Sunday, November 4, 2012

Why I’m Voting for President Obama

This is from blogger Randall Gross, who I have known for a few years as a fellow poster at the website Little Green Footballs. I was thinking of writing a post clarifying why I was switching parties for this election and voting for President Obama, and then I saw this post from Randall and thought heck, why even try to improve on that?  This sums it all up for me.  Bravo.  

Randall, your words speak for me and thousands of other former Republicans, spooked away by willful ignorance, hate, greed, and religious fanaticism who now find themselves voting to re-elect a President they didn't vote for the first time around.  Credit goes to Charles Johnson and the community at Little Green Footballs for using facts and data to promote rational analysis and thoughtful political commentary and debate.


 LGF Pages: Randall Gross: Why I'm Voting for President Obama
I’m voting for President Obama because I trust him to do the right thing, and even on the issues where we don’t agree I know that he will make his choices based on principles and what he sees as best for our country as a whole rather than based on political expediency or the dictates of narrow interests. I have confidence in him as President and I know that he’s principled because I’ve watched him in action first as a candidate and then as our president for five years now.
When this started out I was not a Barack Obama fan - instead I was one of the many here at this site writing posts against him and campaigning for his opponents (that included Clinton, Guiliani, Romney, and McCain at various points as the long primary season wound into the national election). I was against him as president and was pretty firmly seated in the “anyone but Obama” camp because I still believed all the far right bumper stickers about him, and even took part in some of the attempts to slime him with Reverend Wright and other things.
Even after he was elected I was still heavily criticizing him regarding jobs and the economy all the way into 2010, but over time he slowly turned all of those negatives around. He demonstrated his leadership time and again, and took a lot of heat not only from the right, but also from many of the progressives in his own party to work through issues with a highly recalcitrant Congress. Under his guidance I watched as multiple branches of our Federal Government became more open, more effective, and more efficient.
At the same time I watched the right become bitter and hardened, witch hunting not only our new president but also anyone in their own party who didn’t kow-tow to their hard right litany at every other step. The cracked pots were let in the back door, and I ran out the front, at first to become an independent, and then a year later a registered Democrat.
Meanwhile, President Obama took the fight directly to the specific terrorist organizations who were attacking us and destabilizing the subcontinent of Asia and the Middle East. He quickly got results, using a combination of drone warfare, sanctions, agreements and diplomacy to further US interests and missions.
He didn’t care if the terrorists were hiding in Yemen and Pakistan and being sheltered by factions of those country’s military. He went after them anyway, just as he had promised in his campaign; he took out leader after leader until we got Osama Bin Laden hiding in Abottobad, Pakistan. Both Romney and McCain had roundly criticized him for saying he would go into Pakistan during the campaign, but he persisted until justice was done.
I’ve watched our President in action, turning the country around, doing what was required to save the auto industry, putting the country back to work with construction projects across the nation when we needed it most, and I’ve seen him persevere while the rabid right did everything in their power to cause him and our country to fail. I’ve seen him smile and still try to deal with Republican congressmen even as one of them called him a liar during an address to a joint session of Congress.
That joint session was for his landmark health care initiative, and I’m glad it passed. Now all of my nieces and nephews have a chance to stay on their parents health insurance as they go into those starter jobs. Now my pacemaker isn’t a pre-existing condition hurdle to changing insurance if I want to.
It’s now five years later, and I’m a big supporterIt was that kind of bile and the over the top charges like “Death panels” at that joint session and Barack’s persistent work against our real foes overseas that made me reconsider the propaganda I’d been fed, and made me dig deeper into the issues. At most junctures I found myself deciding that our president was right, and his opponents were absolutely crazed, as I dug into the facts of each issue.
I found that we agree on most issues regarding climate, social issues like gay marriage, and women’s rights. I fully support the regulations on Wall Street — we can’t afford vulture and wild West capitalism of the sort his opponent wants.
It’s now five years later, and I’m a big supporter. I honestly don’t think there is anyone out there who can do a better job as President for the next four years. Instead, I firmly believe that putting anyone else into office would seriously jeopardize the slow but steady recovery that we are in.
That’s why our President, Barack Obama, not only has my complete confidence and trust as president, but also my vote for the next four years.

7 comments:

  1. Humanly speaking, with the re-election of President Obama, the progressive dismantlement of the Greatest Nation in the history of the world will continue. Through stifling regulations, wasteful spending, and out of control debt, we will become like our European neighbors: another top-heavy welfare state with chronic under-employment and an ever-declining military capability. What a shame! Why can’t we learn from the successes and failures of the past? Those who fail to study history are truly doomed to repeat it. The ideas, discovered by the framers of this nation and enshrined into law and custom, allowed 5 percent of the world’s population to grow into the most powerful and richest country the world has ever seen. Why do we, in our arrogance, think we have a better idea? It’s a confirmation of the often repeated statement about the life cycle of nations.

