Comments

1
That was the back of my head then...
2
Krugman's so good he doesn't have to shout. His clear-eyed, cant-free tracery of the presidential and congressional failures of the last few years really does honor to the public service punditry is still capable of performing.
3
Well duh! That's what happens when you elect an ideologue with scant political experience and zilch management experience especially when you don't know exactly what his ideology is.
4
Obama is totally a Republican stooge. They planted him or bought him, let him get elected, and now he's taking down the Democratic party from the inside. It makes perfect sense.
5
The Senate showed backbone when it counted: voting for health care reform. But back then they had 60 Democrats--enough to vote for cloture.

Now that they no longer have a filibuster-proof majority, backbone is irrelevant in the Senate. Reid can bravely call for as many votes as he wants but Republicans could filibuster every single one. His only option is to compromise and try to court the few moderate Republicans in the Senate (Brown, Lugar, the Maine ladies, etc.)
6
we tried to tell you girls.
tried and tried.
"obama has no experience..."
not just a little.
none.
NONE.
that matters tremendously in the white house.

obama DOESN"T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK HE IS DOING.

you get that now, don't you.

we tried to tell you way back in the primaries.
not only does obama NOT KNOW WHAT THE FUCK HE IS DOING,
he has NO IDEA WHAT THE FUCK HE SHOULD BE DOING.

we feared obama would be like carter.
*shudder...*
he is worse.
he is WAY FUCKING WORSE THAN CARTER was.

we really didn't think it was possible.

you live and learn.
7
I've said it so many times I'm tired of saying it, but I guess one more time won't hurt: Hillary would have been better. At least she's not a fuck-up.
8
Is Mitch McConnell the first Senate Majority Leader from the minority party?
9
BWA HAW HAW HAW

Naive sheltered white Seattle "progressive" do-gooder hipster libtards just prove over and over again how nauseatingly naive they really are!!!! Most of you "progressive" naive libtards voted for Obama simply because he is black! Dipshits!
10
@7: Sadly, I see your point....
11
Hrrmmm, we've been asking these questions for two years now: What the fuck is the White House thinking? I guess I see four possibilities: 1) Obama's the most naive politician on the planet; 2) Obama's actually a Center-Right Republican, like more than a few "Democrat" Senators; 3) Obama has some sort of incomprehensible Xanatos Gambit in the works; 4) in spite of all evidence to the contrary, we're just objectively wrong about what will be best for the most people.

I don't particularly like any of them, especially since the other Dems seem so timid about challenging him for the nomination in 2012.
12
@7, as someone who waved his little gayz-fer-HIllary flag here back in the day, thanks for covering the I-told-you-so duty this morning.
13
@11, the answer really is #2. I sort of expected much of this when I voted in '08 (I never had a chance to vote for Hilary) BUT. Take a good look at McCain. So yeah, running with Obama.

It's still maddening to see things like the tax cut issue which never SHOULD have been an issue get softballed like this.

And Dan, hitting the espresso early?? I swear there were no new posts before I left for work this morning, then kapow!
14
Really?
This is the kind of group think that Republicans want to have bouncing around on the internet & in the media.

He should be more assertive and has shown flaws as a leader. Some of our best presidents have done far worse and accomplished much less in the same amount of time he’s been in office.

I think that that Obama has been trying to get Congressional Dems to grow a backbone. Sadly, the enthusiasm of the voters who voted for Obama and the rejection of Dem. leader apathy this last election has rolled off like water on a duck’s back and it’s hurting.

It’s important to hold accountable the man or woman we voted for once they’re in office, as Dan so often does. Pressure needs to be continually applied. I agree with @ 13, issues like the Bush tax cut shouldn't be "softballed". But a barrage of constant media pessimism is not productive.

I enthusiastically voted for Obama but I knew very early on that he was moderate. My enthusiasm was grounded in his intellect and the fact that he was a huge improvement on Bush & the grandpa who ran against him. He still is an improvement.

As much as I wish things would happen faster, he is still working hard on a lot of historically challenging tasks. He has a lot to grapple with and not all of this country is as liberal or as educated as the Puget Sound area.
15
What @14 said. Thank you...
16
14

ah-

'intellect!'......

that, and really dreamy eyes.....*sigh*......
17
@7 & @11, I too thought Hillary would have made a better president, but I made the (cynical, I know) decision in the primaries that I didn't think she could win against McCain due to the Republican slander machine being up and ready to take her down. I don't think anybody could have predicted the self-destruction of the McCain campaign, or the pick of Sarah Palin (Seriously, WTF was he smoking, and where can I get some?) and how it destroyed his chances at the White House.

