So is Obama a closet conservative or poor negotiator?

[Still a Democrat]

I've seen a lot of folks jump between the latter and the former.

If you find yourself embracing both, you might want to think again. They can't both be the case. One presumes he is a liberal, the other presumes he is a closet conservative.

[Edweird]

1. Closet?

[NorthCarolina]

5. Exactly...

I got a bit of a chuckle by the addition of 'closet' to 'conservative' too.

[elias49]

2. He is neither, IMO. n/t

[fascisthunter]

3. he's a compromised politician

he sold himself to powerful interests...

[yourout]

4. He is miles from liberal.

Every major piece of legislation he has signed has had a loophole or clause that benefited his corporate masters.

[alcibiades_mystery]

6. He's a good negotiator

filling in for a do-nothing Congress and pushing us to debate important issues.

[Name removed]

21. Deleted message

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[Sherman A1]

7. At this point

I no longer care what he is... he has lost my vote.

I will vote in 2012, but will skip the top of the ticket and go to state & local issues.

[Blecht]

8. The label doesn't matter

Only the actions are important.

[Better Believe It]

9. Closet?

[Laelth]

10. I do not believe that Obama is a poor negotiator.

He got exactly what he wanted (exactly what he negotiated beforehand) in the health insurance company enrichment act.

I believe Obama to be intelligent and capable. He also admires Ronald Reagan.

-Laelth

[B Calm]

11. When he campaigned he said he would look into NAFTA. Still

waiting. . . He is not in the closet anymore . . .

[scarletwoman]

12. He's a Friedmanite Chicago School neoliberal.

And he's out to destroy Social Security on his watch.

[bemildred]

14. Yep, you nailed it.

Lying to the proles is allowed.

[Edweird]

16. He appears to be succeeding.

[Little Star]

23. yep.

[salvorhardin]

24. If only he were a Friedmanite

Milton Friedman was the originator of the idea of the negative income tax. You may recall that both Nixon and Moynihan championed replacing welfare programs with a negative income tax that would be enough to raise a person or family above the poverty line. Of course, what we got instead was the much watered down compromise of the Earned Income Credit.

Market forces can accomplish wonderful things, he realized, but they cannot ensure a distribution of income that enables all citizens to meet basic economic needs. His proposal, which he called the negative income tax, was to replace the multiplicity of existing welfare programs with a single cash transfer — say, $6,000 — to every citizen. A family of four with no market income would thus receive an annual payment from the I.R.S. of $24,000. For each dollar the family then earned, this payment would be reduced by some fraction — perhaps 50 percent. A family of four earning $12,000 a year, for example, would receive a net supplement of $18,000 (the initial $24,000 less the $6,000 tax on its earnings).

Mr. Friedman’s proposal was undoubtedly motivated in part by his concern for the welfare of the least fortunate. But he was above all a pragmatist, and he emphasized the superiority of the negative income tax over conventional welfare programs on purely practical grounds. If the main problem of the poor is that they have too little money, he reasoned, the simplest and cheapest solution is to give them some more. He saw no advantage in hiring armies of bureaucrats to dispense food stamps, energy stamps, day care stamps and rent subsidies.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/23/business/23scene.html

[TheKentuckian]

13. Open conservative/closet regressive.

[Lorien]

15. Openly conservative/ closet neoconservative. nt

[TBF]

17. Clearly he's out of the closet now. nt

[lib2DaBone]

18. Not Closet...Overt. We been had....

[rucky]

19. He's not liberal enough to negotiate well.

If your starting point is in the center, there's nowhere to go from there.

So I think he's passed stuff that was more conservative than he'd like, but his expectations are low enough for him to call it a victory.

[leeroysphitz]

20. Why not both?

[stray cat]

22. He believes politics is the art of the possible?

And differs with DUers about what is possible