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  2. What a huge mark that is going to leave. This country has just chosen the European model of Socialism over Capitalism.
    This was a referendum on a "Bain Capitalist" and a "Lame Socialist". It is significant to note the reason I use the word lame on Barack Obama. He will be a "Lame Duck President" for four years. He will not do what he says (reach across the aisle) as Bill Clinton did. He will meet with severe opposition as he misreads this false mandate that his ego tells him he has.

    A lot will be said and we will try to find someone or some thing to blame. This one thing we must know, and that is this. No matter who is to blame for this outcome, we must understand that De Tocqueville was right about the voting electorate and largess. At least we dodged a Missile, here in Michigan, by defeating proposal 2. I have said if that passed I would be forced to move to Indiana quickly, in order to get there before my job did.

    The state has a lot of work to do, now is the time to get behind right to work and push for it. I thought it was badly timed before and it almost cost us as prop 2 rallied the democrat base. We can now work for it's passage on its own merits.

    I pray that our country will come back to her first love. I pray she will give up this tryst as it now has continued, with a false love affair with socialism. It will fail her. She has "Seared her Soul". God please give us strength to "block the sell". I love my Country. Let's fight for her.

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  3. The demise of which you speak started long before President Obama, but he does make a convenient target for conservatives to blame for the decades of ignoring the deficit and kicking the can forward to future generations. All of us have to share the blame for that, because we elected all of the local, state, and federal politicians who have all contributed to the problem.

    The idea we will fix the State economy by eliminating unions is downright silly. There is not a single example of a state in this country where a lack of unions has brought prosperity to all, in fact the opposite is true. The ten States with the lowest percentage of residents who pay income tax are all in the solid GOP south, from Florida across to Texas ( and toss in Idaho as well) The reason for that is so many people do not make enough money to pay income taxes. There may be jobs, but they don't pay enough to even qualify as middle class, more like working poor. Extrapolate that low wages scenarios across the USA and then we will be in much worse shape than we are now.
    As for pining for the old days when the USA was all powerful, that was before globalization and before the developing nations started gobbling up limited resources which had a very real effect on our standard of living. Is that what you are proposing? Pushing the economies of India, Brazil, China, and other developing Nations back to the 1950's in order to make things easier on Americans? really? How would you propose doing that?
    As for socialism, it is already all around you. Farm subsidies, private health insurance, automobile insurance, social security, corporate subsidies, these are all forms of socialism. Of course to the angry white Republican men the only forms of socialism they acknowledge are things like food stamps for welfare queens.
    Here is a simple truism that you should think about as you formulate economic theories. The enemy of economic growth is wasted consumption of limited resources. You can not base an economic plan on increasing the supply and consumption of resources such as oil, gas, steel, etc. It may work in the short term, but the growth can not be sustained, period.
    So do you really care about the future of America or do you really only concerned with making sure the gravy train keeps rolling until you check out one day.
    I am more concerned with the future of America than my own selfish interests. The GOP has made it clear they are only concerned about themselves, witnessed by the rampant racism, xenophobia, war mongering, total disdain for science and education, lack of concern for the environment, and the complete and self-serving perversion of the Christian principles set forth in the Gospels.
    I recommend you open your mind. There is no point in being eloquent wit words while promoting hate and ignorance.

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  4. Boy have you bought into the liberal mantra. Too bad the country will be destroyed by the time you realize your mistake. Too bad your childtren will be the ones that suffer most under the elitest rule of the left. There will only be the ruling class and the rest of us.

    How can you look at Europe and not see what will happen to us? They are already in the condition that this country will become quicker now that the left is in charge. There idea of fairness is to destroy the middle class and too only have two classes, the ruling class and the dependent class. Hooray for the nanny state that you support.

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  5. And the Republican alternative presented by Mitt Romney was precisely what again? There was nothing his campaign proposed that would address the staggering debt. Republicans love to spend other people's money even more than Democrats do.

    The financial meltdown in the Euro zone is happening because of the effects of the austerity programs that the GOP has proposed here. An economy can not shrink to prosperity, it has to grow. Europe is trying to prove otherwise and they are doomed to fail. How do you look at their regressive tactics for solving their budget problems and connect them to what this administration has done?

    As for the elimination of the middle class, you don't have to look to Europe, it has been happening right here for decades as well.

    The Republicans rely on the notion that all it takes to create jobs is to give rich people tax breaks, but there is much more to it that that. One recent example, we gave businesses huge tax breaks in 2011 so they could write off 100% of depreciation for new investment in a single year (look up Bonus Depreciation) and yes it did lead to 2011 corporate profits being the largest in our history, but as the GOP campaign literature pointed out, job creation was lacking, even in an environment of low taxes and huge profits.

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  6. Just keep believing that the rich and corporations are the cause of all our ills. You might as well join the Occupy movement and become an anarchist.

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  7. Take a look at the UN's Agenda 21 to see where this administration is taking this country.

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