Will Romney be the Next President?

[tytlyf]

Originally Posted by Revoltingest

Those in glass houses should not cast stones at us poor feckless Libertarians.
Let's all remember that we should be about issues rather than personal insults.

From the Libertarian websites it sounds like the party is an arm of the Tea Party. There was a story today on huffpo that showed the Tparty was given the cold shoulder by major GOP donors. Google it.

[Revoltingest]

Originally Posted by tytlyf

From the Libertarian websites it sounds like the party is an arm of the Tea Party.

No matter how it sounds to the unfamiliar, we were here first by a long shot, & we have
a coherent philosophical agenda, rather than just a reaction against the status quo.
There are reasons why they identify more with the Republican Party than with ours.

There was a story today on huffpo that showed the Tparty was given the cold shoulder by major GOP donors. Google it.

Google it yerself, bub.
The Tea Party ain't us, no matter what Ariana's opinion.

[Copernicus]

Originally Posted by Revoltingest

Those in glass houses should not cast stones at us poor feckless Libertarians.
Let's all remember that we should be about issues rather than personal insults.

Well, I hope that you don't take any of my digs as insults. Some of my best friends are libertarians.

Seriously, you have the sharpest wit of anyone else in this forum. It doesn't matter whether I agree with you. I still enjoy your posts.

[Revoltingest]

Originally Posted by Copernicus

Well, I hope that you don't take any of my digs as insults. Some of my best friends are libertarians.
Seriously, you have the sharpest wit of anyone else in this forum. It doesn't matter whether I agree with you. I still enjoy your posts.

I did detect some mirth, & responded in kind...somewhat.
Aw, shucks....now I gots me a swelled up hed.

[work in progress]

Originally Posted by Mr Spinkles

I see your point but to play Devil's advocate: if Mitt Romney had been president over the past four years things may have been decidedly different in terms of health care reform, U.S. blundering in Libya and Syria, student loans, unemployment benefits, and funding for science.

On the science front, Obama has allowed the Republican defunding of NASA, NOAA and the EPA to continue on its course of destroying the effectiveness of these agencies. The Obama Administration has not changed anything regarding the space program -- following Bush's course of the expensive, gradual decommissioning of the Shuttle Program, while not receiving the funding for the Constellation Program...pretty much leaving the future of manned space flight beyond Earth Orbit up to China.

The Obama Administration's foreign policy is a disaster that has only added to the mess left by Bush. The gargantuan military budgets are even larger than before, taking more money from other programs...or just adding to increasing debt levels. Targeted assassinations by drones, and directed by the President, looks like a deliberate press leak to make Obama look tough; while no thought by both parties and mainstream media is given to how they violate international law, not to mention U.S. law in the case of assassinating U.S. citizens without making any attempts at due process. Obama has further entrenched previous administration policies of acting on behalf of Israel's interests in the Middle East, rather than their own...let alone that of any other nation in the region. There is no other explanation for the recent fabricated Iran Nuke stories being used to trump up a war or an invasion of Iran. And a major unknown story in the U.S. right now, is that there is a deliberate policy being developed to blockade China -- check out the stories of the planned new naval bases in Australia and Philippines for further details. China and the U.S. are right now in a fierce competition for available natural resources around the world, and the U.S. is making all the moves to indicate that they will take what they need by force, when the time comes...hello WWIII. This is the primary problem with Democrat/Republican politics that follow identical policies and objectives. The U.S. is appearing more and more like another desperate, overgrown empire that has indebted itself financially through military overreach; and I don't see anyone but a real radical changing that course and following an example of England -- which was likely the only empire to voluntarily unwind itself, and stepping back into the community of nations.

On the domestic side, you've got to admit that Obama's health care reform and student loan guarantees are pretty weak compared to what he could have done when he took office with a Democratic-controlled Congress! And that's why I don't buy the logic of a lot of liberals that Obama is too cautious. No, I think he governed like he had a divided government at the start because his patrons who have fast-tracked his political career picked his options, and picked the so called "moderates" that took the steering wheel of his administration. I'm speaking chiefly of Larry Summers and Rahm Emmanuel. Both of these guys are players who have worked in and out of government, and have enriched themselves by working in the interests of corporate benefactors. Health care reform was weak and tepid because they wanted to make sure that the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical manufacturers, and the large hospital corporations received most of the benefits of health care reform. There was no logical excuse for opposing a medicare buy-in option for those who wanted it.

