Quote:
Originally Posted by The North One
Some people don't seem to realize that Obama's "hope and change" campaign back in 08 was a lie. Obama was a center-right establishment democrat who fucked over the people behind their backs.
Obama was very pro-high speed rail though.
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Obama was a Centrist no doubt about that. I've never heard anyone describe his campaign initiatives as a lie. I believe he wanted to accomplish most of what he spoke of but was incredibly naive to think the GOP and the right wing hate machine were going to cooperate, with what was obviously a very profitable industry of Obama hysteria encouraging absolute obstruction. He even went so far as to try to get Republican support by proposing a Republican health care reform program. They rejected their own health care proposal as socialist, communist, Hitler, death panels and other assorted nonsense only possible in this ridiculously uninformed country of ours. He also wasn't planning on inheriting the most serious economic downturn in 80 years. That will put a hamper in any presidents intentions and I believe we owe him for having the wisdom to do the things necessary to keep the world from plummeting into a global depression. I'm not sure what people he was "fucking over behind their backs". Deportations? The lack of DOJ prosecution of Wall St? When you're being told how fragile the economy is you would probably lay off too if in his position. Not saying that's what he should have done. But that's what happened for better or for worse. The history books will judge Obama very positively regardless of how much he disappointed the left of the Democrat party especially economic leftists like myself.
And yes, Obama, like Biden as well, are true believers in high speed rail and had his 2 terms produced a serious dedicated infrastructure program outside of the emergency stimulus and Tiger grants, we would have seen much more solid progress with true HSR in the country. That said he still would have had despicable creatures like Walker and Scott making political hay out of rejecting federal investment in rail on purely ideological grounds and a cornucopia of absurdist concerns over UN control and indoctrination to be more like Europeans. Make no mistake the Republicans are the reason no progress has been made on, well, pretty much everything. And that has little to do with whether Obama was a centrist or a "radical leftist." In America, a president like Obama can be a "radical leftist manchurian candidate" to the ignorants on the right. Blame the ignorants on the right for that instead of whether or not one of the most dignified Presidents the country has had in a century governed a little more conservatively than we had hoped for.