First off, I’m not a fan of Romney but I’ve been alive for 5 presidents, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush/Gore and Obama. My point is has anything changed? I mean since Reagan don’t we still have an incredible high prison population, shitty schools, too many people needing food stamps, rampant underemployment and every other social ill we can think of? If Mitt wins the presidency isn’t it just another rich white guy running the country? My more liberal friends are up in arms over the fact that he might win but really would anything change?
Why not Mitt?
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The U S A run on the Peter Principle.
Interesting.
Maybe we could get rid of Congress and pass legislation with Internet polls crafted by Frank Luntz.
A couple points:
First off, I assume you know this, but Obama is not “another rich white guy.” He’s a rich black guy. Also, unlike Romney and the Bushes, he’s not a silver-spoon rich guy; he had the experience of depending on government assistance and of struggling with student loans. I think there’s some value to having a president who knows what it’s like to not be able to get a cab in New York, or to really not know if he can make ends meet at the end of the month. He may not be a *good* president, but I think Obama is less likely than his opponent to support actively racist or anti-poor measures.
There’s also the issue of women’s and LGBTQ rights. This is really what kept me from saying “there’s no difference between the candidates” this time around. The next few judicial appointments may decide the future of marriage equality; a signature or a veto could change whether doctors, nurses, and teachers at religious institutions get reproductive health benefits. I don’t know about my “more liberal friends,” but I couldn’t honestly say to my female or gay friends that “nothing would really change” in Romney-land.
anschelsc:
WTF? The point of experience is either to a) grant competence or b) indicate future behavior — especially what political faction the candidate will side with. Regarding the former: quite frankly, the presidency isn’t a terribly hard job, Clancyian political thrillers notwithstanding, and Obama displayed the minimum skills necessary when he got his undergraduate. The latter point, however, is even more irrelevant, because if you were dumbass enough not to get what Obama was about at least by the Dem. convention speech in 2004, four years of his presidency should have filled you in. He’s not on our side.
“I think Obama is less likely than his opponent to support actively racist or anti-poor measures.”
WTF? He’s already supported racist measures. He did that in Chicago — hallowing out schools so that privatizers can screw over black kids and black teachers while ripping off taxpayers. Where have you been?
. . .
This is the real problem with a dem candidate. Dem authoritarians will roll over and love him no matter what, and if you suffer due to the candidates actions, they’ll tell you to shut up and like it. Rightwing dems are as bad as rightwing repubs — at least the latter don’t bother hiding their contempt. A repub president galvanizes everyone who isn’t republican, turning a bunch of lickspittles, quislings, and a disheartening number self-serving racist assholes (not bigots, but racists) backing the leaders of the democratic party into a useful political opposition. Not a good political opposition, but something that serves a function upon occasion, as opposed to what you get during, say, the current president’s term.
Is that opposition worth it? Maybe. More importantly, it highlights the ridiculous importance of the primary. The resounding ethical failure of the pundit class during the 2008 election, where everyone followed the media’s framing (after having spending eight years complaining about said framing!) and attacked everyone who didn’t lick the backside of either Obama or Clinton is the gift that keeps on giving. Listening to the opinions of the unreformed members of that group, or being an unreformed member of that group, makes one either stupid or asshole: either way, their concerns about Romney versus Obama should be dismissed with contempt.
Would anything change? Let’s have that war with Iran and find out!
There are many things to dislike about Obama, but Romney would be far worse.
Nailed it in one, John.
A Romney Presidency is a guarantee of a war with Iran, as well as a return to policies that would tank our economy even worse than the last time they were tried.
I know a lot of people here don’t want to admit it, but as a whole, the economy is slowly improving thanks to Obama and the Democrats. A Romney presidency would not merely end that improvement, but actually reverse it.
The USA is situated in a world and an era in history that is increasingly hostile to the existence of a USA in its current form. So yes, things will change, i.e. continue to get worse. Does the Presidency have any actual power to affect that? Yes, I think it has some, but only to the degree of either slightly accelerating (Romney) or slightly retarding (Obama) the inevitable. Think of it like a swimmer in an ocean tide. You can swim this way or that, which might have a small effect, but overall the tide still compels you toward your particular destiny.
While pollsters are often wrong about every election except the US Presidential Election (no major gaffes since 1948), the best guess is that the Republicans are almost certain to retain the House (current estimate, 90%), and have a very good chance to take the Senate (current estimate, 60%). The last time this happened, the Democrats refrained from using the filibuster, and the Republican Congress and Bush, Jr. got almost everything they wanted (they couldn’t quite manage to abolish Social Security, though they gave it a good try).
