Obama And The Crumbling Of A Liberal Fantasy Hero

[Drunken Irishman]

182. What?

Who said traditional Democrats were out of the mainstream? I certainly didn't. And I got news for you - you don't get to decide who is and isn't a mainstream Democrat. I think Barack Obama is certainly the mainstream of this party and you know how I know that? Because he receives fairly high approval ratings from Democrats, won two Democratic primaries and won two elections with monumental Democratic support. You make the claim he isn't liberal enough for your liking, but let's be real - that wasn't your argument here.

If your argument is that someone more liberal than Obama and Clinton could win a presidential election, by all means, produce the evidence. Who is this figure and why haven't they won? Why didn't we have a President Mondale or a President Dukakis? I guarantee you it's not because they were too moderate or too conservative. In fact, when was the last time a perceived liberal Democrat won the White House? LBJ? Hell, by much of the logic of DU, he doesn't count because his foreign policy was extremely authoritative. The same could be said about Kennedy and Roosevelt too. They weren't doves and they certainly weren't pacifists. They were aggressive interventionists and we give 'em a pass why?

You say the candidates pivot leftward every election? That's not true. Bill Clinton certainly didn't run a campaign from the left in 1992. He spoke of reforming welfare, supporting the death penalty, he played up his fiscal conservatism and spoke of how tough on crime he was. Four years later, he played up that welfare reform, signing NAFTA, signing DOMA and adding more cops to the street than any president. That was far from being a liberal campaign and he certainly didn't pivot to the left once the general election came around.

The fact remains is that liberalism has no legs to stand on because they throw their best bets under the bus every single time. I recall Al Gore wasn't liberal enough in 2000 for a great deal of you people. That type of logic explains why you fail every single time. It's why there hasn't been a supposed liberal president, in your eyes, since JFK or LBJ and even they weren't as liberal as many of you made 'em.

So, stop blaming people like Clinton and Obama for your ideology not getting it done in presidential politics. You don't like Obama and you don't like his brand of Democratic politics - go nominate someone else. Go nominate Alan Grayson and see where that gets you nationally. But until you can prove to me that a flaming liberal will win a general election, I will not buy any of the shit you're trying to sell because I've seen it play out all too often in the past. Well it didn't work in the 70s and 80s and it ain't gonna work now.