Who does Obama think is going to support him in 2012?

Yeah, Obama needs something that would boost his approval ratings to, like, 86%. Any ideas?

They are employing the clintonian model to re-election:

1. Serve big business to build their campaign funds (the health care bailout bill is clinton’s nafta). Fealty to wall street is a must.
2. Completely disregard the needs of the congressional democrats.
3. Lose seats in congress, maybe even the majority … the more seats lost, the better.
4. Use the divided or republican-controlled congress as cover to serve more big business needs (see 1).
5. Use those campaign funds to pay their way to victory over a weak republican opponent.

The possible miscalculation in their model is that things are a lot worse now than they were then and the model may need a Perot to work.

Z

Blacks, liberals, latinos, traditional democrats and centrists. Progressives have never won an election in the US, they did mange to lose one in 2000. Look to the middle to determine the outcome of the next one.

Those voters Obama counts on because “they have nowhere else to go” do have somewhere else to go — home. They’ll stay at home if they’re not happy. Look for percentage of eligible voters to decline in 2012.

Which leads me to my next (off) topic. I’d like to see stats on how many voters stay home. They’d get a lot more voters out of the house if we could vote for none of the above.

Who does he bloody well think is going to support him in 2012?

I would say: all of the above. Either Z’s model holds true directly, or it’s merely the case that the Republicans will nominate mostly crazy people, and their general craziness will whip all the normal constituencies into line. As long as there is a large voting bloc of extreme right-wing populists, there will always been a boogeyman. A perfectly real boogeyman, too.

I’m still not willing to say that the Dems will lose the House this Nov, let alone the Presidency in 2012.

The really fun question is: if I’m wrong, am I wrong on the upside or the downside? I get the impression that not everyone who hangs around here thinks that Obama losing is a Really Bad Idea.

Z’s got it. After all, Obama simply ran Clinton’s ’92 campaign with more polish and the wonders of the internets. Remember during the campaign when people worried that Obama might be another Carter? I laughed and laughed. It should have been clear that we were going to get another Clinton; unfortunately, there are broad swaths of the Democratic Party who think that’s a fine fucking idea.

Maybe Obama doesn’t care about reelection. What if his role in ratcheting America further to the neo-liberal right can be accomplished in just one term? If he can get the job done in one, destroy the Democratic Party for a generation and ride off into the speaking engagement sunset that might be enough for him.

In any case, i’ll buy a hat just to eat if he does anything politically to win these voters back.

Basically we’re screwed; isn’t it somewhat irrelevant “who” will support Obama?
U.S. democracy is broken, the government is broken, the economy is broken; the whole enchilada is down the crapper. There’s nothing left.
The visible reality is the appearance of a runaway train with nobody in control; but the unseen reality is the coup (and there was a coup [silent and secret]) driving the agenda regardless of what the governed want.
We only have ghosts determining our future; an it’ll be what “they” want, not “us”.
We need the Ghost Busters; but they’re not real, are they?

Who’s going to support him in 2012? Thanks, I’ve been asking the same question since April 2009. He’s lost the progressives, Labor, and the crossover votes. He may even lose a significant part of the black vote since unemployment for them is in the 40%-50% range.

My guess he ‘ll retire and take his $1.5M year annual pension plus the state pension he earned, and hit the lecture circuit.

He was bought and paid for by Wall Street so there was no way he was going to rock the vote.

In the meantime, the country has lost four more valuable years to get things turned around. Unfortunately, that slim chance has disappeared.

Wall Street learned well from the 1930s and took action to prevent a repeat.

Republican Crazy will start a war with Iran and use jingo crazy to get everyone to go along. I don’t want that to happen. So, unfortunately, I will vote for Obama in 2012 even tho I don’t like a lot of his policies.
But, I have never been surprised by his actions. I’m sure it was Ian who wrote before the last election that a lot of the Obamaniacs would be surprised by his conservative governance.
Stirling Newberry did for sure.

Wow, the anti-Clinton loons are out in force. The difference between Obama and Clinton is that Clinton took GOP legislation that had sufficient support to override his veto, and moved it left – yes, even NAFTA was considerably more liberal when he got done with it. Not only did he move the legislation left, he moved the cultural dialogue left as well, and took the time to educate people. He raised taxes on rich people and passed that bill with 51 votes – no 60 vote majority necessary for him. He gave us the lowest unemployment in history and the highest family wages. That just isn’t what conservatives do.

