Obama warns about going too far left

[REALITY 80,162]

4 minutes ago, Faysalaaa said:

Obama used to be a true progressive which is why people supported and loved him in the past. After he became president, it took people a while to realize it was all a lie. 

Well, he was in office for 8 years and I didn't hear many people (on the left) complaining about it.

[derpmonster 22,412]

2 hours ago, Oshawott said:

Not y'all calling Obama a "centrist" when 99% of his ideology was liberal. If he's a centrist, I wonder what y'all would call Hillary if she had succeeded him as president. 

Ma'am liberal is different from left. Please look up terms in political science. Bernie isn't a liberal. He's a leftist. So is Warren to a degree. Obama and Hillary are liberals as is Biden.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Oshawott said:

Not y'all calling Obama a "centrist" when 99% of his ideology was liberal. If he's a centrist, I wonder what y'all would call Hillary if she had succeeded him as president. 

 

[ItsTommyBitch 12,640]

3 hours ago, PoshLife said:

If you think a man who wants to:

- expand on Obamacare (Republicans voted to repeal it 40+ times),
-bring back the Clean Power Plan (Trump cancelled the rulemaking and pulled us out of the Paris Agreement),
-ditch building Trump's wall (Trump shut down the government for a month over it), and
-protect LGBT rights (I can't even begin to list all of the actions, large and small, that the Trump Administration has done to roll back LGBT protections in nearly every aspect of American life)

is a Republican in disguise, then either your understanding of today's Republican Party is seriously misinformed or you are intentionally being deceitful. 

I don't know why this is meant to be persuasive...

Social liberalism isnt a hard sell for anyone running right now (though Joe is the worst on this issue lol), the critique that Joe is a republican is because his economic and foreign policy is pretty center-right. These are all the bare minimums that the Democratic president should do, not brand new ideas that will excite anyone and especially not things that will bring out voters. Joe Biden will certainly depress the young vote and the independent vote. Republicans that hate Trump (and again, this is a small small #, not a voting bloc worth putting any effort into appeasing) but like Joe like him because hes not a strong regulator of businesses, not too socially liberal, and on the right economically. They like him because for all his talk, his voting record and history is pretty republican.

Obamacare isn't a leftist idea though, it was quite literally a Republican idea similar the plan implemented under Mitt Romney. Obama set it up to be a moderate, compromise position, even though he personally is on the record as being in favor of a single payer system just like many establishment Democrats (like Nancy Pelosi) were in the early 00s and late 90s - because he didn't think they would work with him on it. He believe(d) in single payer because it makes the most sense and its what *everyone* else does, not because he was ever a radical far leftist or whatever.

 

[littlepotter 76,610]

You can sad react as much as you want, truth is yall had the same energy in 2016 and look what happened. 

[Gagaloo911 12,959]

Calling Obama a liberal or leftist when he bailed out Wall St, made the Bush era tax breaks for the rich and wealthy permanent, bowed down to big corporate donors, filled his cabinet with mostly neoliberals and Wall St goons, extradited more immigrants than any of his predecessors, and bowed down to Republicans every chance he could has got to be the most hilarious thing I've ever read 

Supporting gay rights doesn't make you a crazy leftist or liberal. Obama is a centrist and neoliberal through and through, and in today's context even more so. 

To say he's some crazy liberal, put nicely, is to be completely disingenuous. And put not so nice, an ignorant fvck who doesn't really know what they're talking about. Maybe he's a "liberal" relative to previous administrations, but that's a pretty low bar to hit lmaooo.

[En_Sabah_Nur 9,366]

After reading all these comments, you guys make me want to become a Republican!  

You guys better hope that black people don’t hear about your hatred for Obama, because without them(who keep the Democrat party a float) you win nothing!
 

Also, I keep hearing on this thread that most Americans love leftist polices...  But let Americans find out the extreme position of the left on immigration, and then you will know what the “centrist” mean...

Because Abolishing ICE, CBP, hardly any deportations, and weakening the penalties for numerous illegal entries into our countries, taking away private health insurance if medicare(for everyone) is enacted. Is NOT what the public supports, and that’s why people out there are thinking that the left is going too far & I don’t blame them when you hear stuff like this!  SMDH

The fact is NO president is perfect & that can make numerous mistakes while in office. But if Bernie or Warren makes it to the White House, then you will see what they mean.

