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Saturday, Nov 7, 2009
Roman Berry
Published Letters: 198 Editor's Choice: 10
I keep making this point but I despair of the prospects that it might be understood by writers, bloggers and pundits everywhere:
I am not now nor ever was a big supporter of Hillary Clinton. Of the major Dems running for the nomination, she was next to dead last on my list of candidates I wanted or was willing to support. Dead last on the list? Barack Obama.
Even not being a Clinton supporter, I found his campaign tactics Rovian. (And why wouldn't they be? Rovian tactics worked for an opportunist like Bush and an opportunist like Obama wants to win above all else.)
PUMA's are not merely to be found among disaffected Clinton supporters. Many are just like me. They can't and won't support a lightweight who has neither the experience or the grasp of the issues to make a good president in these trying times. From where I sit, Obama is like Dubya without the verbal tics.
Where is Obama on FISA? Where is he on the Iraq War? Where is he on the mandates that are necessary for anything approaching true universal healthcare? Where is Obama on Social Security? Where is he on NAFTA?
Obama is a cypher. He will not have my support. He used whatever tools and influence he had at his disposal to subvert the democratic process in the primaries and to get the DNC's RBC to award him votes and delegates he did not earn.
Angry? You betcha I'm angry. I want a Democrat who understands what being a Democrat means. Obama? He is a lot of things, but an agent of change and "the one I have been waiting for" is not on that list.
My goal this year is to see strong gains by Democrats in the House and the Senate...and to see a divided government with an opposition party president in the White House so that the congress and the chief executive spend the next four years moderating each other by being at each others throats. In short, I'm for splitting the vote.
This lifelong Dem will not vote for Barack Obama. Period. And Hillary has nothing to do with it.
Are you kidding? Since when did mob mentality, intolerance of dissent and a cult of personality equate to love?
I have never in all my years of participating in Democratic politics seen the ugliness I have seen from the ranks of Obama supporters. It's the liberal equivalent of the cult of Dubya. No thanks.
Axordil, thanks for proving my point about the intolerance of dissent.
I am many things but a Freeper is not on the list of those things that I am. I've been a regular on Salon's Table Talk since the late 1990's. I supported Howard Dean in 2003 and 2004. I am hoping beyond hope that Obama implodes before Denver and the Democratic Party drafts a reluctant Al Gore for an eight week sprint to the finish. That the best you can do is call me a Freeper says more about you than it does me.
If we can't trust a strongly Democratic congress in a divided government to stand up to an opposition party candidate, damned if I can see where we can trust 'em to stand up to the cult of personality surrounding Obama.
It took a Republican (Nixon) to go to China. Given his rhetoric and his comments about Social Security in "crisis" and his opposition to mandates, I wonder if it will take a (putative) Democrat to utterly destroy Social Security and any chance we might have at universal health care.
Paul Lukasiak has made the point in his letters on these forums that Obama, like Dubya, is an opportunist whereas McCain, like Clinton, is a pragmatist. Me? I'll take my chances with the pragmatist as opposed to the opportunistic leader of a cult. That doesn't make me a Freeper. That makes me an American. Deal with it.
Juneausmog, I wanted to compliment you on the letter/comment which you posted at 12:20 pm PST. I would link it directly, but the link associated with my handle/signature will have to do.
Bravo!
As I posted in Salon's Table Talk...
Quite a two weeks? That's quite a four years if you ask me (and yeah, I know that no one has.)
Where I differ from Greenwald is simple: Greenwald still supports Obama because he believes McCain is much worse. Now I will grant that McCain's positions in this campaign may in fact be much worse, but I don't think McCain would have a snowball's chance in hell of getting his positions into law through the opposition of a strongly Democratic congress whereas I am fearful (and fearful is the word) that a Democratic congress would be anything but strong in dealing with a President Obama from their own party. Seems way too close to Bush and the Republicans redux for me.
What's more likely? That a president from an opposing party would find a way to work with an opposition congress, or that a Democratic congress would put the brakes on Obama? I'll take my chances with the first scenario. McCain, for all the talk of "McInsane" from the freeper-left**, was someone that John Kerry thought enough of in 2004 to offer up the vice presidency as his running mate. And more than a few Dems in 2004 were for it.
John McCain is not GW Bush. I don't fear a McCain presidency as long as a Democratic congress does its job. And if we can't trust a Dem congress to hold a McCain in check, we surely can't trust a Dem congress to hold an Obama in check.
**Freeper-left is in reference to how a sizeable portion of thee left in this past primary and now in this campaign season is entirely intolerant of dissent and is focused on goals of power and win at all costs no matter the consequences. I refuse to be a part.
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The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The Maine fight was supposed to be the dress rehearsal for repealing California's Prop. 8 -- but gay marriage lost
Once one obtains Seriousness credentials in the Washington media, they are irrevocable no matter one's conduct.
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