I think Matt is wrong;

At least on one account; Obama's balls AND nut sack are HUGE.

Just for him to run was a show of the testosterone levels he has. To let the country slowly slide to the right IS a terrible thing but

with lame duck status and another momentum from his 2012 reelection will enable him to take back the initiative to right 'read LEFT'

the country for the next generation. The country has had its glimpse into what a true Conservative road the country will have to go

down. If the economy had truly tanked with Obama at the helm then the Republicans would have won next year. However, that would

have truly brought about the Great Depression II. THAT would have assured a Democrat in the White House in 2016, but at WHAT

cost? Maybe there is a Democrat in the wings of the caliber of FDR. Maybe that person WOULD be able to bring about a revival of

ANOTHER New Deal.


But think, maybe it would HAVE taken another World War to alleviate a mess total destruction a limited, 'hopefully', with 'only' 500

million dead and most of the world's large cities destroyed beyond human habitation. But with thousands of warheads going off,

Nuclear Winter would kill off most of humanity, along with maybe 90% of Earth's species. The total dead would be 10 times greater in

the above scenario of limited war.


This bull shit Incremental crap I keep hearing lately IS a good thing. Let me explain; Darwin's main point in the explanation of what

we now call Evolution IS incremental. He used the illustration of doves, ONE of his passions, to make his case in the Origin of Species

by Natural Selection. He envisioned the need for a species to adapt to LOCAL and slowly changing conditions for the species to be

able to NOT go extinct. The dove's case is not considered Incremental in this case. But it is NOT Natural Selection. Humans cause

breeds to occur only when they want certain attributes. They will make certain that offspring will carry on phenotypes, the actual

traits, and cause short term Evolution. This is known as WHEN the conditions changed, those individuals who were able to adapt to

these new conditions were able to flourish and be able to produce more offspring. This takes many many generations to be able to

make any difference in a general population. This is called EVOLUTION.


But Darwin did not go far enough. His early and mid 19th century thinking was limited to a shallow, but ever growing, pool of

knowledge that only enabled him to limit his theory to INCREMENTAL stages of Evolution.


Fast forward to the mid and late 20th century. I am sure most of the of the members of DU are aware of the name and reputation of

Stephen J. Gould. If not, he was among the premiere Evolutionary Biologists of his time. He died not long ago after decades of great

pain and anguish from a disease that usually killed shortly after the first diagnosis. He was the central figure that overturned the

Kansas School Board's decision to teach Creationism in the high school Biology classes. Gould WAS a Darwinist in the classical sense.

However, he went a bit further with at least one theory, that of a notion of Punctuated Equilibrium. Punctuated Equilibrium states

that;

"{Punctuated Equilibrium) is a theory in evolutionary biology which proposes that most species will exhibit little net evolutionary

change for most of their geological history, remaining in an extended state called stasis. When significant evolutionary change occurs,

the theory proposes that it is generally restricted to rare and geologically rapid events of branching speciation called cladogenesis.

Cladogenesis is the process by which a species splits into two distinct species, rather than one species gradually transforming into

another." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium


Ok, enough talk on Evolution. My point for this lecture is that Incremental can be thought of in both Evolutionary AND political theory.

Think of early US political parties. Both ancestral branches of the modern parties started out with both different names and different

ideologies. They EVOLVED by both Incremental AND Punctuated Equilibrea. Incremental-wise the political landscape changed with the

times, usually over decades if not a generation or two. I grant you this is not anything like the hundreds of generations that natural

selection requires but this is a human endeavor we discuss where the general population of the US thinks 2 years is a long time,

especially with the advent of mass media. A case in point is the gradual acceptance of the civil rights of the many different 'classes'

of Americans; women, African Americans, gays... All these movements took decades, or longer, for these groups to get their, mostly,

acceptance into the American mainstream.


As for Dr. Gould's idea of Punctuated Equilibrium, take for example the McCarthy era of TERROR. That political oddity took only a few

short years to coalesce. BUT LBJ's call for the Great Society brought about the sudden need to change the political landscape

literally overnight; change or go extinct, at least as a political party or movement. Another case would be Lincoln and 'his' Civil War.'

Granted, the Abolitionist movement had been going on for decades, but it was only held by a small minority that blacks were human

and they were whole and not the 3/5 that the original Constitution called for. It became generally political only after his election,

causing the almost immediate shift in political thought we see in hind sight. Prior to that there was a shifting of political movement

and much 'saber rattling' but it took the galvanization of a split of Americans to actually make the final 'Punctuation.'


Now to the matter at hand; Obama's political needs. Since his 2008 election, he has been attacked, openly, by his political

opponents. They have the power of hate, a POWERFUL force. They have a loud voice in the media-Fox, The Wall Street Journal and

others. The Tea Party, even if it was not truly a populist movement in a traditional sense, was a force that gave the Republicans

such a showing in the 2010 elections. That election has caused such a turmoil in the political landscape that Obama has HAD to give

in and BECOME an Incrementalist. This, I truly believe, has saved the Democratic Party AND the nation.


I DO NOT AGREE with MANY of his decisions. I HATE his decision to sign away our constitutional rights, among others. But, and I

hope this will come to pass, he will lead to the overthrowing of several (MANY?) of these hateful bills and statements.


The 2012 election will prove to be the turning point, mentioned above; IF he is elected. He will have the will of the people. They will

be skeptical at first because of his need in the last 3 years of being portrayed as an ANGRY BLACK MAN. He may or may not have

both houses go Democratic, but this is my main point, it will give him, the Democratic Party, America AND the world a starting place in

history that our children's children can look back on and say 'this is the time when the world truly began its Golden Age.