In his first two years, Congressional Democrats were resigning and going to prison in spades. Those charges of corruption – the Check Kiting Scandal, etc. – are what drove the loss of Congress, not Clinton. But the loons can never admit that.

From Wikipedia:

The scandal contributed to a perception of corruption and malfeasance and was a contributing factor to major changes in the House, in which 77 Representatives resigned or were ousted in the 1994 election. Four ex-Congressmen, a Delegate, and the former House sergeant-at-arms were convicted of wrongdoing as a result of the investigation that followed.[2] Among these, Former Rep. Buz Lukens (R-OH) was convicted on bribery and conspiracy charges. Former Rep. Carl C. Perkins (D-KY) pled guilty to various charges including a check kiting scheme involving several financial institutions including the House Bank. Former Rep. Carroll Hubbard (D-KY) pled guilty to three felonies. Former Rep. Mary Rose Oakar (D-OH) was charged with seven felonies, but she ended up pleading guilty only to a misdemeanor campaign finance charge not related to the House Bank. The House Bank investigation also led to Delegate Walter E. Fauntroy (D-DC) pleading guilty to an unrelated charge of a making a false statement relating to a charitable contribution to his church. The former Sergeant At Arms, Jack Russ, pled guilty to three felonies.[3]

Never mind who is going to vote for him, who is going to volunteer in 2012? the women are already beginning to walk, that is going to increase.

Sure Lori,

clinton did a great job moving things left with nafta … george bush sr. couldn’t get that bill passed, but clinton rounded up enough democrats to do it. He promoted it for God’s sake … put rahm on the matter to get democrats to buy in and had gore debate Perot, who was against it. nafta didn’t have to be … it was not inevitable.

And he did a great job moving things left with his secretary of treasury deregulating everything in sight, carrying out polices that led to hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi children, passing welfare reform, increasing the H1-B visa limits, relaxing the limits on media ownership, preventing college students with marijuana possession convictions from getting federal financial aid, and passing The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act which helped lead to this wonderful growing police state we live in and increased the amount of inmates by 50% during his reign.

The delusory “healthy” clinton economy was the results of easy credit, the initial benefits of cheap goods from the free trade agreements that he couldn’t do enough of, his abhorrent secretary of treasury, rubin, talking greenspan into exploding the money supply to reflect the “productivity miracle”, and the consequent stock market bubble. In the end, we all saw how real that was when many highly capitalized companies couldn’t produce anything and went bankrupt with wall street walking away rich. It was mainly based on bullshit and it started to fall apart even before the abominable bush came into office. And, also, that initial wave of corruption that finally surfaced from enron and worldcom and the like in 2002 or 2003 … that didn’t start the moment bush came into office, it started when clinton was president. It obviously got a lot worse under the worst president in our nation’s history, but the economy did not just start to fall apart in January 2001.

You’re the loon …

Z

Not to mention that Clinton took the moment to turn swords into plowshares and decided that more swords would be the answer.

His foreign policy was horrendous. Does V.V. Putin scare you with his semi-totalitarian nationalism? It’s no stretch to thank Clinton for Putin after he papered over the outright election fraud committed by Yeltsin and called it a “triumph of democracy” and after he sent Summers to Russia to blow the place up for the benefit of Wall Street traders. And if all that wasn’t enough, he went back on the word of the Bush Sr. administration and rolled NATO right up to the Russian border.

Should we talk about Haiti? Iraq? This could be a long conversation if we’re going to catalog eight years of foreign policy only slightly less disastrous than those of Bush the Lesser…and then only because Clinton never found the political courage to actually start wars. Of course, his first instinct in the Balkans was to arm everyone and see what happened. He floated a trail balloon for the Iraq invasion. (and iirc he supported Bush’s little misadventure, didn’t he?)

Obama is, unfortunately, cut from the same cloth as Clinton…and we’ll pay for it.

