"The administration hasn't been true enough to fundamental Democratic principles, has embraced some of Bush's worst excesses on civil liberties, and has ditched popular ideas (like the public option) in favor of watered down centrist policies, thus looking weak and ineffectual. The center has moved so far right that the left is barely recognizable. With a military surge in Afghanistan, a denuded health insurance bill limping through Congress, Bush-era detainee policies reinforced, a deflated climate summit, and a windfall year for bankers, among other things, it's almost ludicrous to claim that the new administration is run by a gang of lefties."
The far left dems say Obama is not LEFT enough, and the far right pubs said that Bush wasn't RIGHT enough... Meanwhile, the independent voters have no champion, no agenda nor plan but to express their discontent... So it appears that we once again get more and more lessors...of the evil of a two party system.
obama made two critical mistakes - he caved to wall street (banks and insurance) and let pelosi and reid change his infrastructure plan to democratic pork. If you think that means he was not left enough, I think you are incorrect. Good ideas do necessarily have to be left or right. Spending on infrastructure to avoid a depression was not left or right. It was a potentially good idea. But supporting cap and trade was a crazy left idea because it was so poorly conceived. Changing health care to allow the people more choice and more competition was not left or right. Instead what he created was just a pile of crap. Allowing the banks to be bailed out without any real reform was not left or right - it was corrupted government in action. Had he spent on infrastructure we would be seeing real jobs and real green innovation. He would have then had the power to get a real health care bill done. He was torpedeoed by his own party. Pelosi and Reid and the democratic machine in Washington were and are the ones out of touch. They destroyed the people trust in Obamas ability to make real change. The country knows traditional democratic policies of spend and spend and tax destroy the future. The people who swung the vote to Obama hoped he was different and could throttle his own parties stupidity. He chose not to lay his political capital on the line and fight for what he ran on. It was not that he was not left enough - he did not exercise his mandate for change. Its been business as the leftist dems wanted.
Rubbish. The most democratic country in the world, Columbia, can't fight it's way out of a wet paper bag, even Kernel Ghaddafi's efforts at grassroots town politics in Lybia amount to naught without an iron fist overlooking all of this "democracy". Ironic, don't you think, that countries that most embraced democracy and the western ideal, at it's most basic level, are enemies of western civilisation as we know it. So what went wrong? I have no doubt, many lybians would disagre with the "local " democratic/town vote principle, but again, whats "wrong" with that picture? