Disappointment Among Young Obama Supporters
A significant part of President Obama's success in 2008 was the dedication and enthusiasm of young people. They voted, and they did the necessary work to get lots of other people to vote for Obama, including old people.
In the last few weeks of the midterm campaigning the Obama team has tried to renew that youthful enthusiasm and get all these young people to vote again. But it hasn't worked. He has also tried to convince the Progressives and Liberals that the Republicans are even worse than he is, so voting for Democrats is essential. But it seems that lots of the Liberals have such a bad taste in their mouth that they are just sitting this midterm election out.
Young people feel like once Obama got elected he completely ignored them and turned his back on their ideas. During the campaign he supported ending the wars; after becoming president he radically increased the number of troops fighting in the wars. The health care program that was discussed during the campaign was Universal Health Care. I've watched the YouTube clip where Obama says that “Single Payer” is the answer to the American health care disaster. After being elected this rapidly turned into cost containment along with a few badly needed reforms, but certainly not in any way Universal Health Care.
The young voters expected far more from him in the area of civil rights and also in gay rights like DADT. He surrounded himself with Republicans and conservative Democrat advisers. The ideas of the young voters were no longer solicited or welcomed. They were shut out. The progressives and liberals were quite openly told that they were “retards.” Obama opened up environmentally sensitive areas for oil drilling that even George Bush II didn't consider possible, and he became the cheerleader for nuclear energy...in other words becoming an absolutely disastrous President for the environmental community.
The George Bush years almost destroyed the nation's economy, with the government ignoring so many important laws and regulations in the sacred name of “deregulation.” A large fiscal stimulus was needed to get the economy going again, but Obama's stimulus was timid at best. The nation's financial system had been largely deregulated, causing widespread fraud and disaster-after-disaster. All greed driven. The Obama financial re-regulation program was very timid. It certainly will not prevent future similar disasters. This was not FDR style new deal reform, this was timid, cautious, "please don't talk bad about me or kick sand in my face" reform.
During the 2008 campaign it was widely reported that Barack Obama had the absolute very most liberal voting record of any elected official in the U.S. Senate. Ha, what a joke! He has turned out to be surprisingly unemotional and detached. His record as a leader so far has been very poor; no backbone at all; offering to compromise with the racist right wing lunatics at the slightest little criticism. But after he adopts their ideas they have still voted against him and his programs...time and again.
So what has happened is really not in any way a secret or a mystery. Obama pretended to be one thing, but the reality of who the real Barack Obama is has turned out to be completely different. This man is not a liberal. He talks good, but his actions are those more of a Republican than a liberal Democrat.
In a well functioning democracy the voters choose their leader. If they find that the man they chose as their leader has deceived them, and in fact he is just a weak, timid man with extremely poor leadership skills, the voters will do what is necessary.
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