Has Obama harmed traditional liberalism and Democrats' positions?

Gipper said:

Not to me. You invest at your own risk. Besides, what you described is more akin to putting the cart before the horse.

I still would not. There still needs to be a "premium" of sorts. That's how money market tools work. It's the same reasoning behind why some people will invest in high-yield (junk) bonds.

Capital gains get a bad reputation because all people see are these fat cat hedge fund managers. For every one of those, there are a thousand middle to upper-middle class people gambling with their money. I'm not about to penalize the vast majority for the actions of a tiny minority.

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I would agree with you, if we were talking about a new and untested system. However we aren't. I think there have been plenty of patterns that have emerged from market trends over the years, and those patterns can be used to support certain presidence. If you are going to calculate for certain risk, what's wrong with calculating that risk and determining what is a reasonable way to ensure the entire coutries economy does fail with that tiny minority?

If it weren't for the fact that trading on the stock market, effects people who have never even thought about investing, I would say, do what you want. It's one of those things now though, that effects everyone from top to bottom. The failure of such, has required the safety net of the taxpayers already. So why not use that recent history to better prepare for the next inevitable bubble?

Gipper said:

Gee, I can't imagine why us libertarians fight the left wing for expansion of government. It's not "think" - fiscal liberals are in favor of a giant redistribution machine. If you disagree, then maybe you should change your lean.

Also, I don't see him saying the word "Democrat" at all. Leftists want larger government - either directly or by proxy. If they're honest, they'll voluntarily expand government, or they'll demand that government perform functions that require expansion by necessity.

Do you not favor higher taxes for the rich? Do you not favor higher capital gains taxes? Do you not favor an expansion of (or at minimum, a retention of current levels of) entitlements in this country? If you can look me in the font and tell me that you don't agree with all those, I won't put you down as a rank-and-file ultra-liberal.

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I'll take a stab at it and answer your last questions first.

Yes, I want taxes on the rich to be higher. Yes, I'm in favor of raising the capital gains tax. No, I don't want entitlement programs expanded beyond their current levels.

I don't want a larger government. I want a more effective government. Now for the rationale...

Republicans (and some Democrats) want to reduce the deficit by reducing federal spending. I can agree with that. The problem is cutting spending alone will not solve our deficit problem. You can cut until the cows come home and it will not spur economic growth. Moreover, you have to make spending cuts at the right time when your national economy is in flux. Otherwise, all you've done is make the problem worse. Imagine, if you will, what would have happened had Republicans had their way and cut spending at the height of the Great Recession, moreover, when unemployment was at 10%. You think things were bad in the Fall of 2009. Just imagine how bad bad could've been had the social safety nets,i.e., unemployment, food stamps, Medicaid, WIC, were all drastically reduced or eliminated while joblessness was at its peak?

So, you can't just cut your way out of this economic mess. And you can't borrow any more especially now that our credit rating has been downgraded. The only thing left is increase taxes in order to continue investing in ourselves. It's foolish not to! Nonetheless, I agree that we have to reduce spending and do it smartly. I agree that we can't continue living off the government credit card. And I do agree that you can't lay the heavy hand of taxes squarely on the shoulders of the rich, but neither can you keep bleeding the middle-class dry. There has to be a balanced approach to getting our debt and deficit under control.

I agree with the President (as apparently some Republicans do as well) when he said we need to streamline government bureacracy. We do need to get rid of those departments of government, as well as those government programs that are duplications of effort. But as most people who pay attention to politics know full well once you get a department started it's hard to shut it down. Let's take for example the Department of Homeland Security. Many people see this agency as necessary to coordinate intelligence among state, local and federal agencies. Why couldn't we have used NSA for that? And since the FBI is our federal police agency on the domestic front, couldn't they have handled coordinating efforts between federal, state and local authorities? Truth is, Republicans have wanted DHS for a long time and they finally saw justification for starting yet another branch of government all the while complaining about "expanded government".

I am a Moderate-Democrat, but I purposely leave the "Democrat" part off because I am more than capable of seeing the issues from both sides of the political divide. I'd call myself a Centrist except I don't just stay in the middle of the debate. Where this President is concerned, I don't think he's as much of a hard-left Liberal as many people try to paint him. That's why I'd have to vote "None of the Above" if such an option existed in this poll.

joko104 said:

The loyalty to Obama by Democrats is astonishing to me and appears unique to Obama. Historically, Democrats had no problem protesting Democratic presidents - such as LBJ ("Hey, Hey, LBJ, how many boys did you kill today?") - while Republicans supported LBJ. Now, partisan lines are so absolute that Obama is like Rev. Moon leading his mindless worshippers.

