Obama reaches out to skeptical voters
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0
Sarge
"skeptical voters who are still hurting"
It's going to take most of President Obama's two terms to fix the mess left by the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld debacle, lol.
0
GJDailleult
Obama has brought this all on himself. He ran on change, but then when he got in and had to make the big decision about the economy and the banks he just went with the flow and caved in. Maybe because of fear or maybe he intended to cave all along.
The USA is going down until somebody steps up and is honest about the problem, and in modern politics with its focus groups and "win elections by telling people what they want to hear" mentality that isn't going to happen. Americans want to hear that the problems in their country are caused by ideological differences, and that by voting for this group of corporate sponsored hacks or that group of corporate sponsored hacks they can change things. They can't because the problem is not ideological. It might have been caused by idiotic ideology in the first place, but now it is technical. The economy is screwed, now what do you do about it. Fix it on the fly or let it crash?
But anybody willing to ask that question has no chance of getting anywhere near the White House or power. Nobody wants to think about it because it is too scary, nobody wants to be the one who has to pay, and nobody wants to admit their ideology has no basis in reality. So crash it will be!
0
kokorocloud
“There aren’t jobs out there right now,” countered Ted Brassfield, 30, a recent law school graduate. He praised Obama for inspiring his generation during 2008 but said that inspiration is dying away. He asked, “Is the American dream dead for me?”
That's the question we're all asking. I don't even know that there ever was an American dream, at least not for the already poor/jobless. Things simply went from bad to hellish. You just got lucky if you had anything close to the so called "dream".
Totally agree with GJDailleult.
0
Junnama
It's strange to vote in people who have already demonstrated they have no better answers, but that's where we are. Either way both party's agendas are unrelated to the state of the economy.
0
ca1ic0cat
Gitmo is still open so I'm still skeptical....
0
TimRussert
How bout that Summer of Recovery, eh campers.
0
GJDailleult
Wow, two posters get it. I'm sure later on I will be accused of being a radical left-wing Keynesian, so I'll just add a little more and keep it simple.
The problem facing the USA and other countries is not ideological, though the problem can, and probably will, be made worse by ideologues trying to exploit the situation. It is a technical, systemic economic issue. The money supply and asset prices were intentionally inflated through credit creation and expansion over a 30 year plus period (in order to create fake economic growth), and once the turning point of peak credit hit the economy started to crash, as speculative investment stopped and the level of new debt and credit started to fall. This means A) less money is being spent and B) the real economy can not pay off the debts that have been run up in the bubble years, not least because of the damage done to it by the bubble.
OK, that's maybe not so simple. But that point is that Obama is not in trouble because he is a radical left-wing, foreign-born, Muslim president, he is trouble because he has refused to acknowledge that economic reality. Same for the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, both political parties, and of course Wall Street, all who are working to keep the status quo in place. Why? Because the only solution is to write-off the speculative debts and wipe out the "rich" whose wealth comes from the speculative boom (as opposed to being productive). And they have no intention of doing that, and Obama has no intention of forcing them too. You'd have to ask him why not.
0
smithinjapan
There are no better choices, and the party of 'no' is most certainly not. In fact, if they weren't so intent on stopping bills from passing simply as a childish reaction to the current government, Obama could have accomplished a lot more by now.
Regardless, who are you going to vote in, then? The people who made the economy the way it is now and were subsequently thrown out of the WH in 2008? Some will, because they are fickle. In either case I agree that the economy needs to be focused on.
0
TimRussert
Obama can't even get Democrat faithful to quaff the kool-aid any longer:
" I’m one of your middle class Americans. And quite frankly, I’m exhausted. Exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the mantle of change that I voted for," a woman told President Obama at a town hall.
Today's RealClearPolitics has the video.
0
WilliB
Sarge:
So at what level of government growth and national debt would you consider the mess "fixed"?
0
skipbeat
If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
smithinjapan,
Democrats hold majority in the house and the senate. Take responsibility.
0
alladin
Obama has become to be a real joke with not much progress.
0
MisterCreosote
Nah. I think you do a fairly decent job of presenting Peter Schiff's ideas as your own. Though a Libertarian, like Ron Paul, he has chosen to run as a Republican , but the label is redolent of Dumbya, and you don't want to be seen endorsing them because of it.
0
Junnama
Gjd'd ideas are fairly mainstream in Econ/business circles. Nothing need be aped here: alot of people came to the same conclusion at the same time for some reason...
0
TheQuestion
There are always better choices. Voting for an independant or a third party are always on the table. Some people consider it a wasted vote but I refuse to accept the lesser of two evils arguement. If my choice of leadership is split between two equally useless parties I think I'm better off finding a better alternative myself.
Someone else.
To be honest they all look the same to me.
0
RomeoRamenII
“I voted for a man who said he was going to change things in a meaningful way for the middle class. I am one of those people. And I’m waiting, Sir. ... I don’t feel it yet,” said Velma Hart, the chief financial officer of AMVETS in Washington
I heard this clip today. Evidently some of the most vehement Obama supporters are tired of him as well. In an NPR piece on the midterms, most people they interviewed who'd voted for him were disappointed and would not vote for him again.
So much for Hope and Change.
RR
0
tigermoth
That's okay - he can just be as crappy a president as Jimmy Carter, then proclaim himself the most brilliant ever of former presidents as JC did. People will forget what a disaster his administration truly was and the left will still canonize him as god.
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Molenir
You are actually correct, and incorrect in saying this. Correct, because by any measure, the US is facing massive problems that don't have much to do with ideology. However you are incorrect, because Ideology is at the root of much of the problems. Be it economic ideology that says that government spending is the way to get out of recession, or ideology that says people must be forced to have government mandated health insurance, despite the fact that this will cost an additional trillion dollars the US doesn't have.
Your off the cuff comment leaves out 2 critical components. The first is that an excellent President followed JC and undid much of the damage that JC managed to do. The other thing, is that JC spent the next 20 years building houses for the homeless. So, to compare him to JC, Obama will have to spend his next 20 years, doing something selfless for others, and of course, be followed in office by a truly great President.
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GJDailleult
That would because a lot of people are right. And I wasn't presenting those as my own, I was just writing them up here because they are always ignored on this board, by people claiming that voting Republican is going to change things. It isn't. Also, those are not Peter Schiff's ideas, he is always jabbering on about inflation. They are also not new ideas, they go all the way back to the 30's and the the debt-deflation theory of Irving Fisher, which Bernanke conveniently continues to ignore.
The question, and point I was making, is why are those people not being listened too. The answer is because those in power either haven't come to that conclusion or because that conclusion is so far against their own interests that it is suppressed. Which is true for Obama, we don't know.
Last point, about government spending being an ideology about how to get out of recession. Hehe, that is what they tell you it is. Actually it is there to cover for the loss of private spending while they try to find a way to pull a rabbit out of their hat and pray for a miracle.
0
tigermoth
Good points. Unfortunately I fear neither is very likely. I hope for the latter, but no standouts in my mind as of yet.
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