Despite everything, there is one MAJOR thing we have to be grateful for:

[Rocknrule]

McCain did not win the election

As much as some of you may not like how Obama is doing things, imagine where we'd be if the fossil and the bimbo were in charge:

-Many working-class Americans would now be living in cardboard boxes (and the billionaires would probably be repossessing said cardboard boxes to use as servant quarters)
-Full-blown depression
-The only full time jobs to be found would be in the military because we'd be bomb, bomb, bombing Iran (and probably alot more countries as well)
-We'd be soiling ourselves every time McCain so much as coughed on TV because of who would be waiting to take over if he bought the farm :scared:

Did I leave anything out? What else are we (thankfully) missing out on thanks to Obama winning?

[Drale]

1. Civil War 2 probably would have started by now

or worst the stress would have killed McCain by know and Palin would be president.

[JoePhilly]

2. No invasion of Iran

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[elocs]

6. Who will believe the promises we will hear in 2012?

Did I ever become a lot more cynical in just 3 years.

[maxsolomon]

9. 8 years of the clinton presidency left you an optimist?

or did you just wake up in 2008? if a politician is speaking, it's a lie, even if he's your politician.

CAMPAIGN RHETORIC is hyperbolic. this is the way politics has always worked. "a chicken in every pot", etc.

i for one am overjoyed that i don't have to worry about McCain and the Grifter Princess fufilling their campaign promises.

context is everything.

[elocs]

15. No, believing the promises of the 2008 campaign made me an optimist.

I don't see myself falling for that again. Looks like I will have to swallow the Kool-Aide again and pick the lesser of two evils.

[maxsolomon]

35. just don't believe campaign promises anymore

there's no kool-aid involved.

[notesdev]

36. It's OK

They'd have screwed the people who voted for them too.

It's all a charade, they're all owned by the banking cartel, and no matter which was elected, the banker agenda was going to move ahead. The major difference would be the rhetorical trappings on the screwing that we get.

[maxsolomon]

7. which Congresses since, say, 1980 have been more progressive?

i'd really like to know because i can't remember any - i turned 18 in 1982.

i don't think he's a liar any more than every other president in my lifetime. it seems to go with the territory. i wouldn't say Clinton was more progressive than Obama. i'd say that, given the defacto parameters of the job of POTUS (running an imperial government owned by and operated for the benefit of corporate capital - that premise cannot be questioned), he's actually getting progressive things done. it's too little, and i'm impatient, i'm disappointed, but i'm also a realist. what he's doing IS progressive for the context.

with GOP intransigence and Harry Reid's parliamentary spinelessness, i'm amazed that he got DADT repeal and HCR done. and it cost him control of congress.

liar or not, he's going to win in 2012.

[hfojvt]

18. you set the bar pretty low there

wow, a massive Democratic majority is more progressive than the Congress of 1994. Hmmm, we may not have gotten Hillarycare, but at least the Reagan tax cuts were rolled back in 1992. Obama's surrender there was very un-progressive in any context.

[maxsolomon]

34. so tell me ANY congress that was more progressive then

civil rights act? under Roosevelt?

american government is generally not progressive.

[notesdev]

38. This government CAN'T be progressive

It can't be conservative either. It's a business - a form of organized crime. That business is taking from the average Joe and giving what is taken to the people who pony up big bucks for campaigns.

Everything you hear that is ideological in any way is more likely than not to be window dressing, a facade. The only true ideology in this government is control - control more of everything, so more can be stolen, so protests can be suppressed, diverted, hidden.

This is why we vote explicitly for "change" and nothing of true importance in the big picture changes.

Asking these people to be progressives is like asking an actor to stop in the middle of a play and debate the relative merits of Socrates and Plato. It simply does not compute with them, they know it only as the bait they dangle in front of you to get you to work for them for free and spend your votes on them.

[maxsolomon]

40. I agree a bit more with WS Burroughs

"...the rulers of this most insecure of all worlds are rulers by accident. Inept, frightened pilots at the controls of a vast machine they cannot understand, calling in experts to tell them which buttons to push..."

