Sunday, October 30, 2011
Why I Won't Vote for Barack Obama
I have never voted for a Republican candidate for president or any other office and I cast my first ballot in 1960. I won't vote for a Republican candidate in 2012. Barack Obama might be less objectionable than any of the people, so far, who say they would like to be the Republican candidate but we're not even sure of that. In fact, one reason I won't vote for the President is the fact that he has either acted as a Republican might act or has followed their lead any number of times, and even more if they would have let him.
It might be said that the Democratic Party, as it has come to be over the past thirty years, transformed itself into a pseudo kinder, gentler adjunct to the Republican Party. This in fact might have been a major factor in molding the thinking of the President, and Joe Lieberman being his Senate sponsor was a harbinger of the kind of man we have now.
On taking office in January 2009 President Obama inherited a huge mess, there is no doubt of that, and the people who got him there were predisposed to the corporate mindset. He trusted them, evidently and tried to act presidential. I didn't criticize for the first year. Pretty much every president, George W. Bush excepted, deserves at least that. But the snide remarks about the Progressives and the "Left" by his staff and eventually Obama himself began to rankle. The failure to take drastic action on the economy when it was possible, allowing the "Health Care" Industry to have all it wanted on the Health Care Bill and no effort whatsoever made to consider a single-payer system, the throwing money at Wall Street Bankers, huge amounts of money with no accountability tied to it, the disinterest in criminal prosecution of any of these people or the criminals in the previous administration, all of these things began to mount up, and the country began to fall apart.
I am obviously not a mover and a shaker, but what if my vote for Bernie Sanders or whichever candidate with absolutely no chance of winning should be the tipping point enabling a Republican, say Michelle Bachmann or Rick What's-his-name, to be the next president? Would I be OK with that? No, I wouldn't. What about Mitt Romney? Actually, he and Obama are very much alike - both weasels who dress fairly well and whose grammar is clearly a cut above the last guy.
This country is in a lot of trouble. If you think that Obama is having problems in his first term just wait. I don't know why Presidents want a second term anyway. Look what happened to W, and Clinton, Bush One was lucky, and Reagan, Carter-never mind him and Ford- and Nixon, yikes! and Lyndon Johnson. Which is worse, Obama losing next year or winning? If he wins it will be four years of water torture, and nothing good will happen - for him or us.
I'm not counting on anything from the Occupy Wall Street movement. I'd love for there to be a real rocking of the foundations and a new political party to come out of it that spits in the eyes of both Republican Parties, but the odds against this happening are astronomical. Meanwhile, I'm not going to enable Barack Obama or the party that has forgotten where it came from just to get more of the same old same old.
My message is this: President Obama and Democrats, start being Democrats, or just stop being hypocrites and join the Republican Party. This bullshit about voting for you because the Republicans are vile is a cruel sham.
It might be said that the Democratic Party, as it has come to be over the past thirty years, transformed itself into a pseudo kinder, gentler adjunct to the Republican Party. This in fact might have been a major factor in molding the thinking of the President, and Joe Lieberman being his Senate sponsor was a harbinger of the kind of man we have now.
On taking office in January 2009 President Obama inherited a huge mess, there is no doubt of that, and the people who got him there were predisposed to the corporate mindset. He trusted them, evidently and tried to act presidential. I didn't criticize for the first year. Pretty much every president, George W. Bush excepted, deserves at least that. But the snide remarks about the Progressives and the "Left" by his staff and eventually Obama himself began to rankle. The failure to take drastic action on the economy when it was possible, allowing the "Health Care" Industry to have all it wanted on the Health Care Bill and no effort whatsoever made to consider a single-payer system, the throwing money at Wall Street Bankers, huge amounts of money with no accountability tied to it, the disinterest in criminal prosecution of any of these people or the criminals in the previous administration, all of these things began to mount up, and the country began to fall apart.
I am obviously not a mover and a shaker, but what if my vote for Bernie Sanders or whichever candidate with absolutely no chance of winning should be the tipping point enabling a Republican, say Michelle Bachmann or Rick What's-his-name, to be the next president? Would I be OK with that? No, I wouldn't. What about Mitt Romney? Actually, he and Obama are very much alike - both weasels who dress fairly well and whose grammar is clearly a cut above the last guy.
This country is in a lot of trouble. If you think that Obama is having problems in his first term just wait. I don't know why Presidents want a second term anyway. Look what happened to W, and Clinton, Bush One was lucky, and Reagan, Carter-never mind him and Ford- and Nixon, yikes! and Lyndon Johnson. Which is worse, Obama losing next year or winning? If he wins it will be four years of water torture, and nothing good will happen - for him or us.
I'm not counting on anything from the Occupy Wall Street movement. I'd love for there to be a real rocking of the foundations and a new political party to come out of it that spits in the eyes of both Republican Parties, but the odds against this happening are astronomical. Meanwhile, I'm not going to enable Barack Obama or the party that has forgotten where it came from just to get more of the same old same old.
My message is this: President Obama and Democrats, start being Democrats, or just stop being hypocrites and join the Republican Party. This bullshit about voting for you because the Republicans are vile is a cruel sham.
