Can’t please all of your supporters all of the time
Briefly came across this on yahoo news.
The gist of the article is that President-elect Barack Obama is alienating himself from the liberals that supported him with such stances as:
-Letting the tax cuts of people who make $250,000+ expire in 2010
-A “responsible drawdown” from Iraq
-Appointing Hillary Clinton, keeping Robert Gates, and having a centrist cabinet
-Not taxing the windfall profits of oil companies
To sum up this article:
Now it’s Obama’s Cabinet moves that are drawing the most fire. It’s not just that he’s picked Clinton and Gates. It’s that liberal Democrats say they’re hard-pressed to find one of their own on Obama’s team so far – particularly on the economic side, where people like Tim Geithner and Lawrence Summers are hardly viewed as pro-labor.
Apparently, what they want is a cabinet made entirely of Nanci Pelosi.
**Statement only valid in Chicago, IL; Void where prohibited.
I second what Scott said: much better that we have a moderate / centrist administration than any one with a heavy lean to a political extreme. We saw a heavy right-leaning cabinet with the Bush administration, and the hardcore progressives want a heavy left-leaning administration with Obama, I guess to counteract the previous one.
I’m holding out for an administration with a heavy gangsta-lean.
O wait, that may still be Obama …..
ZING!
Latest AP poll shows 9 of 10 Dentists actually accepting bribes from the candy lobby.
I don’t really care what the progressives think, in fact, I’m more okay with a centrist administration than a which-ever-way leaning one.
Although, I do agree with Vincent. Clinton and Bush re-treads isn’t exactly inspiring.
Mostly though I found it funny that people are already flipping and Obama hasn’t even been inaugurated. I’m holding any vitriol I might have until that man actually does something in office.
I didn’t realize that pollsters published names and faces….ahh well. You learn something new every day. : )
I guess polls are always meaningless if people are always lying to save face?
Latest AP poll shows 9 of 10 Dems don’t want to publicly express disappointment with Obama.
Latest AP Poll shows 9 of 10 Dems happy with picks.
And furthermore, does it really make that big of a difference if Obama stacks his cabinet with centrist-right leaning affiliates?
To the average voter, no. To the starry-eyed progressive types who projected their every aspiration onto Obama and who seriously believed an Obama Administration would set about doing things like create a “Department of Peace” with Dennis Kucinich at the helm (I’ve actually seen people expressing their disappointment at Obama’s failure to do just this), then Obama packing his cabinet with a bunch of Clinton re-treads and a couple of “neocon warmongers” from the Bush Administration is probably coming as a serious letdown, if not an outright back-stab.
Such people, you have to understand, really thought that this was going to be “their” Administration, that they’d be calling the shots, and that a “progressive” agenda was going to dominate Washington for the foreseeable future. Reality seems to have left them nonplussed.
Personally, I’m a bit fed up with the Clintons and more than worn-out with Bush’s people, so I’m not terribly impressed with Obama’s choices. On the other hand, it’s gratifying to watch him give his “progressive” base the finger and even more gratifying watching them invent new reasons to explain their way out of their disappointment (“He’s doing this to placate people so that when he starts making tons of liberal reforms, he’ll have the political capital to do so! What a brilliant strategy! He really is working for us… but he just can’t say so right now!”).
To be fair, I don’t remember Obama ever saying that he was going to fill his cabinet with the uber-left….
I think his choices make sense for someone who has plans that he wants to implement. You want people who know how to do what you want to do…and who will listen to you when you tell them what to do. Having good listeners who are clueless and may come in with some crazy agenda of their own is counterintuitive.
It’s the equivalent of James Dobson threatening to not get ‘his people’ to vote for the (R) ticket if A, B and C aren’t done the way they want it done.
What?! A Politician is going back on his word after being elected to office?!?! Someone get the NY Times and Robert Frost ASAP!
But seriously….
Really? REALLY? The man isn’t even president yet …. he hasn’t even been president for ONE DAY! Suffice to say, he hasn’t done anything yet! How can people be upset about the new administration, when it hasn’t officially administered anything? Sure, we may be in a “Lame duck” period of presidential transition of power, and it would be naive to believe that the political maneuvering seen by Obama and his cabinet so far as anything but nothing; but again, I have to ask … really? How long ago was the election? Just two months? I would tell all those that are up in a bunch to simmadownnow, and wait until the man is at least sworn in before griping.
And furthermore, does it really make that big of a difference if Obama stacks his cabinet with centrist-right leaning affiliates? It would be easier to view the administration not as individual people, or even not as components, but as one cohesive whole: as long as that political body delivers democratic or liberal agenda items, do the people really care how the internals work? I know I don’t. I only take apart my VCR (yeah, I still got one!) when it stops working like it is supposed to; when it is working fine, I could care less how all of the pieces inside work.
But its unfair to say that things aren’t working, because this Obama administration hasn’t done anything yet!