Quote:
Originally Posted by Splum
I beg to disagree and I will tell you why. Obama got elected because he softened his message mid-campaign and tried to become more mainstream and move to the middle-left. It worked obviously, of course he had a very weal opponent in my humble opinion. Obama is a wonderful politician and an incredible speaker, very likable those obviously also helped him. The people in the middle didnt vote him in to "push a vast social agenda" they voted him in because they believed he would be "positive" to the country and perhaps unite Washington politicians. Congressional approval ratings were horrendous during the Bush and Clinton years and people are tired of Congress.
Obama has LOST the people in the middle-right that you can take to the bank. Obama has LOST the older white generation as well now, they see the effect the economy has taken on their retirement and it is only getting worse. Obama has done nothing to help those people, his stimulus doesnt even address that issue at all.
The economy WILL get worse, and it is accelerating at a pace even the Obama administration did not expect. Obama had the good faith of many in the middle-right(which whether you like it or not is the majority in America) but he is losing it very quickly.
When the Congressional budget office says that the Obama stimulus bill will hurt the economy you know we got serious problems. Unfortunately I think Obama had many fooled that he was an agent of positivity but he has ushered in an era of complete pessimism.
We shall see in 2012, if we make it that far.
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While I agree that he had a weak opponent I feel like people voted for Obama because they felt the country was going in the wrong direction and they thought, of the choices available, he was the better choice to fix that problem. You can't peg any one group as voting for a guy for any one reason. People vote for a million different reasons. I know people who didn't vote for him simply because he is pro-choice. I know others who still think he is a muslim. I know people who voted for him just because he is black and others who voted for him because the thought he had some good ideas and still others voted for him because they thought he would bring in universal health care and get us out of Iraq.
Has he lost some people? Sure. Has he lost all of the people on the middle right and all of the older white people? I doubt it. On the day he was sworn into office he had a 69% approval rating. Today he has a 62%. That is a decline, but not the mass exodus you like to paint. And I would love to see where you get the fact that most of Americans are middle-right. That is standard issue republican talking points. They want you to believe that just like the democrats want you to believe that most people are middle left.
You are 100% certain his economic plan will fail. Maybe it will. Maybe it won't. Sure there are a lot of economist who say it won't help. There are also a bunch of them who say it will. In the end we have to wait and see. If it were so easy and you, a simple GFY poster, has all the answers, then why hasn't some of the economist (Nobel winning economist at that) that are advising Obama figured that out? Could it be that maybe he is about 6-7 weeks into his presidency and he still has more ideas coming down the pipe? No that couldn't be it. Nobody does that. Nobody puts out one idea, gets it through then works on a second idea or a third to back up the first. Again, maybe it will fail. Maybe we will plunge into the depths of a recession and implode on ourselves. But maybe it will work.
His reelection really depends on him. If, 3 years from now, the economy is doing better he will be credited for that regardless of how much of a role he played in it. If, 3 years from now, things are doing okay in Iraq and and Afghanistan he will be credited with that as well. If those two things are happening chances are he will have a pretty good approval rating. If that is the case it won't matter who the republicans run they will lose. It is hard to unseat an incumbent president. It is nearly impossible to unseat a popular president who appears to be doing a good job.
I don't agree with everything he is doing. I know he is not perfect. But he has been in office 6-7 weeks now. You can't project out what will happen in the next 4 years based on what he has done over the last 6-7 weeks.