All For Naught
That’s the logo of the latest version of the “Committee to Re-Elect the President” [CREP – pronounced “creep”]. Obama is truthfully represented as the zero, because that is what he has done for the people who voted for him – nothing, nil, zilch, nada.
Now he wants those people whose interests he has ignored to send him money so he can ignore them for another four years, based solely on the premise that a Republican will be worse. He misses the fact that by promoting and enacting policies that are only wanted by people who hate him, he has managed to push the Democratic base into the financial insecurity of unemployment and foreclosure.
What about the health care reform, you ask? That was a give away to insurance and drug companies, people won’t see any benefits from it, and he is on the road to attack the programs that do help people with their medical bills – Medicare and Medicaid. He is a Reagan Republican and will, in the end, help the Republicans in Congress disable them both.
You don’t have to vote for the Democrat or the Republican, other people run for office and you can write in anyone qualified for the office. People tell you that voting for someone else doesn’t affect the outcome, and they are wrong. If you vote, but don’t vote for either of the major parties, you are sending a message that can’t be sent by not voting. You are saying that you pay attention, and will go to the polls, but you don’t like what the major parties are “selling”.
CREP is trying build a grassroots campaign. They should give up. The White House killed the grass by pissing on it.
9 comments
Congrats!
You’re the first person I’ve seen who’s brave enough to say it publicly.
Kucinich for President!
S
I’m just the first you’ve read, Suzan, and possibly the bluntest so far, but a lot of people are tired of the crap coming out of this White House.
Obama’s civil liberties record alone is enough to disqualify him IMHO. Putting out a “contract” on an American citizen not charged with a crime did not endear him to me. But as always I will vote strategically, for whomever is least bad for the nation.
My fantasy is that somebody in the Democratic Party, some well-known name, will “primary” Obama. That, and I want a pony, and ice cream for dinner.
Failing that, I have to decide just how dog-awful Obama’s opponent would have to be, and how likely that opponent would be to be elected, before I’d vote for Obama. So far, the list is very short: Sarah Palin. But it could grow. There’s a lot of gross stupidity out there, and more of the truly stupid are announcing for prez every day.
Unless Obama has a terrifying opponent with a good chance of winning, I’ll write in someone, quite possibly Kucinich. The problem is, the fact that someone wants to be prez is, in and of itself, evidence of insanity, and who wants an insane president?
The problem is the two-party system that blocks good candidates from even running, much less being elected. Forty years ago party labels actually meant something, but no longer. We have kept the worst of Dubya’s abuses and added a few more when Obama entered the White House. What really infuriates me it the assumption that people have no place else to go, so they will vote for him after he repeatedly attacks and slanders them.
Enough.
(Gack! There’s a glaring grammatical error in my last post!)
At present, with Obama proposing to spend $1 bn on his re-election campaign, I have to believe he will probably be re-elected no matter what. If that looks probable, I’ll vote a symbolic vote for an independent write-in candidate. Of course, KKKarl Rove hasn’t worked his magic yet, at least not so it’s obvious to me, so there’s some time yet left for him to steal the election…
It appears that your anger is with arithmetic, Bryan. Any first-past-the-goal electoral system with a strong executive elected by popular vote (well, close enough in the case of the USA) will naturally devolve into a two-party system over time via simple arithmetic — if it takes 50%+1 votes to absolutely *guarantee* that your candidate becomes President, clearly the only way to guarantee that is a coalition of what would be multiple smaller parties in a parliamentary system into one big party that can obtain 50%+1 votes. So you can blame our founding fathers, who wanted to make George Washington our King but George Washington didn’t want to be king so they got him to grudgingly accede to being an elected President for four years at a stretch, for the current situation. If not for that desire for an imperial Presidency with George Washington as President, we likely would have a parliamentary democracy like most Western democracies and not be in this situation (though parliamentary democracies do tend to devolve to two major parties and a few smaller ones over time, unless proportional representation is instituted, which causes its *own* problems).
Regarding Obama, I didn’t want him to be the Democratic nominee in the first place because he was clearly the most conservative of the Democrats in the race and the last thing America needed was eight more years of conservative rule in a time of economic hardship. But look. Teddy Kennedy thought primarying Jimmy Carter would be a good idea in 1980. If he didn’t win the nomination, at least he could force Carter leftward. Well, that turned out well — Teddy ended up helping elect Ronald Reagan and helped bring in thirty years of disastrous Republican rule of America. Carter wasn’t a particularly good President, and neither is Obama, but still. Huckaby? T-paw? Michelle Bachman? Caribou Barbie? A man who wears magic undies? You *really* think one of that gang of clowns, goons, cretins, and all around creepy people would make a better President than Obama?
This is turning out to be another one of those McCain-Obama elections where I held my nose and voted for the sane conservative vs. the insane radical lunatic moron (and senile sidekick). I’m certainly not sending any cash Obama’s way. But I’m not insane, and I’m *not* going to vote for one of the insane clown posse that is the Republican Party — and the math says that any vote that’s not for Obama is effectively a vote for the Republican candidate. You may rail about the laws of arithmetic, but they are what they are, pi is the infinite series starting at 3.1415 regardless of how much you wish it were something clean and simple like “3”.
– Badtux the Mathematics Penguin
Every individual has to do what they feel is best, Steve. I’m not a strategic voter – I vote for the individual that I feel is best qualified for the position.
Badtux, that is the case in California, but it doesn’t work that way in other states. New York had multiple parties and to win state wide elections, and many local election in New York City, candidates need the support of the smaller parties.
The Tea Party fraud is another example of ways to affect the major parties.
As long as the Democratic Party and its candidates feel free to ignore the wishes of the membership, the membership should withhold support. They will need to lose a few more elections to understand this, as they obviously missed the point of 2010 losses, but that is the only way of really changing things in a two party system. There is no point in voting for Democrats if you get Republican policies regardless.
The voters in Wisconsin had that same notion. Look at how well it’s turned out for them :twisted:.
– Badtux the Snarky Penguin
The voters who would have backed real Democrats stayed home and didn’t vote in 2010. I don’t advocate staying home, but you don’t reward bad behavior, whether you are dealing with puppies, kittens, children, or politicians. You are assuming that the policies would have been different if Democrats were elected, and there is no evidence that that assumption is true, and plenty of evidence in Washington that it isn’t.
When a Republican running as a Republican faces a Republican running as a Democrat, the voters will always elect the Republican.