Yeah, I just stick the complaints in the pneumatic tube at my front door.

I’ll agree that the Nation, the leftist magazine, is calling for too much (even though they were endorseing Obama early)…but a Clinton 2 administration is pretty much all we’re seeing (except for Obama’s much more attractive family imo).

Not that we weren’t warned: Robert Rubin is probably more responsible for the economic calamity befalling us than anyone (with possible exceptions of Reagan ‘n Greenspan, GW Bush was just a dumb bystander_)) and yet Obama refuses to throw him under the bus. Larry Summer’s is Rubin’s accolyte. And then Paul Volker? Dr. Doom who tanked the economy during Carter’s time….with massive unemployment and Reagan was the result. With such a team we can expect 20 percent unemployment a year from now. And Obama won’t have any money to help poor innercity men needing work…let alone crazy white guys out in the sticks also w/o income but with guns galore. I include women but at least the ladies are more likely to get help and keep calm…but massive unemployment of men will surely cause are already filled the max prisons to get really nasty. And Unemployment funds will be tapped out by March, ‘09 as Wall Streets already taken everything the Govt’s got. I expect by 2010 Obama and Congress will be still bailing out Wall Street Banks with our Social Security funds while 20 million foreclosures go down. Not a pretty picture for Obama, if he lets the Clintonites have their way.

I know Obama’s not even in power yet….and He needs to keep the Clintonites in his economic team to the far right of him and needs to read what really worked in the New Deal and what didn’t.

Ok, Obama’s an improvement over Bill Clinton…not so many bimbos in the wings…and a more experienced cabinet…(hmmm, thx to the Clinton’s giving them some time in power, after all)….but where are the progressive leftists to balance the Rubin-Republican-lite crowd?

Yeah and they’re being aided by the left who think Obama’s not being liberal enough before he’s even taken the oath.

Clinton, while hands-down the best President of my lifetime so far (I was born in ‘82 and missed Carter), was a disappointment pretty much from the very beginning. I think it’s asinine to blame his failures on the left for criticizing him; bullshit like Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell DESERVED the criticism it got and continues to deserve the criticism it still gets.

When I think of Clinton, I wonder what he could have accomplished if he’d had as little concern for public opinion polls as Bush.

All this is not to say that I have a problem with Obama being a moderate, or that I expected anything else from him. But when he makes a bad call (as he has in voting to renew PATRIOT and give the telecoms a get-out-of-jail-free card for warrantless domestic surveillance), it is ABSOLUTELY the left’s role to call him on it.

I know that at that age, I was wargaming and trying to get close to anything that resembled a girl.

The first people to lead the charge against Clinton were Sam Nunn and Colin Powell over Gays in the Military.

Following that, we had the assault on Bill Clinton from….Bill Clinton in the repeated nanny-gate collapses of Attorney General nominations.

While all this was going on, we had the rest of the Washington intelligentsia, liberals none, engaging in attacks from a position of high Broderism.

The first break from the left wer objections to Clinton’s complete cave on gays in the military.

The second was that the “left” campaigned against NAFTA.

These are both core issues, and the idea that the left “went after” Clinton in supporting their positions is inside the Beltway bull.

As for a level of “New Deal power”, I think Obama will not have that unless there is citizen unrest. I am concerned about Michigan. It is our most vulnerable state, with one in eight families on food stamps already. As Detroit goes, so goes the level of suppport for radical change Obama will wield. If Detroit blows and Michigan sinks like a rock, the ensuing poverty, food crisis and rioting will put pressure on the legislative in the extreme. THEN you’ll see real impetus for change, and Obama will have what he needs.

That will make two states left for dead by Bush policies. Amazing.

That was an advantage?

Dave: I’ve heard it said that Clinton was the best Republican President the Democrats ever had.

onslaught.

Obama seems to be making the same mistakes by being overly concerned about the Right’s love for him. Remember Hillary-care was a huge give-away to the Health Insurance industry while most people wanted universal care, not ‘insurance’. Bill’s kiss-don’t-tell policies on gay rights is another weak-kneed response to the Right. It’s best to marginalize and then destroy the Right. They are a much bigger enemy than Al Qaeda. As Lincoln…who was killed by the Right, should’ve known.

We’ve lost more casualties to the Right than the Left: the American civil war and the WW2 were wars with the Right.

We have a chance for at least competence and compassion. That’s a good start, not wondering if this is the day everything gets screwed up permanently. We have a chance for restored civil liberties, a better economy, an end to the Iraq war. If Obama can deliver on those promises, maybe there will be time/political capital for other things as well like universal health coverage (especially single payer).