I really didn't have the great expectations that most of the Obama supporters had from

[WCGreen]

the beginning...

I thought he was a little too green, a little too flash in the pan...

I felt a lot of people were projecting their own feelings on to the junior senator from Illinois.

To be honest, I thought John Edwards was the best person in the pack followed by Hillary Clinton and then Joe Biden.

I considered senator Obama as not yet ready for prime time.

Even though he was given the keynote speaker slot at the 2004 convention, I felt that he was very light on the experience side.

I want to come clean.

I voted for Senator Clinton here in Ohio even though I knew senator Obama was going to ultimately win the nomination.

I felt that I owed her my vote for all the hard work she had done and all the gruff she had taken from the press and the Republican Party.

She was vilified like no other political figure I can remember.

I truly believed she would have been an effective, pragmatic leader, which of course would have been a welcomed relief after the Hole in the Head Gang that had taken up residence in the White House...

Still, after the convention, I was what I always am, a loyal democrat. Not so much anymore for what we stand for but more, sadly, for what we do not stand for, for what the leaders of our party decide is not worth fighting over...

I will still support president Obama because he is our party's president. And if history teaches us anything it shows us that more often than not, a strong opponent in the primary does not make for a stronger candidate in November.

But the problem I am having is defining what differentiates a democrat from a republican. I know there are certain things that a democratic president just will not do such as capitulate and compromise on labor or women’s or civil rights.

Right?

I always felt that our side was a little more about principle than the other guys, that there were just some issues that deserved to be placed above the ambitions of any given person.

I guessed wrong.

Several Dem's in the senate proved that fairly clearly during the last two years, that reelection was more important than principle.

I just did not think that a supposed idealist like president Obama would view his historic presidency as a job and not a calling.

But then again, what did we really know about Barack Obama before he burst on the scene at the 2004 convention?

I think the great expectations many had for then senator Obama were fueled by the many disappointments our party has suffered over the last three decades.

Be that as it may, I guess my immunity to deep cynicism has been overcome by a wave of pragmatic and frankly, callow behavior of the people supposedly running the party, our party.

The Best and the Brightest, Camelot, two terms thrown around about another bolt of lightning. For better or worse, JFK and his cabal defined a generation, made us strive for great things together.

Maybe we wanted so much for that once in a lifetime moment to be fueled by Barack Obama.

But is seems to me what we got from the expectations was the mediocre and the dim.

I hope this is just a rough spot. I hope all the tinkering around the edges turn out to be really good stuff for the people but I have my doubts.

Bold oratory does not always translate into bold governance.

The excuses being made by this administration and this administration's supporters just reinforces my first opinion of senator Obama.

Maybe there just isn't any there there.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. We've been through such desperate times, with the bush cabal...

We really needed something, or someone who would lift us out of our doldrums, and show us the way to a better country being run by the truly enlightened people of our party.

We thought we'd found that in Obama...

His soaring rhetoric thrilled us!

He charged us up, made us want to believe. And we did.

We put all our expectations onto him, without really knowing if he could rise to them.

Sometimes expectations turn out to be the most fragile of reeds...

I fear it is so, this time, with Obama.

Recommended.

[obxhead]

6. Many of us put our expectations on Obama knowing he could rise

to them, with hope that he would rise to them. He has dashed that hope for many with his actions not matching his beautiful and now meaningless words.

[WingDinger]

15. We needed superman. The righties smelled that, and sold the whole fals framework of our spuerhuman e

expectations. Fox news hammered that, till it sold. WE BOUGHT IT.

[bluestate10]

11. I am a moderate.

So I did not have great expectations of radical change. What I did want was someone that stood up to adversaries and had the cahones to take something away from them. Obama has disappointed me with his inability to draw a line and hold that line. One question in my mind is whether Obama will refuse to implement republican legislation when republicans take over the House and start passing legislation. GW Bush, when faced with a democratic majority refused to implement legislation, using a tactic where he wrote concerns and questions back to the legislature about the provisions. The tactic worked, GW Bush prevented much legislation that he disagreed with from becoming law. I don't see Obama stopping implementation of offensive legislation and using Bush's actions as precedent, Obama is too wrapped up in the bipartisan dream that he has going on.

[WingDinger]

16. I want to know how he will handle impeachment proceedings, for real.

For it is a comin' soon. Clarence Thomas already did the high tech lynching thingie. What is left is squat. They wanted to get Clinton on record as to individual characteristics of his willie, no telling what kind of indecency they have planned for this pres.

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

2. "The only difference between the Republican and Democratic parties...

...is the velocities with which their knees hit the floor when corporations knock on their door. That's the only difference."





























































Ralph Nader

[WCGreen]

3. Sadly, that is all we can expect...

[RKP5637]

4. He made me feel worthwhile as a citizen again after eight tortuous years of Bush. I have

this nagging feeling that compromise is not seen as a sign of strength by the republicans, but rather as a sign of weakness to be exploited. I also think these times call for a more radical approach, somehow I keep getting the feeling we are just trying to prop up the existing system that is in need of some serious refurbishment.

I'm hoping for the best over the next two years, but I do have to admit my enthusiasm is drained.

[WCGreen]

5. Tinkering around the edges alienates supporters and emboldens

opponents.