Thank you for saying that, Ian. Other than his educational credentials, I’ve never seen any evidence of Obama’s supposed brilliance. I went to some of the elite schools and have worked with many people with similar academic credentials, some brilliant and some really not. I have not read his books so maybe that’s it, but I’ve never gotten it. The man speaks of political history as if he learned it from Meet the Press and his policies are drafted along similar lines, as if he believes the right-wing propaganda of the last 30 years. I’d almost feel better about the guy if I thought he was some sort of stealth candidate designed to fool us instead of just another member of the elite who isn’t nearly as smart as he thinks he is (which is what I suspect).

Perhaps I am missing something. It’s like I have some gene that makes me completely immune to whatever charms Obama has. I can see he’s charismatic in a weird detached way (speaking of me being weirdly detached), but even that has no effect on me.

There’s a lot I disagreed with Bill Clinton on, but he remains, by far, the best Republican president of my lifetime (I believe I’m stealing that from you, Ian). There were a number of things – like his progressive tax increase – that he did that I affirmatively support even if I hated NAFTA and welfare reform (to name two). Obama is barely better than George W. Bush, the worst GOP President in my lifetime. And while I do disagree with Lori on Clinton and NAFTA, she’s absolutely right that a lot of the Congressional wipeout in 1994 had to do with Democratic corruption, something the standard narrative – pushed by the Democrats in Congress – usually overlooks in favor of 100% Clinton blame.

Ian,

Obviously clinton came into power at a much better time than obama so it is difficult to compare the effectiveness of their economic policies. But tell me what was so good about clinton’s economic policies? Was it the free trade agreements, his zeal for deregulation, his coddling of wall street, the strong dollar policy, the increase of the h1-b visa limits? Which one of those wonderful pro-labor policies do you think were the most effective?

the “clinton” economy benefited from the initial stimulus of cheap goods imported into the US from the free trade agreements… the exported jobs would take more time, the explosion of consumer credit, greenspan’s irresponsibility in nourishing a huge stock market bubble, and wall street being set lose in a major way on the world’s markets. Workers fell further behind during those wonderful clinton years in wage inequality …. even behind what they were during the republican dominated 80s.

Let me also remind you that clinton coddled wall street in a major way by empowering robber rubin … who played a large part as to where we are right now with his zeal for deregulation and free markets. geithner and summers both worked for the clinton administration and pretty much continue rubin’s policies to this day.

obama’s economic advisers and philosophy really aren’t much different than clinton’s, but obama’s in a much worse situation. It would be very difficult for him to balance the budget when he has no asset bubbles to tap into for tax revenue, and stimulus is needed to decrease unemployment. obama and clinton are both pro-free trade, pro-wall street, pro-free market, and anti-labor obama hasn’t raised taxes on the rich … like he should … but I think that even he agreed to raise taxes on the rich to partially fund his health care bailout bill.

What do you think that clinton would have done different than obama to boost this economy? Maybe he would have designed a bigger and/or better stimulus package? Basically, I don’t see much difference between the two’s economic policies … just in the situations in which they are being deployed … but maybe you do.

Z

Trade liberalization—beyond NAFTA—ate into US manufacturing like acid, and much of it happened during Clinton times or was fueled by Clinton policies which were based in exactly the same ideologies—neoliberal trade orthodoxy—that dominates policy discussion in the Obama era, and to be fair, the Bush era. What happened during the Clinton period to give a veneer of prosperity was the tech boom; I was there, by 1997 it was obvious it could not be sustained, and in 2K it fell apart for good.

It didn’t begin with Clinton but it sure didn’t end with Clinton or even take a break with Clinton. Production is sovereignty.

Dear Lost Lori,

Are you claiming that the fact that the outgoing republican president ceremoniously signed off on agreement that was not yet finalized meant that clinton HAD to sign it? Didn’t Perot run on NOT signing off on nafta? A republican ex-president ceremoniously signing off on an incomplete agreement that hadn’t been voted on by either the senate or the house equates to fait accompli that it must come into law? If you are so dumb to believe that then all I can say is WOW! And somehow in your minuscule mind the fact that a democrat president, a democrat dominated house (that outnumbered the republicans by 82 seats) and a democrat dominated senate (which outnumbered republicans by 12 seats) passed nafta is trumped by a republican ex-president’s ceremoniously signing an incomplete agreement so therefore it is GOP legislation. Another WOW! on that.