Hell, if I had my druthers, I'd rather have seen Kucinich in the White House over Clinton or Obama, but you don't see me going "I told you so." :P
18
11

1.
but mostly 4.

with the majorities and momentum he had obama should have been able to pass anything he wanted but he is a terrible terrible president, technically speaking.

however 4 addresses the core problem, not just of Obama but of the whole Radical HomoLiberal Left.
you are Fucking Wrong about most everything.
and America knows it.
hense only 19% of Americans admit to being "liberal"
hense the only successful democrap president of the past 50 years governed as a centrist and worked with the GOP in congress.

congratulations.
admitting you are wrong is the first step to improving your pathetic sorry-assed lot in the world....
19
@7 & @11, I too thought Hillary would have made a better president, but I made the (cynical, I know) decision in the primaries that I didn't think she could win against McCain due to the Republican slander machine being up and ready to take her down. I don't think anybody could have predicted the self-destruction of the McCain campaign, or the pick of Sarah Palin (Seriously, WTF was he smoking, and where can I get some?) and how it destroyed his chances at the White House.

Hell, if I had my druthers, I'd rather have seen Kucinich in the White House over Clinton or Obama, but you don't see me going "I told you so." :P
20
It seems to me like Obama is exactly who I thought he was when I voted for him: a reasonable center-leftist who was going to do his best not to become embroiled in the endless partisan shouting match that is Washington. Compromise and tactics were key parts of his game plan from day 1, he campaigned on these promises heavily, but now we yell and scream about him living up to these promises?

Dan you are so often the voice of reason in the political game, and Krugman too is a very intelligent guy, but this strikes me as the impatient whining so characteristic of the american public...that same impatient whining that's largely to blame for how shitty our political system is right now.
21
The political victory of the Obama campaign was convincing staunch liberals and progressives that the administration would swing further left than any other in history, when in reality no one had any firm reason to believe that he would govern as anything other than a moderate.

The greatest political victory that the right can claim over the last two years is that they can get away with saying that Obama is a hard left/ultra-liberal/socialist president, and millions of people believe it.

Are we pissed because Obama got squished toward the center right? Or are we pissed because he represents the reality that true progressives will never run things in Washington?
22
Obama's biggest weakness is that he hasn't been able to convince Harry Reid and the rest of the Senate Democrats to quit being a bunch of scrotums. When the Republicans "threaten" to filibuster (remember, they never have actually filibustered anything), Reid should have said - "Fine, fuck you Mitch McConnell, get up on the podium, read from the fucking phone book, grind government to a halt, let the CSPAN cameras capture everthing for replay on the evening news, and do your little filibuster. Let's let the American people see you to it." Clinton in effect did this with the Republican's in, I think '95, and when the government came to a halt, the people recognized where the impediment really lay, and this was huge in his reelection.

I lay the disappointment primarily at Sacky Reid's feet and the rest of the sacky Senate.

(BTW, Dan, thanks for that perjoritive - it's come in quite handy at times!)
23
@ 21, good points.

But never say never. Things CAN shift any which way in Washington even if it seems impossible. Giving up out of disappointment certainly won’t result in the change we want to see.

Again, I think applying pressure by voicing criticism is important but bitching without offering any glimmer of hope or encouragement for solutions will kill voter enthusiasm.

People’s lives are at stake in this economic crisis. Maintaining & increasing voter enthusiasm and social action are crucial to solving our problems.
24
first, shove it up your ass @3 etc. youre just fucking wrong and cant see shit.

no mystery here- he was and is a moderate in terms of working with 'both sides'. he's not a hard-ball politician in a time when government is broke and ass needs to be kicked. but this is a lesson to our generation that we should be electing more tough guys, or at least nice faces with some fucking ball busters behind the scenes. in an era of pre-modern right wing reactionaries, from islam to republicans this is not a time for nice guys nicely believing in civilized progress.

ok all you right wing nuts who think im talking about stalin, im talking about fucking lbj with an eye to a modern denmark so dont even start.
25
This week's Tom Tomorrow cartoon doesn't show Obama, but it might as well: http://www.salon.com/entertainment/comic…

I don't mind compromise. Really, I don't. I understand that liberals aren't going to get everything they want, even assuming Obama would want to give it to us. It's just that he doesn't seem to understand that if you compromise *unilaterally*, you not only don't get anything in return, but you also tell the other side that you're weak. How many times does Obama need this proven to him?
26
Actually, President Obama is a great right of center President.

At least he's not incompetent, like lefty Comrade Bush was.
27
Obama's doing just what he said he was going to do in the books he wrote before he became President. It's just that everyone assumed he'd do what they wanted him to do once he got into office, because he was so inspiring and diferent from Bush when he was out on the campaign trail.

I've stopped reading Krugman's columns, because he's on a constant downer. Life's already depressing enough; a steady media diet of handwringing won't help matters.
28
#27's first paragraph nailed it. Anyone who bothered to read Mr. Obama's first two books isn't surprised by the President's policies.

Krugman makes a fine Greek chorus.
29
It's time for an extreme Left-Wing President. It's the ONLY thing that'll get this country back on track.
30
I think he's gotten rather a lot done, considering the wimpiness of Dems in the Senate.
31
The Big 0 is exactly who he told you he was.

Were the voices in your head telling you something different?
32
uncannily similar photos on the stranger and the link to the house dems article.

Please wait...

Comments are closed.

Commenting on this item is available only to members of the site. You can sign in here or create an account here.


Add a comment
Preview

By posting this comment, you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.