What do Democrats and Progressives say about Obama ...

[Amelia]

... when they think none of us annoying rightwingers are listening?



Are they happy with the guy?

 

[editec]

... when they think none of us annoying rightwingers are listening?



Are they happy with the guy?

You've been reading complaints about Obama by Dems and progressives on this board all along.

Have you been too stupid all along to understand them?

Apparently, so.

 

[Amelia]

That is very close to a non-answer. What people say here is quite explicitly not what I was asking about.

I tried to read at DU to see what they might be saying but they seem to be heavily into talking about Republicans. I didn't see much reflection on Obama.

I guess I'll try again.

 

[occupied]

I would tell you but they would kick me out of the club and I would lose my welfare Cadillac.

 

[ba1614]

They didn't really have much to choose from, I have my doubts McCain would've been much different.

They are likely feeling pretty depressed about the state of everything

 

[occupied]

Seriously, speaking only for myself, my opinion of our president is the same no matter who is listening. Want to know what it is? Turn down the volume on the the RW hate machine first.

 

[Greenbeard]

... when they think none of us annoying rightwingers are listening?

Are they happy with the guy?

The verdict on Obama's performance you're going to hear will depend mostly on a person's ideological bent, their pet cause(s), and their personal evaluation of the politics of the last three years. There are plenty of folks on the far left who have just as distorted a view of the administration as those on the far right. Personally, I'm a center-left pragmatist, not unlike Obama himself, and for the most part the issues he's put on his agenda are the ones I wanted to see action on first; that makes me more sympathetic to him than most. As I've said before:

Obama's flaws are readily apparent but his policy preferences are generally good and where the political constraints have allowed he's moved the needle on them to my satisfaction. I'm not a purist, I'm not an idealist, and I'm not a teenager so that's good enough for me. Anyone dissuaded by a handful of policy concessions and failures simply needs to put down the sanitized high school civics textbooks or president-as-hero biographies and live through a few more election cycles.

 

[Amelia]

That's a nice answer, Greenbeard. Thank you.



There's actually a semi-serious element to my question which was probably difficult to detect. When people are in a group of more or less like-minded people, there are dimensions of conversation which can be engaged in which are impossible or at least unlikely in a more heterogeneous group.

Like the difference between talking about Mormonism in Alabama, and talking about it on the BYU campus in Provo, Utah.

I just guess that when serious-minded left-leaning people gather together, the conversation could sound a lot different than it does on a forum open to the general public.