[pnwmom]

10. Obama was honest; you weren't listening. His health care plan is far more progressive

than than what we had. And he campaigned on a moderate platform, not a leftist platform. People wanted to see him as more liberal than Clinton, but anyone who actually listened to them would have known that wasn't the case.

[Capitalocracy]

12. Oh, you mean he didn't say he wanted a public option

that he later pretended he'd never heard of, never fought for, never negotiated for? You mean he didn't say he thought the mandate would be as ridiculous as trying to fix the homeless problem "by mandating that everyone has to buy a house"?

[pnwmom]

16. Clinton and Edwards were united in pushing for the public option.

Later, he came to support it, and he did work on its behalf. But it had never been a deal-breaker for him, as it shouldn't.

[hfojvt]

17. he didn't say he would reverse the Bush tax cuts either apparently

That was my line in the sand. His deficit comission is a real loser as well.

[pnwmom]

19. He isn't Congress. He couldn't overcome the filibuster in the Senate. n/t

[Capitalocracy]

20. Did a filibuster appoint Social Security vultures to head a deficit commission? nt

[pnwmom]

25. Nothing has come of that commission. And I doubt that

anything will.

[hfojvt]

27. sure he couldn't have

there was no way Republicans were gonna let all those tax cuts expire. I'd have made them blink.

[derby378]

33. Then he shouldn't have said anything about the Bush tax cuts

Or Gitmo, for that matter. At least he managed to sign the bill killing DADT.

[cascadiance]

30. And he campaigned on increasing government transparency. What about that State Secrets thing?...

Seems like he's using it as much or more than Bush is, and is continuing things like rendition, and now trying to rationalize that we can assassinate others we don't like, even if they are American citizens.

[FiveGoodMen]

4. I certainly wouldn't have wanted McCain, but...

You offer nothing to back your first three points.

Do you actually know that anything McCain would have done would be worse than what Obama has done? (Or different in any way?)

If so, please give details.

[vrp]

5. Obama

Well, yes, we're better off because Obama did win the election, but his capitulation is still problematic. If Obama is going to act like a Republican, perhaps we should simply have a Republican and be done with it. Or those are my thoughts anyway. Personally I thought we were getting FDR, but we ended up with a moderate Republican instead. And if that's what I wanted I'd join the Repub party. The trick, in my opinion, is to convince the Dems to look left, instead of right. Vern

[bigwillq]

14. Hello.

Welcome to DU! :hi:

[Capitalocracy]

22. I didn't think we were getting FDR

but it really pisses me off that he breaks all his progressive promises and fights against the progressive movement, while keeping any conservative promise and promoting a conservative agenda.

Welcome to DU.

[lunatica]

8. And don't forget that Boner would be Prez if he could off Palin

It could be so much worse.

[valerief]

11. No atomic explosions over major US cities. That's good, too. nt

[leftstreet]

13. True enough, but I do miss the antiwar movement n/t

[walldude]

21. Yeah, thank god no working class Americans are living in

cardboard boxes. Thank god we are not in a full blown depression. And thank god there are an abundance of non military jobs out there. Hell if McCain were president unemployment would be at 20%.. Oh wait it is.

You base your opinion on Obama's performance on a comparison to the most lame political figures we have seen in the last century. It's no wonder many think he's doing a great job.

Sure if you've been eating shit for 8 years, dirt is going to taste great. Not what I'd call nutritious though.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

23. McCain surrogates in the media.

:think:

[WillyT]

24. The Aqueducts ???

:evilgrin:

[FiveGoodMen]

26. Well, he certainly hasn't brought peace!

[notesdev]

28. "McCain did not win the election"

I can barely tell the difference anymore

[Capitalocracy]

32. McCain did not win the election.

Someone tell Obama!

[TBF]

29. That argument is not impressing us any longer -

not when unemployment is higher than ever and we are sitting with a house full of repubs. This administration has failed miserably, at least from the perspective of the workers. I'm sure the owners are quite happy.

[quaker bill]

39. Those who lack imagination

are difficult to impress.

[Odin2005]

31. No, Obama is just governing like him.

[Swamp Rat]

37. LOL!