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It's kind of weird. You guys like to hate Obama a lot more than we like him.

1. While infuriated at the the government monitoring who checks out library books, Democrats now support the government using drones in the USA to watch all Americans.

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No we don't. No one does.

2. There is silence by Democrats over record numbers of refusals to comply with Open Records requests.

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Don't know about this. It's not okay, though.

3. Democrats used to condemn and protest drone strikes in other countries - which Obama condemned in campaigning - but now support even increases in foreign drone strikes.

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As an alternative to invasions, yes. Liberals are, as a whole, generally anti war.

4. Democrats support massive increases in the militarization of the police including Federal police.

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No one supports this.

5. Democrats dropped all criticism of not closing Gitmo, something Obama campaigned on doing.

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Really? Cuz here's a Washington Post article from yesterday about it. Guantanamo detainees’ frustrations simmering, lawyers and others say - The Washington Post

6. Democrats are silent on hypocrisy and contradiction and failure - from the administration cancelling allowing anyone else with pre-existing conditions to have affordable insurance under ObamaCare - to Obama lying and then admitting to proposing sequestration to then oppose what he got passed, drone strikes, Gitmo, and the rest.

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No we don't. We just don't expect him to be perfect. Nor do we somehow think that president has the same powers as congress.

You also hear over and over on this forum extreme arguments that the Bill of Rights are irrelevant in terms of the power of Congress, where liberals used to intensely support the Bill of Rights.

Has Obama redefined and even reversed many liberal and Democratic traditional stances and priorities?

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I don't know where you get these impressions, Joko. Do you just make them up as you go along? Or do you only ever notice the occasional times when these instances occur? A lot of these liberal bashing threads seem to revolve around accusations of "hypocrisy", and false attribution of malicious motivations. For example:

ttwtt78640 said:

You look at temporary acceptance of your noted "infractions" yet ignore the Obama main mission; expanding the size and scope of federal control, especially increasing income redistribution programs - the #1 goal of the left.

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That is literally no one's goal, except for the corrupt politicians and business owners who are getting rich from expanded government. And even then, it's a means to an end, not an end unto itself.

No discussion or debate about issues is reasonable or possible if your basic proposition is that the other side is completely outside the realm of human values. If conservatives really believe that accusations they sling, then there is a deeper divide than I thought and very little possibility of cooperation.

Paschendale said:

It's kind of weird. You guys like to hate Obama a lot more than we like him.



No we don't. No one does.



Don't know about this. It's not okay, though.



As an alternative to invasions, yes. Liberals are, as a whole, generally anti war.



No one supports this.



Really? Cuz here's a Washington Post article from yesterday about it. Guantanamo detainees’ frustrations simmering, lawyers and others say - The Washington Post



No we don't. We just don't expect him to be perfect. Nor do we somehow think that president has the same powers as congress.



I don't know where you get these impressions, Joko. Do you just make them up as you go along? Or do you only ever notice the occasional times when these instances occur? A lot of these liberal bashing threads seem to revolve around accusations of "hypocrisy", and false attribution of malicious motivations. For example:



That is literally no one's goal, except for the corrupt politicians and business owners who are getting rich from expanded government. And even then, it's a means to an end, not an end unto itself.

No discussion or debate about issues is reasonable or possible if your basic proposition is that the other side is completely outside the realm of human values. If conservatives really believe that accusations they sling, then there is a deeper divide than I thought and very little possibility of cooperation.

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That is exactly where we are now, 2/3 of all federal spending is said not to be "discretionary", and oddly enough defense spending is mostly considered "discretionary", even if it is a primary mission of the federal gov't. If all discretionary spending was cut then we would still have a defict. I fail to see how that could leave the parties farther apart; demorats want tax increases and cuts only to non-social (income redistribution) programs, republicants want no tax increases and cuts to income redistribution (low income based entitlement) programs.

ttwtt78640 said:

That is exactly where we are now, 2/3 of all federal spending is said not to be "discretionary", and oddly enough defense spending is mostly considered "discretionary", even if it is a primary mission of the federal gov't. If all discretionary spending was cut then we would still have a defict. I fail to see how that could leave the parties farther apart; demorats want tax increases and cuts only to non-social (income redistribution) programs, republicants want no tax increases and cuts to income redistribution (low income based entitlement) programs.

