There is nothing I'd enjoy more than watch a Dem juggernaut bend the government to the left in a way that compensates for the horseshit of the last 8 years; but he doesn't seem to have the make-up. He seems to be more of the "I'll convince my enemies of my viewpoint" type, which if he noticed, did absolutely zero to persuade people of his tax policy in the election. His message did not drown out the idiot delusions of the right.

Ah well, we'll wait and see.

We didn't elect Dennis Kucinich. If you want unabashed progressivism, elect an unabashed progressive.

If you want someone who'll kowtow to the right under the guise of bipartisanship, elect the guy who thinks the President should have unlimited spying power.

I was ecstatic when Obama won, but I couldn't even bring myself to vote for the man. He's a centrist, period. He's not the man who's going to lead the progressive revolution.

Obama is a lawyer. My suspicion at the moment is he has no real doctrinal leanings.

If Paul Volker's presence doesn't open your eyes, they can't be opened. Paul's not a hippie, and he isn't the Paul of Beatle's fame.

"What now?" might have been a poignant line in a 1970's movie.

I'm confident as hell that Obama and his team are assuredly not wondering, "What now?"

There's a titanic amount of work to be done, and I don't think that line from "The Candidate", a stoner's hazy question, has any real relevance today.

Obama's team is not wondering, "What now?" in that helpless, simpering, weak liberal way as in the 70's. They're preparing to kick ass in a tremendous way. I'm sure of this. A facile comparison.

They are not going to kick ass. At least not openly as the phrase implies. If they did, they would lose all power in less than two years.

After eight years of UG

It's all we really deserve

I've been an Obama supporter since before he announced his candidacy, and I don't want him to go big and liberal. I want him to go smart. Big and liberal will continue the partisan crap of the last 8 years and result in an immediate swing to conservative in the next midterms, not to mention failure in dealing with the economic crisis.

Big and conservative is what Bush did, and you see where that got us. Milquetoast is not the only alternative to big and liberal.

Please do not attempt to speak for me again, as a voter.

...he grows a spine. His cave-in on FISA left me wondering whether he was the person for the job-- or was he, like McCain, willing to say anything to get the job?

That's for sure! Obama should go BIG with progressive action, for the sake of a nation battered by the Bush years. He could carve a quick path to a legacy as great and needed as FDR's legacy. To mention a few possibilities that he could start with: 1). Develop infrastructure and community-improvement (WPA-type) projects that put people and groups of occupations back to work and in development for achieving amazing goals. (There is an urgency, as a million people have lost their jobs in the last year of the Bush presidency.) 2). Close the Guantanamo Bay prison facility and involve the UN, the Red Cross and Amnesty International in just prisoner evaluation. 3). Connect banks getting those $700 billion bail-out funds to high-debted consumers, so that people can receive payment extension options for eventual debt obligation relief. 4). Freeze home foreclosures and allow an agency to actually do something helpful for homeowners--to negotiate longer terms and lower payments. 5). Provide incentives for purchasing electric cars, thus encouraging the production of them by U.S. automakers. Award electric cars to college students who work in ways of community service. Lots of possibilities. Lots of ways to show the middle class that action is liberal, progressive, and great for a nation. Go BIG, President-elect Obama, go BIG.

Very smart, very strategic, very disciplined and very effective. At least for the first 2 years. After that, he can get more fancy.

The Democrats lost Congress because the Republicans manipulated the press and the public into believing that the Clinton universal health care plan was Socialist (sound familiar), because the public was manipulated into believing that the Clinton tax increase (which led to the budget surplus recklessly wasted by Bush) hit the middle class instead of the wealthiest 1.2 percent and the wealthy elite in the media knew their taxes had been raised and hated it, and because of the Jim Wright, D-Tx, book scandal and the House Banking scandal were hyped into major scandals instead the minor ones they were. With the exception of NAFTA, Clinton tried to govern from the left or center-left until the take-over in 1994, and then he was forced to triangulate and go with small incremental changes.

Yeah - Obama, Biden, Kerry, Summers, Emmanuel. The kleptocracy must be shaking in their boots seeing those guys coming at them! More like shaking some martinis to welcome their buddies to the club.

I wonder whether salonistas really want "progressive politics" or just the thrilling appearance of it, until election day's come and gone and our leaders can get back to the serious business of making (non Salon reading) Americans work harder, for longer hours in miserable and depleted public spaces, for stagnating real wages, while the top 10% carve out private shangrilas for themselves in the exurbs. Obama! Yes he can! And you'll love him for it.

Obama did not run as an ideologue. I don't expect him to be one. The election certainly wasn't about left-wing ideology. If anything, the election was a rejection of ideologues: those on the right. The many self-described conservatives who voted for Obama were not embracing a left-wing ideology.

I can't help wondering if, as he wrote his piece, Mr. Sirota wasn't smacking his lips like so many Big Government Liberals pondering the fat incomes of the Uber Rich and Corporate Fat Cats they seem to be lining up to plunder via the tax code. This Independent - who quietly rooted Mr. Obama on from the sidelines - did so with the fervent hope a he will bring a healthy dose of intelligence and pragmatism, along with his big hearted compassion, into the Oval office.

This election was not a hall pass for the Closet Socialists of the Democratic Left to engage in their favorite income redistribution schemes, which often seem intent on bringing the most successful among us down a peg or two. For certain the fraudsters and crony capitalists need to reined in, but America did not grant you permission to paint everyone who works hard and did well for themselves with that mile wide brush.

We all know that the infrastructure neglect of the past decade or more must be corrected, but it must be done in a fiscally responsible way. And for certain it is only fair that those who benefit the most from the fruits of capitalism be turned to the most to provide sensible support for the infrastructure and institutions of the society that makes that capitalism so possible.

This election never was about Big Government Socialism and you did not get a blank check from the American people to plunder the hard won rewards of the successful.

W. Stiles

Sammamish, WA