This is EXACTLY what Obama meant by purity test & Democrat firing squads against each other!  

 

[Gagaloo911 12,959]

17 minutes ago, En_Sabah_Nur said:

After reading all these comments, you guys make me want to become a Republican!  

You guys better hope that black people don’t hear about your hatred for Obama, because without them(who keep the Democrat party a float) you win nothing!
 

Also, I keep hearing on this thread that most Americans love leftist polices...  But let Americans find out the extreme position of the left on immigration, and then you will know what the “centrist” mean...

Because Abolishing ICE, CBP, hardly any deportations, and weakening the penalties for numerous illegal entries into our countries, taking away private health insurance if medicare(for everyone) is enacted. Is NOT what the public supports, and that’s why people out there are thinking that the left is going too far & I don’t blame them when you hear stuff like this!  SMDH

The fact is NO president is perfect & that can make numerous mistakes while in office. But if Bernie or Warren makes it to the White House, then you will see what they mean.

This is EXACTLY what Obama meant by purity test & Democrat firing squads against each other!  

 

There are legitimate criticisms against Obama. I love and look up to the man, and he'll always be my President. And of course no president will be perfect. He did many great things and tried to make up for some things he did later on such as with the DACA program. But to think he's free from criticism for the wrongs he did simply because he's the first Black President is not cool. 

Also, if you look at polling, a majority of Americans support Medicare For All, getting money out of politics, raising the minimum wage, enacting stronger gun control, and making the wealthy pay their fair share. SIGNIFICANT majorities support all of these. These are all policies put forward by progressives and which progressives and the "too far left" are fighting for. 

As to your other points,

ICE was created under Bush after 2001. We were completely fine without it for hundreds of years.

No one is calling for open borders or hardly any deportations.

And taking away health insurance is not being proposed AT ALL. Who likes their overpriced insurance with little benefits to begin with?

What Americans want is to keep their doctors, which private insurance actually limits due to different networks, etc. Under a single payer system everyone would get to keep their doctor and there would be no such thing as out of network since everyone's in the same thing and which would drive down costs, saving everyone thousands of dollars every year on medical costs. 

Honestly, you should do some more digging on these things you're discussing because you're literally regurgitating Republican talking points with this which is what they want. To fear monger and scare so to keep Americans from getting the things a majority of them want..

[Economy 52,844]

5 hours ago, gabeoz said:

I'm tired of hearing about the "far left" movement that doesnt exist, US politics are very right leaning to begin with. Any objective/neutral political scale would put candidates like Bernie and Warren as moderate leftists. The fact that Americans have to fight for rights that are normal in almost the entire industrialized world is ridiculous.

Nah... especially bernie is far left even by other nation standards

 

for example, the taxes he proposes for the rich are far higher than any OECD Developed Nation im aware of

 

[doppelganger 4,021]

Universal Healthcare is too far left?! 

[En_Sabah_Nur 9,366]

34 minutes ago, Gagaloo92 said:

Honestly, you should do some more digging on these things you're discussing because you're literally regurgitating Republican talking points with this which is what they want. To fear monger and scare so to keep Americans from getting the things a majority of them want..

I knew you were going to compare me to a Republican, I must be psychic!  🙄

Also, you have skipped around some of the points I made in favor of Bernie’s or Warren’s talking points/narrative. 

On healthcare, not everybody wants to get rid of their private health insurance, and to suggest so or push for it will political suicide. It’s ideas of this nature is why so many democratic seats were lost under Obama’s watch. That and Republicans actually voting in midterm elections & falling in line like they usually do.

As for immigration, when the left criticizes Obama for too many deportations. It’s comes across as open borders. You guys make the argument for Republicans by just criticizing that apart of Obama’s presidency alone...

The reason why a lot of “centrist” Democrats don’t want to go with the far left, is because this chapter in political history has happened before.. McGovern, Walter Mondale ring a bell anyone?!?  BOTH were far left at the time & both lost!  Giving us 12 years of republican presidents in the White House!  Smh

Nothing wrong with criticizing Obama, because I have as well. But telling him to STFU, seat down, killer of middle easterners & brown people like has been said in this thread. Is going way farther than just “criticizing” him!  SMDH

 

[ItsTommyBitch 12,640]

34 minutes ago, En_Sabah_Nur said:

On healthcare, not everybody wants to get rid of their private health insurance, and to suggest so or push for it will political suicide. It’s ideas of this nature is why so many democratic seats were lost under Obama’s watch. That and Republicans actually voting in midterm elections & falling in line like they usually do.