And speaking of Summers...working without checking my notes, I believe he was responsible for keeping Ben Bernanke in charge of the Fed, and bringing Tim Geithner in, and the "banking reform" which created even larger "too big to fail" banks, and millions of homeowners bankrupted by foreclosure the real estate meltdown.

Stepping back and looking at the big picture, there is a more valid argument that the Democratic Party went on a strategy of silencing and marginalizing the left, because they had planned to rule from the right as soon as they were in office. In that light, removing them all from power...including all the corporate-supported Democrats who have betrayed union workers and other core constituencies...would at least put the enemy clearly on one side of the battlefield, instead of having to worry that your leaders are just looking to stab you in the back to further their own selfish interests!

Also there is the Supreme Court to consider. It seems to me that a lot of disappointment in Obama (such as not having a public option in Obamacare) would not at all be helped by putting the Tea/Republican Party in power, since that party fought tenaciously to ensure those disappointments.

I haven't followed the Supreme Court issues as closely as others, but Obama's two appointments to the Court could have been stronger progressives. I recall some blather by one of the talkingheads stating something about Elena Kagin being a preferred candidate over another whom I forget the name, but was considered more radical. Kagin, it was argued, would have some influence with Kennedy...the so called swing vote on the Court. How has that worked out? Kennedy has never been a swing vote on the money issues, like expanding corporate power, and he certainly was no help on the Citizens United Case.

So, I'm not sure if I would even go with voting for Obama in the hopes of putting another moderate on the Court. The SCOTUS has become more progressively right wing over the last 30 years because, as it's been noted by many independent observers - the Republicans are nominating the most conservative, pro-corporate nominees while the Dems vote for lukewarm moderates.

[work in progress]

Originally Posted by Copernicus

There is no alternative to Obama for progressives and liberals. He is the best they can get. Unfortunately, Obama has made that cynical calculation and (like so many Democrats) decided he did not need to cater to his liberal base very much. You know--the folks who go out and push doorbells and make telephone calls on his behalf? That was a huge mistake, and the 2010 midterm elections showed why. Liberals and progressives just didn't turn out to vote. What will turn them out in this election is largely fear of a Republican victory, unfortunately. I'm not sure that Obama has come to understand how important it is to cultivate his base, although he has taken some steps in that direction (e.g. by reluctantly backing same sex marriage and finally taking some action on immigration reform).

There are a lot of people who will vote to re-elect Obama because of Romney, but the Obama Re-election Campaign can't get back all of the younger supporters who volunteered their time and energy in 2008. They started rolling up all of those grassroots-led groups as soon as the Election was over, and tried to force them to get in line in all of the White House-approved liberal organizations. Recall for example, how much MoveOn.org had to say about the foreign wars and civil rights violations of the Bush Administration, and how they refused to criticize anything coming out of the Obama White House. A lot of those activists worked to get Obama nominated because they feared that a Hilary Clinton White House would just be Clinton part 2, and that's what they ended up with anyway, in spite of all their efforts.

If the left is going to have a voice at the table, they are going to have to either make a successful third party happen, or take over the Democratic Party without being co-opted by the monied interests that presently run the show. It's disappointing that Obama hasn't even faced a primary challenge in the Democratic Party. I'd say he deserves one much more than Clinton, Jimmy Carter, or LBJ -- if anyone recalls, Johnson decided not to run in 68 because he was facing a strong primary challenge from Robert Kennedy. Either the Democratic Party is a complete dictatorship today, or it's nothing than Obamabots left in the Party!

WIP, I learned my lesson back when liberals abandoned Hubert Humphrey and stayed home to watch Richard Nixon win. You don't vote for the man. You vote for the politics.[/quote]
But, take a closer look at what was happening in 68. Hubert Humphrey was parachuted in after the assassination of RFK and the rise of an anti-war liberal threat - Sen. Eugene McCarthy. The Party establishment put Humphrey in, in the same manner that they lined up behind John Kerry in 2004 to keep an anti-war candidate - Howard Dean, from winning.

In retrospect, things likely worked out as best they could in 68. And I say that because Humphrey would not have ended the War -- he stickhandled the issue the way Kerry did in 2004, and would have been too afraid to be called "weak on defense" to bring it to an end....as was the case with LBJ, who kept escalating the War to try to win, because he was in so much fear of being called soft on communism. Nixon took two terms to get U.S. troops out; but he did not have to worry about the war hawks as much as a Democratic president would.

