotely described as practical solutions to the issues facing Black Americans-here comes the National Review to the defence!!! Wow,wow,wow! Obama certainly does have the ability to bridge previously unbridgeable gulfs of interests.
 
Whatever

Here's a fact-based look at economic life under President Obama... the "ObamaNation":

* Under the current administration, America has lost 2,240,000 jobs - and over 900,000 full-time jobs in April '11 thru July '11 alone. President Obama is on track to have the worst jobs record of any president in modern times.
* 9.1% unemployment rate vs. 7.8% in January 2009, his inaugural month.
* July 2011 marked the 30th straight month in which the U.S. unemployment rate was higher than 8%, the highest since the 1930's.
* Since May '09, the unemployment rate has been above 10% during 3 months, above 9% during 22 months, and above 8% during 2 months.
* Long-term unemployment is worse than it was during the 1930's... the so-called Great Depression.
* Our youth employment rate is at the lowest level since when the statistic first started to be tracked in 1948 .
* The share of those in the employment (i.e., employable) population that actually have jobs has plummeted to the lowest level since the early '80s.
* Fiscal year 2011 will be the third consecutive year with deficits in excess of $1,000,000,000,000. Before this administration, America had never had a deficit in excess of $1T.
* Under this administration, the U.S. has upped its debt by $4,000,000,000,000.
* The housing crisis is worse than it was during the 1930's, with home values worth approximately 33% less than they were in the Summer of 2006.)* The U.S. had its credit rating downgraded for the first time in our history.
* Consumer confidence has declined to the lowest level since the malaise of Jimmy Carter.
* A record number of our citizens now rely on the FedGov’s food stamps program. Over 44,500,000 Americans received food assistance-related benefits, up 12% in less than a year.


As Obama Chief of Staff Plouffe and DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Shultz have said, President Obama "owns this economy". Unless he changes course and works a miracle, he will be judged accordingly.
 
The RNC talking points are getting a little old

We get it. Obama is a crappy president. All but the most left wing partisan hacks understand that. However, even if Obama had done everything "correct" the economy would almost certainly still suck as bad or worse than it does now. The fact is that the things that need to be done to fix this economy are almost certainly going to make it worse in the short run. In 1983 you could have easily said Reagan "owned" the economy. Would you have been blaming the high interest rates and high unemployment on him? If McCain were president things would almost certainly be just as bad. Would you blame him? I agree that Obama has done almost everything wrong when it comes to the economy but what is your solution? Elect Perry or Romney? All I see is people wanting to rearrange the deck chairs on a the proverbial sinking ship and blame the other guy for the hole in the bow.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top