[RKP5637]

13. Yep! We see that a lot IMO. n/t

[bluestate10]

17. My enthusiasm is low also.

I have no idea of who is giving Obama advice in the White House on the democratic side, but I do know that advice is destroying his democratic supporters. The jarring thing is that no one in the White House seems to give a crap, they just keep making the same unexplicable choices. Given what I saw during the first two years and particularly saw during the midterms (when Obama was late to the fight and backed off if it looked like he could lose), I do not hold out much hope for the next two years. This year will be the watershed, if Obama does not start fighting and fighting until he has gotten his way, we just had well buckle down and prepare to fight a republican President from 2013 through 2016. I just don't see how Obama can rip the legs out from under loyal democrats and win re-election, republicans have shown that they will do anything to defeat him, even up to seriously damaging the nation's future.

Looking forward, this is what I see what we can do. In Maine, take out Snowe and Collins, run strong, hard working, ethically clean democrats against them and take them out. Protect Shaheen in New Hampshire and McCaskill in Missouri, defeat Scott Brown in Massachusetts - run a strong, ethical, hardworking democrat against him and take Brown out. Defeat republican governors of blue states that are coming up for re-election during the 2012-2014 period, their ongoing policy actions will make them vulnerable. Prepare ourselves to welcome a fighting democratic President in 2017.

[bluestate10]

7. I supported Clinton with my vote and money.

Mostly money, because by the time my state had it's primary, Obama was too far ahead in delegate count to be reeled in, although I prayed for later states to reel him in. I did not get my wish. What I did get is a democratic President, my second wish. I am a moderate, so I am not getting ulcers from most of the choices that Obama is making. What does bother me is that Obama is not setting and driving the agenda, he throws out ideas then let Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid butcher them while giving republicans ammunition. I have read the Lyndon Johnson made people pay if they did not give him what he wanted in legislation. What democrats need form Obama is Obama to use his executive privilege to cancel projects that are important in republican districts if republicans refuse to yield on important national goals. As a democrat, I was to see Obama literally slap people like Mitch McConnell and Jeff Sessions in the mouth once then literally kick their behinds if they complain. Obama has not shown me that he has the backbone needed for a democratic President who is facing hostile republicans. During his first state of the union speech Obama has a republican yell "you lie" after Obama made a statement, Obama's response was to quietly mouth something. A tough President would have interrupted the speech, looked right at the republican, waited until cameras that were televising the speech found that republican, then verbally rip him a new one while cameras focused in on the savage verbal beating. My issue with Obama in a nutshell is that he enables republicans instead of challenging them and beating them to a pulp.

[treestar]

8. I've never had any more than having a Democratic President

Do what he could manage to do.

These soaring and poetic expectations seems sad to me. Like people looking for a Messiah.

We had the government back from the evil Republicans and instead of being happy, people bitch about every thing. I don't get feeling so entitled to seeing some perfect revolution occur in the American system or being full of enough hatred to hope for people to suffer enough to cause one.

[bluestate10]

21. While I mostly agree with you.

My complaint about Obama is that he does not seem to fight for any thing. Every policy position is a movable object to him. He hates DADT, but will not have someone look at what he can do constitutionally to stop the practice. He wanted health care reform, but stood by silently while republicans savaged that reform and seriously damaged the political careers of democrats that were brave enough to enact the reform. Obama wanted to end the abusive and costly Bush tax cuts, but he is letting republicans push him off that position while they hold other policy hostage. Obama seems to have NO ONE in the White House who can identify programs and projects in republican states and/or districts that can be thrown in as bargaining chips to give the White House a stronger hand. If Obama does not get most of what he wants, vanish go those project, with a statement detailing how wasteful and detrimental to the countries finances they were. What I see is a democratic President that seems to be completely clueless of how to drive public opinion and have the average Joe and Jane Public writing letters giving their Congressional legislation hell if Obama does not get what he clearly defined to Joe and Jane Public.

What I see is a President that meets with a psycho republican governor of Arizona on an issue that is clearly a federal responsibility, even as that President has executed 300% more real policy actions to solve the issue than his predecessor did. What I see is a President who then allowed that governor to hold a self aggrandizing press conference and face no negative consequences. What I see is a President meeting to make policy with people that have stated they want him to fail - even before he had been in office for two months.

[kentuck]

9. I think about how we got to this point...

It's been a long time coming.

Much of the damage was done by progressives during the Clinton years, who did not speak up because they kept thinking it was better to be in power than to actually stand upf for their ideas and principles.

But it started with the Reagan years. Many Democrats thought they had to be more like Reagan if they expected to win. Gradually, we gave away much more than we could ever imagine.

[WCGreen]

10. Which I think explains the growing disenchantment with president Obama...

Three decades of wandering in the wilderness perhaps created a mirage...

[kentuck]

12. Also...

I think President Obama is trying to emulate President Clinton. He doesn't understand that many progressives did not hold President Clinton in the same high regard as he might. Triangulation and special deals with the Repubs left a bad taste in the mouth of many Democrats. They don't wish to see it repeated.

[WCGreen]

23. No amount of mouthwash will erase that taste...

[WCGreen]

24. No amount of mouthwash will erase that taste...

[Angry Dragon]

14. Rec for the post and anger for some here

There is a huge difference between not doing your job and not being able to deliver on your promises.
Not fighting for what you promised is not doing your job.
I am the only one that can determine if he is a fighter or not because he asked for my vote.
If you are satisfied with him, that is fine, just don't tell me he is fighting for us.

edit: added the word not

[demigoddess]

18. I thought he should have had more time in the Senate

so he would know these guys and how they work.

[MissDeeds]

19. K&R

[Bobbieo]

20. WC - I like the way you write - you have a long post but you make it readable

by breaking up your paragraphs into simple sentences. Easy to read and follow your thoughts. So many posters here lump their writing and thoughts into one giant,unreadable blob.

[WCGreen]

22. Journalism class in college....

And the fact that long paragraphs are realy hard to read as my eyes get older...

So I guess journalism and gerital!