Rushing through some other issues -- Obama appears to be just as much a captive of big business than Romney is...maybe even more so, since he is no doubt looking forward to expanding his net worth in a similar manner that the Clintons have, and doesn't have the riches that Romney already has taken for himself. So...I don't think either one of them will do anything about an issue like Citizen's United! Ending that sort of corrupt fixing of elections and funneling money to the top of the pyramid is going to come from a grassroots uprising and not getting the right candidate nominated for president.

[Copernicus]

Originally Posted by work in progress

There are a lot of people who will vote to re-elect Obama because of Romney, but the Obama Re-election Campaign can't get back all of the younger supporters who volunteered their time and energy in 2008. They started rolling up all of those grassroots-led groups as soon as the Election was over, and tried to force them to get in line in all of the White House-approved liberal organizations. Recall for example, how much MoveOn.org had to say about the foreign wars and civil rights violations of the Bush Administration, and how they refused to criticize anything coming out of the Obama White House. A lot of those activists worked to get Obama nominated because they feared that a Hilary Clinton White House would just be Clinton part 2, and that's what they ended up with anyway, in spite of all their efforts.

Both the Democratic and Republican parties are made up of diverse interest groups. One thing that gives Republicans the edge over Democrats is that they are more focused on winning elections than maintaining ideological purity. Ironically, their lockstep behavior has them all now marching to the tune of ideological purists. Stay home or vote for someone else, if you want. But don't complain when Republicans take power and show you how different they can be from a Barack Obama administration. As Ben Franklin warned his compatriots: "We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately." Democrats are pretty good at hanging themselves.

If the left is going to have a voice at the table, they are going to have to either make a successful third party happen, or take over the Democratic Party without being co-opted by the monied interests that presently run the show. It's disappointing that Obama hasn't even faced a primary challenge in the Democratic Party. I'd say he deserves one much more than Clinton, Jimmy Carter, or LBJ -- if anyone recalls, Johnson decided not to run in 68 because he was facing a strong primary challenge from Robert Kennedy. Either the Democratic Party is a complete dictatorship today, or it's nothing than Obamabots left in the Party!

You got your history a little twisted around. LBJ faced a strong primary challenge from Eugene McCarthy, not Bobby Kennedy. Kennedy would never have challenged Johnson. After LBJ announced he wouldn't run for re-election, Kennedy jumped into the race, much to the dismay of us McCarthy-supporters. It is a seriously bad idea to challenge an incumbent president in one's own party, and Kennedy knew that. McCarthy, like you, didn't care that much about the consequences of bringing his party down. Nor did I at that age. I wouldn't make the same judgment to support McCarthy, in retrospect.

But, take a closer look at what was happening in 68. Hubert Humphrey was parachuted in after the assassination of RFK and the rise of an anti-war liberal threat - Sen. Eugene McCarthy. The Party establishment put Humphrey in, in the same manner that they lined up behind John Kerry in 2004 to keep an anti-war candidate - Howard Dean, from winning.

WIP, not only was I there at the time, but you keep getting your history mixed up. Humphrey was informed by Johnson that he wasn't running before Kennedy knew it. Johnson urged Humphrey to run, and Humphrey remarked that he doubted he could beat the Kennedys. Anyway, we are arguing over a lot of Democratic losers, and I think you need to step back and ask yourself whether your solution to the problem isn't the same behavior that screwed Democrats in the past. If we don't work hard to elect candidates, then we will not "have a voice at the table", as you put it earlier.

Rushing through some other issues -- Obama appears to be just as much a captive of big business than Romney is...maybe even more so, since he is no doubt looking forward to expanding his net worth in a similar manner that the Clintons have, and doesn't have the riches that Romney already has taken for himself. So...I don't think either one of them will do anything about an issue like Citizen's United! Ending that sort of corrupt fixing of elections and funneling money to the top of the pyramid is going to come from a grassroots uprising and not getting the right candidate nominated for president.

If you are expecting a "grassroots uprising", wake me up when it's over. That just isn't going to happen. It was never realistic to expect Barack Obama, who never had a strong liberal track record, to be a champion of liberal causes. He will work to overturn Citizens United, even if you don't believe it, but let me put it this way. The way you talk, there is no difference at all between Obama and Romney. Romney has been quite clear where he stands and what he will work for when elected. He has already met openly with Wall Street moguls to tell them that he is their boy. They believe him, because Obama is getting peanuts from them in comparison to what Romney is getting. Romney will outspend Obama by a huge amount before the campaign season is over. Where do you think think the political momentum will be if Romney beats Obama? It isn't just about the candidates. It is about the political policies that will be pushed through in the next presidential cycle. Romney will have enormous clout if he wins election, and his backers are expecting a return on their investment. Obama may still owe them, but nowhere near as much.