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So the obvious compromise is some tax increases, and some cuts to social and military programs. We've known that for years. The refusal to acknowledge this middle ground has preventing us from making progress for at least three years.

Paschendale said:

So the obvious compromise is some tax increases, and some cuts to social and military programs. We've known that for years. The refusal to acknowledge this middle ground has preventing us from making progress for at least three years.

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The requires two things that we lack; 1) a president to propose such a budget and 2) congress critters willing to go along with it. The president feels no need to do so (he has zero re-election hopes) and congress critters refuse to do anything that makes their next re-election harder. The 2012 election returned 94% of congress critters and the presedent to office - with $1 trillion annual deficits and a private economy limping along despite massive federal borrowing and money printing. The last "middle ground" deal (early this year) raised taxes by $60 billion and increased spending by $90 billion, causing a net added defict of $30 billion; then sequestration kicked in causing $44 billion in "cuts" for the remainder of this fiscal year - net total defict reduction of $14 billion (so far) not counting any other deals.

I selected IDK/Other. Democrats don't seem to really have any real connection with classical liberalism.

He's hardly a liberal. When it comes to decision making he's pretty moderate. He's socially liberal leaning but fiscally very moderate if not almost conservative leaning such as supporting offshore drilling at one point.

memmorio said:

I selected IDK/Other. Democrats don't seem to really have any real connection with classical liberalism.

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Ya things aren't so black and white. There's the book definition then there's the political definition.

Allowing people to carry guns isn't exactly "conservative".

shiang said:

Ya things aren't so black and white. There's the book definition then there's the political definition.

Allowing people to carry guns isn't exactly "conservative".

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Well not only that, but people in this country tend to act as though what we call liberal and conservative is universal across the world. I tend to call is political relativism.

Obama is a center-right Democrat. He never was a progressive liberal nor did he claim to be one. He was to the Right of Hillary on everything except the Iraq War. Remember when he said he would bomb Pakistan?

memmorio said:

Well not only that, but people in this country tend to act as though what we call liberal and conservative is universal across the world. I tend to call is political relativism.

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Totally, what is Liberal and Conservative is relative. It's like saying what is the acid and what is the base in chemistry.

Compared to Europe we're very conservative, compared to China we'd actually be liberal.

calamity said:

Obama is a center-right Democrat. He never was a progressive liberal nor did he claim to be one. He was to the Right of Hillary on everything except the Iraq War. Remember when he said he would bomb Pakistan?

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Oh how I wish Obama was more progressive but then he'd be lynched by the conservative right. =P Like Obama I'm willing to compromise.

Here's how I'd evaluate the past 3 presidents in terms of political leaning.

if 1 was right and 9 was left

Clinton: Social left leaning (6), Fiscal centrist (5), Total 11
Bush: Social right leaning (3), Fiscal right leaning (3), Total 6
Obama: Social left leaning (7), Fiscal centrist (4.5), Total 11.5

shiang said:

Oh how I wish Obama was more progressive but then he'd be lynched by the conservative right. =P Like Obama I'm willing to compromise.

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Amazingly, when polled, most Americans say Obama is too far Left. But, oddly, when Americans are polled without labels, they are further Left than Obama Governs, meaning they choose things like Universal Health Care, pulling out of Afghanistan, nationalizing corrupt banks which fail, that sort of thing. Interesting I thought.

calamity said:

Obama is a center-right Democrat. He never was a progressive liberal nor did he claim to be one. He was to the Right of Hillary on everything except the Iraq War. Remember when he said he would bomb Pakistan?

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Obama's words and speeches mean nothing, and when he is forced to act he votes "Present." He is merely an empty suit, a sock puppet for the noisy leftist mob that currently controls the Democrat party.

Diogenes said:

Obama's words and speeches mean nothing, and when he is forced to act he votes "Present." He is merely an empty suit, a sock puppet for the noisy leftist mob that currently controls the Democrat party.

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Parrot RW talking points much? Talk about empty suits and sock puppets.