The highest family income in history may be true … I wouldn’t doubt if it was … because there was low unemployment during the clinton years. But despite that, and despite the leverage one would think the american workers would have in that situation:

“Both the average wages for non-supervisory workers and the earnings of those in the lowest 10 percent of wage earners,” notes Robert Pollin, “not only remained well below those of the Nixon/Ford and Carter administrations, but were actually lower than that even than those of the Reagan/Bush years. Moreover, wage inequality — as measured by the ratio of the 90th to the 10th wage decile — increased sharply during Clinton’s tenure in office, even relative to the Republican heyday of the 1980s.”

http://dissidentvoice.org/Sept05/Street0929.htm

A healthy economy, huh? What was the basis of it? A big employer during those years were the internet companies many of which reached crazy stock valuations, but crashed and burned becoz they couldn’t make money. Where did the money come from to blow up the stock market bubble and fund these jobs? A lot of it was the fact that the fed bought into rubin’s “productivity” “miracle” and jacked up the money supply to reflect it. That’s one reason that the stock market doubled in one year and we all saw how much of a true miracle it was when companies with huge valuations crashed and went bankrupt.

The manufacturing jobs began to leave during the clinton administration, but there were other jobs, many of them directly and indirectly produced by the unhealthy stock market bubble, to soak them up.

Free trade agreements and the financialization of our economy had a HUGE part in disempowering the average worker, the average american. clinton had a HUGE part in the rise of both of those factors though idiots like you probably lay that solely on rubin as if rubin fell like an asteroid from the sky into clinton’s cabinet.

It’s not really about history with you as much as thinking … your ability to comprehend instead of imagining things the way you wished they were. I wouldn’t doubt if you were one of those dumbasses from the hillary clinton-loving blog that I got thrown off of. In fact, maybe you are the dumbass that runs it that counts as bill clinton’s achievements fighting off impeachment and winning elections without cheating.

Z

The reason Gore got beaten in 2000 is the Companies were not on board with him and trusted Poppy’s blood. They never counted on the weakness of Junior in the face of Cheney- but made damn sure the Cheneyburton crew got the smackdown they deserved. You do not go to Langely and act rudely to the boys.

As long as the One is onboard with the Companies’ agenda (more and better ca$hflows) he’ll do fine. If he starts to listen to his own campaign speeches in 2010, though, say bye-bye.

No, I do not think that would be a good thing, because of what would replace Obama. It’s the difference between bad and worse. Have no delusions: as much as Obama leaves to be desired, right now there is nothing better in the wings.

Anything better would get the Wellstone treatment as would the One if he took himself really seriously.

Thanks Ian and to some great comments to what you brought up, Sad day in Amerika. It’s a sad day here even if its citizens don’t know it yet but coming soon. I only hope most of the world passes through that edges of its demise. I truly wish the citizens of this nation saw this.

Lori: Do you actually think Bubba moved Republican legislation to the left?? He paved the way for millions of people to be screwed by Bush and the Democrats with bankruptcy reform by eviscerating welfare. He extended the death penalty into the federal area to a larger extent than it was before he was elected. He eroded fourth amendment rights. He committed his own set of war crimes by bombing the shit out of Iraqi women and children. He furthered his war crimes by endorsing the use of depleted uranium in the former Yugoslavia and he supported the Kosovo Liberation Army, the biggest drug dealing cartel in eastern Europe. He cut taxes on the upper one percent of Americans while taxing the middle class (just like Dubya). He pushed through WTO legislation which has hurt our economy and he was instrumental in causing the economic crisis in which we find ourselves by selling out to the bond market and by signing into law the repeal of Glass-Steagall.

So I guess Bubba does have his share of the shitpile to his name and no amount of nostalgic meanderings will ever change that. Bill Clinton governed like a Republican with the interests of the rich and Wall Street ahead of everyone elses except of course his own. The peaks that the stock market hit while he was in office were nothing more than two bubbles inflating. If you look at his presidency and what we have now as a result of his leaving Greenspan in place and bringing in Rubin and Summers, the net effect is negative.