Some say that the problem with Obama is that outside forces make it impossible to deliver

[closeupready]

On his campaign promises, and that this is why, for example, we don't have a public option, not that there is anything wrong with Obama or his administration, that every administration has to break campaign promises.

That is true, but when the party leader stands up and says, "we need to make sure our opposition is also comfortable with our remedies and solutions", isn't that naivete beyond belief? If someone had told you that Obama would be making so many attempts at bipartisanship, even now with the loss of Kennedy's seat to a Republican, would you have believed it?

[valerief]

1. What, like some thugs are gonna run off with his kids? nt

[closeupready]

No, I basically mean special interests, lobbyists, that sort of thing.

That every president gets intense pressure from special interests that basically force them to either accommodate their wishes, or else see campaign money either dry up or go to the opposition.

[valerief]

11. Wouldn't it be nice if a prez did what was right, forgot about re-election, and figured

out how to not get whacked?

[gateley]

2. No. I wouldn't have believed any President wouldn't have 'gotten it' by now. nt

[Sebastian Doyle]

3. It's not outside forces. It's inside forces.

Inside the beltway. Inside the party. Inside his own fucking cabinet. Inside the White House itself.

[Individualist]

5. +1

[closeupready]

6. That's what I see - too much courting special interest money, cushy industry jobs

Lack of integrity.

[jannyk]

7. Bingo!!!

[KittyWampus]

4. Honestly, I really cannot believe the Democrats are STILL peddling this bipartisanship crap.

[robinlynne]

8. Obama told us during the primaries. I believed him. and voted for Edwards.

[kimmerspixelated]

9. I don't know what happened, but it is clearly a huge mess.

There are a lot of good points made to this post, but it is very hard to understand how a "community organizer" with his passion to get things done, can stand this centrist bullshit persona, he puts forth!

[underpants]

10. Since when do people hold politicians to every word they speak on the campaign trail?

Sounds like someone is setting a standard (given all forces for and against) that simply can't be met.

[Bluenorthwest]

12. Face it, the cynical level Obama has played with is not the norm

Against mandates, against taxing health plans, then for both things, without a flinch. I'm sorry, but where you get this 'every word' bit is beyond me, he ran as the opposite of how he 'governs'. He pushed himself as an agent of great change with all the chops needed to make that change happen.
And now, deal with this: he claims his religion demands him to oppose equal rights for all, yet that religion also demands and exactingly clear way of speaking, that avoids any form of confusion, any room for 'spin'. So it is really not acceptable to have someone puke dogma from a faith they do not even try to follow all over the public square to excuse and explain his own petty prejudices. Liars and word parsers do not get to sit and split anyone's hairs but their own. Let him shut the fuck up about his so called faith, and his contempt for gay people based on that faith, for he is a hypocrite.
Clown time is over.

[closeupready]

13. Here's what I don't get - how is it that he can claim to be so religious, and yet,

at the same time, not be a "promise-keeper"? Or, in Catholic dogma, lie by omission?

If he KNEW that his promises couldn't be kept, then no excuses, he should NOT HAVE MADE THEM TO BEGIN WITH. Period. We then would have had more truth from which to choose Hillary or him or someone else.

[Bluenorthwest]

14. this is why I'm done playing

The fact is, he uses that religion deal just like a Republican, like a blade against others, a thing that does not apply to himself or his own family. The fact that he directly employed and employs so many of these religious bigots, speakers of slanders, and does so because of a faith that is no more to him than a well chosen tie or a rhetorical flourish.
He prances to church and takes the pulpit with his whole hate circle along with him, invoking Martin when he and his set would hate Martin's close friend and key organizer, Bayard Rustin. When they believe that millions of their neighbors are unworthy of even so much as equal legal standing with their precious selves, they speak of Martin Luther King Jr. Such people should be called what they are, hypocrites and conservative bigots.

[bluethruandthru]

15. +1000