I voted for Obama this time but I often vote third party for President and people often tell me how irresponsible this is. But I really think it is time to get another party. The Republicans have gone crazy and the Democrats have staked out their old position. So, what to do? Various new parties have started up and withered in the past few years.

Is it suicidal to say the word socialist? My mother votes PFP: http://peaceandfreedom.org/home/

That worked out just great for Obama and the Dems last month, didn’t it?

And I’m puzzled by your advice to readers of this blog that we should smile and feel thankful for all Obama has achieved. Why? What does that attitude achieve when we’re dealing with a politician who continually blows off the left? Shouldn’t we influence his calculations by making him worry about alienating us?

Thanks for those gratuitous slurs on Obama’s primary opponent, blaming her for the shortcomings of her husband. At least that politician knew what she was up against. She would have had a lot of difficulty governing, but she would not have confused compromise with crapped-out capitulation.

Agree with you too on the disappearance of the poor from our political conversations. But the last president to talk openly about the poor was Lyndon Johnson, and the last prominent politician to talk about the poor (“Two Americas”) was John Edwards. And look how far that got him! (I’m not saying it’s right, I’m just explaining the political calculations of our times.)

Finally, tax policy is very important in making other reforms possible. Just search OBRA on this blog or on TalkLeft for a little refresher on the OBRA of 1993 and the stimulus it provided for the economy in the 1990s. I agree with Big Tent Democrat: that was the most progressive legislation passed by any Prez since LBJ.

Absolutely it is pathetic that the right cares about tax cuts. But everyone knows that the right is basically insane right now, and that the left are the only reasonable people left in the room. (Thus you get events like the “Rally to Restore Sanity” some weeks back, where a bunch of young people on the Left tried to position themselves as the only reasonable people left in American politics.)

I am just sick and tired of rhetoric about the poor, beleaguered middle class. It’s a joke. I’m in the middle class, and I know it’s a joke. The middle class is the recipient of a lot of welfare, in the form of tax credits for home buyers and mortgage payments, etc. At the same time, in the last 15-20 years, Democrats have been all too willing to gut much of the safety net that is in place for the lower class. But more importantly, Democrats are also all too willing and eager to advance the interests of the American middle class over the interests of poor people around the globe. Because I would argue it is a fact that in this age of global capitalism, the “lower class” has been exported to Third World countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere. There are now real borders between classes, because of the way global capitalism works. And Democratic policies (see for instance the existence of farm subsidies) protect American interests while doing tremendous harm to the poor in countries throughout the world.

So I for one just find it absolutely grotesque that the American left wants to draw a line in the sand NOW, because tax cuts that the middle class enjoy are being kept for the upper class as well for another two years. It is this, and not the farm subsidies, or use of drones in Afghanistan, or even America’s absurdly horrible prison system, the largest in the world, and one that has clearly become a weapon against African Americans, among others, that gets the left upset. It’s absolutely disgusting and endlessly pathetic. And what it shows, in my mind, is that at the end of the day, Democrats, including those on the left, aren’t so very different from Republicans, or those on the right. If the end of the left’s rope is a two-year tax cut extension for those making over $250,000, well count me as being among those that, looking at the larger problems facing the world, simply doesn’t care.

And, yanno, since the republicans shouldn’t care, then why are they making such a fuss by deliberating preventing democrates from doing what they want?

And what, precisely, is your alternative to “caring about the middle class”? Caring about the ogliarchy instead?

In other words, you’re concern trolling.

The strong presidency has been growing for the better part of a century at this point. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney understood this and leveraged a loss in the popular vote and 50-50 control of the U.S. Senate to get exactly what they wanted in Bush’s first term. As Indyanna said, this guy is clearly over his head and (I would add) has no theory of how to use Presidential power outside of coasting on his own “awesomeness.”

And if you really think this is the “best of a terrible situation,” then I can’t help you. When even Congressional Dems are in revolt and showing more spine than Obama, that’s an index of just how incredibly craptastic Obama’s fold really was.

I think a significant portion of the left has, perhaps in response to all the abuses of executive power during the Bush years, developed a hugely inflated notion of presidential power. Many complaints about Obama assume he has powers that are more likely found in comic books than the Constitution. Why didn’t the mighty Obama flatten the health care lobby and all of K Street with his super-breath a declare single payer law of the land instead of passing a bill that offers the existing health care players significant incentives not to destroy it? Why didn’t the mighty Obama wave his magical bully pulpit wand and convert the minds of a terrible cadre of center-right Senate Dems and House Blue Dogs towards supporting more progressive bills ?

Look, there is a lot to criticize the president about. His too-small initial stimulus, his prolonging of the Afghan War, his glacial pace on closing Guantanamo, and his delay on DADT. But in light of all the structural disfunction and corruption of our system, his first term is packed with extraordinary accomplishments.

Within my own family, Obama has made a real difference in our lives. My sister, who has MS, no longer has to worry that losing her job means losing her health care thanks to her pre-existing condition, and she can be thankful that Obama has lifted the Bush-era funding restrictions on stem cell research. My brother, who was days away from being laid off as an architect, found a new job working with an engineering firm tasked with major stimulus projects.

In less than two years, Obama has built a legislative legacy that dwarfs Bill Clinton’s. Indeed, many Clinton fans seem to have forgotten that Hillary was the top advisor of the President who enacted Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, who signed the Defense of Marriage Act, who supported and signed Welfare “Reform,” who supported and signed the gutting of Glass-Steagall and a host of other deregulation and corporate welfare bills. Bill Clinton’s greatest accomplishment was being lucky enough to take office at the dawn of a major tech boom and a global economic expansion. Obama had no such luck.

You disillusioned progressives don’t have to love Obama or even like him, but it’s clearly in your interest to support him, and maybe, just occasionally, respect him.