I enthused for and voted for Obama and though I think Romney would have done much harm to the nation, I also feel that in total Obama has been a disappointment.
I think he believed in what he was saying, that he wanted to unify a divided country and so became a compromiser from the start against a group of no compromise zealots. In addition, he did not have the administrative experience to run the biggest organization in the world.
His main achievement, his health care bill caters to the Insurance companies. They will make billions of dollars while most thinking people know that we need a single payer system. Obama said he did ask for that because he could not get it. Was he right? At any rate he compromised from the beginning.
The spying is very disturbing, information on billions of telephone calls stored in massive facilities, relations with our allies shattered, yet when some one in the inner white house circle recently was tweeting embarrassing messages, it took the NSA 4 months to find him. The bigger the haystack, the harder it is to find the needle. When Obama was informed about Germany's Prime Minister being spied upon, he said he didn't know. He didn't know? He's the president. We elected him to know about critical
things like that.
As for the wars, we clearly elected him to end them. To my mind, end them means PULL OUT. I am afraid those countries have solve their own problems. They will keep killing one another till so many lives have been lost that they agree to disagree and to share fairly. Iraq is in shambles and on the verge of asking us to return there with military force while Afghanistan is making deals with the Taliban in Pakistan behind our backs. What we could do most to help them is to stop being the biggest arms dealer in he world and keep the guns out of their hands. Fat chance for that.
Guantanamo is still open and we go through the horror of watching those prisoners on hunger strike being force fed through their nostrils. I don't know about you, but I would call that torture. Happily the TV does not show us those scenes very often.
Drones are being sent into Pakistan and Somalia killing women, children and civilians.. A recent study shows that we make 40 enemies for every drone deployed.
The economy is sluggish, the minimum wage has not gone up and the disparity between rich and poor is greater than it has ever been in recent history.
There are pictures of Obama as a student with a youth group that advocated for the use of marijuana. He has admitted to smoking it. Yet our drug policies have been harsher than under Bush.
I hear people seriously using the word "revolution."
Obama compromised regularly with a Republican party controlled by a few extremists of the far right and what did that get him. You can't compromise with someone who openly states that they will not compromise.
Obama has even lost the fire that he had as a campaigner calling for hope and change. Now he sounds like a weary bureaucrat speaking words that have been written for him on the teleprompter.
So what is a progressive to do?
Hillary will probably get the nomination but she is now out giving speeches at $200,000 a pop to banker's groups. Though she will be a better administrator than Obama, I don't expect much change of ideas from her nor much hope for that matter. I am afraid that Hillary, though we may get her, would be more of the same.
I don't know but I am keeping an eye on Bill De Blasio who is about to win election as mayor of New York City. Elizabeth Warren has said she would not run but times change. There are others all over the country.
Progressives have to seek them out and encourage them to run