[incited]

Originally Posted by Shuddhasattva

The only sane people in American politics are on the lunatic fringe.

I couldn't agree more. The insane are becoming the sane in America.

[work in progress]

Originally Posted by Copernicus

Both the Democratic and Republican parties are made up of diverse interest groups.

Republicans made up of diverse interest groups? Is that a typo?

One thing that gives Republicans the edge over Democrats is that they are more focused on winning elections than maintaining ideological purity. Ironically, their lockstep behavior has them all now marching to the tune of ideological purists.

But, Republicans aren't populists. They have become an ideologically pure conservative party, and conservatives are authoritarians by nature. A good example of the differences between Democrats and Republicans is how they are responding to the issue of changing demographics in many southern states. The Democrats are trying to do their usual balancing act of trying to draw in immigrant and visible minorities, while trying to avoid losing all too many white, and possibly xenophobic voters. The Republican strategy is to just say 'to hell with the minorities, our base is white bread suburban and rural voters.' And if their numbers fall below that of visible minorities, they'll just pull something similar to the days of the Jim Crow South - cry voter fraud, and make blacks, latinos and other minorities who don't support them, jump through hoops, or have their names struck from the voter rolls; and tell everyone that they are fighting against voter fraud.

About 40 years ago, a very important founder of modern conservatism - Paul Weyrich, made an iconic statement during a speech somewhere when he declared:"we aren't interested in getting everyone out to vote. We want OUR people to get out and vote. If everyone votes, conservatives lose." Weyrich feared that appealing to populism watered down his vision of conservative values, and taught that conservative values needed to be imposed on the majority, not voted for by the majority.

Stay home or vote for someone else, if you want. But don't complain when Republicans take power and show you how different they can be from a Barack Obama administration. As Ben Franklin warned his compatriots: "We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately." Democrats are pretty good at hanging themselves.

After a few years of holding dual citizenship over 20 years ago, I gave up my U.S. citizenship when I moved back to Canada and got married...so, I don't really get a vote in this election. I'm just an interested bystander with a lot of American relatives; and my interest in U.S. politics is especially piqued now that we have a Federal Conservative Government up here with a room full of Republican strategists and advisers. Pretty much every bad Republican idea is getting trotted out up here. But, re: the Franklin quote, I don't think old Ben had to worry about his fellow patriots selling out to the British, as modern Democrats have to worry about who is funding their Democratic Party candidates.

You got your history a little twisted around. LBJ faced a strong primary challenge from Eugene McCarthy, not Bobby Kennedy. Kennedy would never have challenged Johnson. After LBJ announced he wouldn't run for re-election, Kennedy jumped into the race, much to the dismay of us McCarthy-supporters. It is a seriously bad idea to challenge an incumbent president in one's own party, and Kennedy knew that. McCarthy, like you, didn't care that much about the consequences of bringing his party down. Nor did I at that age. I wouldn't make the same judgment to support McCarthy, in retrospect.

WIP, not only was I there at the time, but you keep getting your history mixed up. Humphrey was informed by Johnson that he wasn't running before Kennedy knew it. Johnson urged Humphrey to run, and Humphrey remarked that he doubted he could beat the Kennedys. Anyway, we are arguing over a lot of Democratic losers, and I think you need to step back and ask yourself whether your solution to the problem isn't the same behavior that screwed Democrats in the past. If we don't work hard to elect candidates, then we will not "have a voice at the table", as you put it earlier.

My recollections may be off...I was only 11 years old at the time, and everything I heard came from having a politically active family, and relatives -- especially one uncle, who even took an unpaid leave of absence from his job at the Cadillac Plant so he could go work for the George Romney Campaign...and he was a lifelong Democrat! Let's just say the differences between the Sr. Romney and Jr. are like night and day.

Refocusing here -- Wikipedia isn't much help resolving this issue of who did what when. On the RFK Wiki page, it says that Kennedy entered the race after Johnson announced his retirement, but both the LBJ and McCarthy articles say that he entered the race after Sen. McCarthy's close 2nd place finish in New Hampshire:

However, entering the 1968 election campaign, initially, no prominent Democratic candidate was prepared to run against a sitting president of the Democratic party. Only Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota challenged Johnson as an anti-war candidate in the New Hampshire primary, hoping to pressure the Democrats to oppose the Vietnam War. On March 12, McCarthy won 42 percent of the primary vote to Johnson's 49 percent, an amazingly strong showing for such a challenger. Four days later, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy of New York entered the race. Internal polling by Johnson's campaign in Wisconsin, the next state to hold a primary election, showed the President trailing badly. Johnson did not leave the White House to campaign.