As for immigration, when the left criticizes Obama for too many deportations. It’s comes across as open borders. You guys make the argument for Republicans by just criticizing that apart of Obama’s presidency alone...

The reason why a lot of “centrist” Democrats don’t want to go with the far left, is because this chapter in political history has happened before.. McGovern, Walter Mondale ring a bell anyone?!?  BOTH were far left at the time & both lost!  Giving us 12 years of republican presidents in the White House!  Smh

Nothing wrong with criticizing Obama, because I have as well. But telling him to STFU, seat down, killer of middle easterners & brown people like has been said in this thread. Is going way farther than just “criticizing” him!  SMDH

 

This is... the point people are making to you. The Republicans use this line of phrasing because their M.O. is to spin, disseminate misinformation, and persuade people on the fence to their side On behalf of the private health insurance industry. Not out of a genuine interest in the people's "wants." 

No one was talking about millions of americans* "loving their private health insurance" until Republicans spread out the talking points and they littered the mainstream news cycle, and then Democrats and centrists started regurgitating them. 

Medicare for All was/is popular BECAUSE people wanted it. There was no other reason. No special interest group with billions of dollars advocating it. It was just the people, being polled, surveyed, and spoken to by people like Bernie Sanders.

When you are faced with that kind of political power, the only way to dilute it is to repeat a lie until it becomes true, which is really the way the Republican party has operated on in overdrive in the Trump era. 

People don't love their health insurers. They love having health care, and they love their doctors and providers. No one knows Katie from Aetna who decided not to cover your cancer treatment because your employer only offers the gold star package and you aren't high enough of a position in your company to be offered the platinum, which means you'll be going bankrupt in about a year and blow through your life's savings. No one loves Jeff from United Health Group that contracts to a doctor in their network and asks if they can deny covering your prescription medication because its not "medically necessary". No one loves needing to get a procedure done but the doctor who  can carry out that procedure not being available in your network. No one loves being uninsured because your employer switches to a new health insurance to save his or her own money. No one loves being uninsured because you got fired, your job was replaced/shipped overseas, etc. No one loves NOT being covered, and no middle class American is always covered in every situation, always. The only way that private health insurance makes a profit in any meaningful way is by denying coverage. Up to 500,000 people will have gone bankrupt, and 10s of thousands of people will die because of avoidable health complications due to lack of insurance, fear of financial ruin, and more yearly. This is the reality for tens of millions of Americans in this country, and that's the "private insurance" that you are saying people love. The actual middle and working class Americans that have to deal with this reality are the people that support Medicare for All. If you go talk to people on the ground, and see and hear rallies and town halls where people discuss their realities, it is very apparent that people support this - they want Universal Health Care, and they want to pay less for it on top of that. Supporting a public option or just expanding the Affordable Care Act is the losing idea, because those arent the policies the people support. And repeating it in the media over and over again won't make the average american that doesn't pay attention to politics, read the news or all of these plans people propose, and just lives paycheck to paycheck in economic distress suddenly believe it.

Also, its just kind of classist tbh  Poor people are the sickest and most vulnerable people in our country, and people making upwards of 75,000 to 150,000 a year complaining about having to move to a different health care system, even when its better for them and saves them money, are reacting to the very ingrained cultural notion that public = poor = low quality. They think government run healthcare is for the poor, and will therefore be underfunded, low quality, corrupt, and bad. They support giving safety nets for others, but they don't want to be the recipients of those safety nets because they see them as being for people who are lesser than they are. 

Oh and open borders ain't a thing. No person running for president is advocating for it in any shape or form. To me, this "all or nothing" mentality when it comes to proposing legislation or policy is really part of the problem, and its usually coming from the Republicans. Democrats should be running on nuance, but informed by strong values. We can abolish ICE and maintain a strong border, as we did in the past. We can stop putting children in cages and separating families without weakening our border. We can allow DACA recipients to become permanent citizens and streamline the process of legal immigration and respect asylum seekers rights to do so without compromising our border security. That is all that most Dems are proposing. Critiquing Obama for going overboard on deportations to appease Republicans (for what praise? He doesn't get any so it was pointless  ) is not open borders.

