If we give him a MANDATE, he'd better USE IT.

[JDPriestly]

87. Obama is not going to move hard left. It's not where he wants to go.

But if we can get Obama elected, we can become active in the party and make sure that the next candidate is at least slightly more to the left than Obama, more progressive.

Obama has done a lot of things very well, but I would like to see a president who can bring some order and control into the financial sector. I would like to see a federal reserve that responds to the people and not just to the banking class.

Also I would like to see less privatization of traditionally public, government functions.

The private sector should manufacture and sell products in sectors that benefit from competition.

Competing for a government contract -- or automatically getting a government contract because its specifications were written for your company is not competition.

The government can do things best in areas in which real competition is not efficient or at best a joke -- like schools, like the military, like police and fire services, like courts and so many other traditionally public institutions and functions.

But we would have to have someone with a far more liberal philosophy than Obama to just get that one change back to the traditions that made us a great country. Oddly, what I am suggesting is deeply conservative. It's the conservatives that are far too radical about privatization.