If you are expecting a "grassroots uprising", wake me up when it's over. That just isn't going to happen.

At this point in time, it's difficult to say what will happen. A popular uprising requires a population that feels a sense of camaraderie and shared purpose. Today, the attitude of what seems like the majority is too selfish and individualistic to get a wide majority to take on the power of the oligarchs.

It was never realistic to expect Barack Obama, who never had a strong liberal track record, to be a champion of liberal causes. He will work to overturn Citizens United, even if you don't believe it, but let me put it this way. The way you talk, there is no difference at all between Obama and Romney. Romney has been quite clear where he stands and what he will work for when elected. He has already met openly with Wall Street moguls to tell them that he is their boy. They believe him, because Obama is getting peanuts from them in comparison to what Romney is getting. Romney will outspend Obama by a huge amount before the campaign season is over. Where do you think think the political momentum will be if Romney beats Obama? It isn't just about the candidates. It is about the political policies that will be pushed through in the next presidential cycle. Romney will have enormous clout if he wins election, and his backers are expecting a return on their investment. Obama may still owe them, but nowhere near as much.

Obama has sure done all he could to curry favour with the Wall Street bankers. If he's getting burned because the greedy oligarchs have dropped him because Romney is even more grovelling and obsequious....I can't really say I feel sorry for him for his poor showing in campaign financing. Last time around, when the monied interests were delivering bags of loot, he opted out of the public financing restrictions and outspent John McCain two to one. This time around, the shoe is on the other foot!

But, again, the reason why I don't see substantive differences between Obama and Romney is because they are so close on money issues. Last year, Obama had planned a deficit-cutting budget deal with Republican leaders that would have made substantial cuts to Medicare, Medicaid programs and Social Security. The so-called "Grand Bargain" would have been signed if the go-for-broke tea party Republicans didn't blow up the deal. If Obama is re-elected, what are the odds that he will revisit this scheme again, rather than go after the elephant in the room...the ever-growing military and defense contractors, to balance the budget?

And add to this, the issue of dealing with the most important issue of all -- The Environment. The Obama 2008 Campaign made a lot of promises about taking a leading role in the battle to reduce carbon emissions, and has completely made that issue disappear entirely...at a time when the World is seeing more droughts and storms that are part of increasing global temperatures. The Republicans aren't going to talk about environment issues; so if the Democrats are going to avoid these issues also, they are both as useless as having nobody in charge!

[Copernicus]

Originally Posted by work in progress

Republicans made up of diverse interest groups? Is that a typo?

Absolutely not, and you would probably agree, if you paused to think about it. What do libertarians have in common with evangelical and fundamentalist Christians? And what does the Chamber of Commerce care about either group?

But, Republicans aren't populists. They have become an ideologically pure conservative party, and conservatives are authoritarians by nature...

I think that you are oversimplifying both the Democratic and Republican parties. Both parties represent coalitions of interests. At this point in time, right wing extremists are dominant in the Republican Party. Those who might be regarded as centrists or moderates have been pushed to the margins by the Koch-brothers' well-funded Tea Party movement. That's why Boehner can't really make good on the deals he tries to make with Obama. He keeps getting out ahead of his party, and they snap the choke chain.

After a few years of holding dual citizenship over 20 years ago, I gave up my U.S. citizenship when I moved back to Canada and got married...so, I don't really get a vote in this election. I'm just an interested bystander with a lot of American relatives; and my interest in U.S. politics is especially piqued now that we have a Federal Conservative Government up here with a room full of Republican strategists and advisers. Pretty much every bad Republican idea is getting trotted out up here. But, re: the Franklin quote, I don't think old Ben had to worry about his fellow patriots selling out to the British, as modern Democrats have to worry about who is funding their Democratic Party candidates.

I think that explains why you take a more sanguine view of American politics. You have much less at stake over who wins the next election, and it matters less to you whether the 5-4 splits in the Supreme Court get locked into total conservative dominance on every issue. The SC can basically nullify just about everything that progressives try to do, and they can do a lot to unravel the progress that has been made in civil rights over the past 50 years.