I am not calling you a Republican. I am pointing out that the people who are responsible for these points that you have made in opposition to Democrats on M4A and the border come from Republicans. Republican think tanks come up with talking points in the media, they spread them, they reinforce the ideas, until its all everyone can talk about. They don't just spring up out of natural consciousness, and that is evident because people on the ground won't have these same experiences, which is why despite this country apparently being Red, and Trump winning in 2016, Medicare for All at its height was supported by 70% of the country. Thats why when states propose propositions and amendments in state elections without marking them "Democrat" or "Republican" the most progressive policies tend to pass with strong support. If you only listen to republican talking points, that doesn't make any sense because most people are allegedly centirsts - and that's because they are derived and arbitrary. That's why people like Obama and Hillary are shooting themselves in the foot. They are playing towards a center that doesn't really exist, in the name of continuing a media agenda to create that center... instead of appealing to the current wants of the people. If they continue to push that the left is "going too far", and the idea that centrism is the only way to win an election, they will lose. It's self-defeating, and its on purpose tbh.

[Morphine Prince 109,655]

1 hour ago, En_Sabah_Nur said:

After reading all these comments, you guys make me want to become a Republican!  

You guys better hope that black people don’t hear about your hatred for Obama, because without them(who keep the Democrat party a float) you win nothing!
 

Also, I keep hearing on this thread that most Americans love leftist polices...  But let Americans find out the extreme position of the left on immigration, and then you will know what the “centrist” mean...

Because Abolishing ICE, CBP, hardly any deportations, and weakening the penalties for numerous illegal entries into our countries, taking away private health insurance if medicare(for everyone) is enacted. Is NOT what the public supports, and that’s why people out there are thinking that the left is going too far & I don’t blame them when you hear stuff like this!  SMDH

The fact is NO president is perfect & that can make numerous mistakes while in office. But if Bernie or Warren makes it to the White House, then you will see what they mean.

This is EXACTLY what Obama meant by purity test & Democrat firing squads against each other!  

 

This is so sad to read.... you really fell for the GOP talking points. 

[ALGAYDO 35,086]

1 hour ago, En_Sabah_Nur said:

After reading all these comments, you guys make me want to become a Republican!  

You guys better hope that black people don’t hear about your hatred for Obama, because without them(who keep the Democrat party a float) you win nothing!
 

Also, I keep hearing on this thread that most Americans love leftist polices...  But let Americans find out the extreme position of the left on immigration, and then you will know what the “centrist” mean...

Because Abolishing ICE, CBP, hardly any deportations, and weakening the penalties for numerous illegal entries into our countries, taking away private health insurance if medicare(for everyone) is enacted. Is NOT what the public supports, and that’s why people out there are thinking that the left is going too far & I don’t blame them when you hear stuff like this!  SMDH

The fact is NO president is perfect & that can make numerous mistakes while in office. But if Bernie or Warren makes it to the White House, then you will see what they mean.

This is EXACTLY what Obama meant by purity test & Democrat firing squads against each other!  

 

You literally don’t know what the hell it is you’re talking about. The public doesn’t warn Medicare for All? Sis it’s one of the most popular policy proposals in the country. 
You really do sound like a republican. I think your ideals line up with them more than they do with the Democrats. Maybe you should switch to being a republican if you don’t like what the Democrats are doing. 

[MJHolland 12,725]

7 hours ago, OG Gaga Stan said:

1. He's attacking the left.

2. Why do you, a Canadian, keep coming into these threads to lecture Americans farther to the left than you? 

3. And why do you think it's unacceptable to criticize a president that obliterated Libya, murdered countless civilians in Pakistan, Somalia and Afghanistan with drones, facilitated arms deals to Saudi Arabia, a country in the midst of committing genocide in Yemen, supported a right-wing coup in Honduras, and deported 3 million people? Are we supposed to just forget that that all happened?

 

7 hours ago, Gov Hooka said:

Considering he’s launching attacks on the progressive movement, yeah his presidency had a lot of wrongs that need to be addressed and never repeated by any democrat presidential candidate aka not Harris or Biden

Getting Trump out of office > giving the most liberal primary candidate the nomination 

Obvi not mutually exclusive, but we'd win the WH if we won ever Obama-Trump district back