It is not altogether clear that Obama will veto any bills passed by a Republican Congress, but if Romney is elected, Obamacare will definitely be repealed, for better or worse. Medicaid will be gutted, and there will be a determined attempt to eradicate Medicare–why should old folks who aren’t obscenely rich be allowed to hang around when they could be fertilising the soil: after all, they’ve lived their lives, so now it’s time for them to make space for the 1% to expand their garages.
Taxes on the 1% and services for the 99% will both be slashed under Romney, while Obama hopes to keep the current tax rate on the 1% and the current inadequate level of services for the 99%.
Finally, Obama’s Supreme Court appointees all voted against his unlimited power to order anyone, anywhere killed for any reason or for no reason, and to strip search anyone, any time for any reason or for no reason (losing 5-4). If Obama continues to appoint as he did in his first term, the Supreme Court might become more reasonable. There’s no chance of that if Romney is elected.
Obama has not been, and will not be a great president, but Romney would be far, far worse.
The only reason not to fight to stop Romney is the hope that Romney will turn out to be another Hoover and inadvertently usher in four decades of progressive politics.
I was going to say that Romney as Hoover redux is an impossibility, but multiple disasters have been set to autodetonate in ’13, so it could happen. And we’ll all be placing our bets on the outcome of this election, whether we want to or not.
anschelsc, Obama, had very wealthy grand parents and spent the vast majority of his life living with them. They helped him pay for school, they helped him in every facet of life. Obama is no more self made or self reliant than Romney. You miss the point anyway. Other than skin color, what really changes if Romney wins versus Obama? We’ve had four years of Obama, do you really feel like much has changed?
John, you do understand that Obama actually takes a pretty hardline stance on Iran too right?
To michaelwme:
I may well have missed this but could you name the SCOTUS Inc ruling supporting Obama’s claimed right to kill US citizens not on US soil on his order alone?
I only see that such a case has been filed within the last month. http://tinyurl.com/c3suxdr
A “pre-emptive” case by the father of Anwar Al-Awlaki (for whose assassination the right seems to have been manufactured) was thrown out of a lower court.
http://tinyurl.com/cfnj6qc
@patron Sure do, but Willard says that BHO isn’t tough enough on them despite sanctions and the Stuxnet & Flamer viruses. What do you suppose that means?
Anschelsc raises the point about women and LGBTQ rights and what would happen under Romney.
Although this is a valid theoretical point, the real-world applications are much more significant. Women’s rights (and by that, what is means is “abortion”) have NEVER been about the sanctity of the embryo or about children and their welfare.
Restricting abortion is one of the two prongs that have evolved to keep the impoverished in their place. None of the abortion restrictions currently in place can stop a woman who has access to a few thousand dollars, or who can raise it in a hurry. The purpose of all these laws is to trap a poor woman, preferably before she finishes high school, in a pregnancy she doesn’t want or isn’t ready for. She’ll end up (on average, so please, can we not invoke the exception that happens a minuscule fraction of the time?) having the baby and trying to raise it. Without a diploma, she will end up in a series of jobs that pay much less (again, on average, please, no stories about the high school drop-out who raised three children single-handedly and then went on to found a Fortune 500 company in her spare time while taking college courses), and the cycle of poverty will continue.
The male version of this is the prison system. Once you go in, guys, your “baby” is your prison record. For the majority, it’s a burden that you will carry until the day you die. If you’re rich however, and again, by rich, I mean that you have access to a few thousand dollars, you can hire a lawyer who can handle the necessary paperwork to minimize the damage (possibly even expunge the charge after a sufficient number of years). In New York, if you can’t raise $500 in bail (and a lot of people cannot), you sit in jail until your case is called. That can take weeks or months. During that time, you can lose your job, your housing, custody of your kids, your car can be towed, etc. All because you can’t scrape together $500. The Village Voice did a piece on this recently, google it.
Poor men are warehoused in prisons. Poor women are warehoused in pregnancies. Why? These are the most effective methods for keeping poor people controlled. Surviving becomes so much harder for these men and women that they don’t have time for politics, organizing, or any of the rest of it.
I’ll leave out the bit on the LBGT community because I’m running out of space.
Whimsical writes: “but as a whole, the economy is slowly improving thanks to Obama and the Democrats.” Is it? I don’t mean that as Obamabaiting. I’m asking an actual question (for anyone, not just Whimsical). What jobs are being created? Fast food workers or brain surgeons? I’m thinking that what’s happening is that the large majority of the “gains” are cosmetic, numerical ones only. Unemployment increased, even while jobs were “added.” I can never find a specific breakdown of these jobs. Are we becoming a nation of part-time retail clerks with no benefits or not?