My recollections may be off...I was only 11 years old at the time, and everything I heard came from having a politically active family, and relatives -- especially one uncle, who even took an unpaid leave of absence from his job at the Cadillac Plant so he could go work for the George Romney Campaign...and he was a lifelong Democrat! Let's just say the differences between the Sr. Romney and Jr. are like night and day.

I'm not so sure that they are political differences so much as moral difference. The senior Romney seemed much less willing to go to extremes in his rhetoric to get elected. When the junior Romney was governor of Massachusetts, he was far more liberal in his rhetoric than he is today. As president, he would probably do whatever he thought it would take to win a second term, and that would probably mean keeping his wealthy patrons happy.

Refocusing here -- Wikipedia isn't much help resolving this issue of who did what when. On the RFK Wiki page, it says that Kennedy entered the race after Johnson announced his retirement, but both the LBJ and McCarthy articles say that he entered the race after Sen. McCarthy's close 2nd place finish in New Hampshire...

Johnson had made his decision not to run for re-election much earlier, but he didn't inform Humphrey until late in the game. He knew that he was vulnerable to challenge, because his Vietnam policy was failing so badly. When Kennedy jumped in, everyone could see that Johnson was not going to run again. McCarthy was building momentum, and a lot of people in McCarthy's camp (myself included) saw Kennedy's move as an attempt to blunt McCarthy's rising challenge. LBJ himself had already confided in some that he might not stand for re-election months earlier.

Obama has sure done all he could to curry favour with the Wall Street bankers. If he's getting burned because the greedy oligarchs have dropped him because Romney is even more grovelling and obsequious....I can't really say I feel sorry for him for his poor showing in campaign financing. Last time around, when the monied interests were delivering bags of loot, he opted out of the public financing restrictions and outspent John McCain two to one. This time around, the shoe is on the other foot!

I'm not asking you to feel sorry for Obama. I am asking you to cure yourself of "false equivalence-itis". There are huge differences between Romney and Obama in terms of what direction they will take the country. Wall Street has quite obviously anointed Romney as the next president, but Obama is far from out of the game. Obama still has to beg for money, but he will be far less beholden to big business than Romney, if he wins. Romney has made clear where he intends to go: "Corporations are people, my friend!"

But, again, the reason why I don't see substantive differences between Obama and Romney is because they are so close on money issues. Last year, Obama had planned a deficit-cutting budget deal with Republican leaders that would have made substantial cuts to Medicare, Medicaid programs and Social Security. The so-called "Grand Bargain" would have been signed if the go-for-broke tea party Republicans didn't blow up the deal. If Obama is re-elected, what are the odds that he will revisit this scheme again, rather than go after the elephant in the room...the ever-growing military and defense contractors, to balance the budget?

There is something you need to understand about defense contractors. A huge number of domestic American jobs depend on defense contracts. No president can afford to simply cut the defense budget to the point where hundreds of thousands of workers are thrown out on the street overnight. Weaning the US workforce and US corporations away from manufacturing war equipment is not a simple problem that can be solved overnight. The tough question is how you keep people gainfully employed while moving away from a wartime economy. Opposition to defense cuts has a very powerful constituency in the US, and Obama knows that. I don't expect Obama to pull any rabbits out of the hat when it comes to cutting welfare and social benefits programs, but I do think that he is the best person we have to minimize those cuts. Frankly, I think that Hillary Clinton would have made a better president, but that wasn't in the cards. (I supported Obama against her, and I regret that in hindsight.) Obama is the only candidate that liberals and progressives can support, even if he is a blue dog Democrat. Backing any other candidate would essentially be handing full control of the government back to the Republicans.

And add to this, the issue of dealing with the most important issue of all -- The Environment. The Obama 2008 Campaign made a lot of promises about taking a leading role in the battle to reduce carbon emissions, and has completely made that issue disappear entirely...at a time when the World is seeing more droughts and storms that are part of increasing global temperatures. The Republicans aren't going to talk about environment issues; so if the Democrats are going to avoid these issues also, they are both as useless as having nobody in charge!

I agree with this point. The environment is the single most important issue facing us, and I fear that it is already too late to save ourselves from devastating catastrophes. Nevertheless, Romney would be far, far worse than Obama on pollution control measures. Obama has failed miserably in this area, but he has not made the problem significantly worse. Romney will make it far worse. Republicans would essentially dismantle all pollution controls if they could, and Romney would be all too happy to help them do that.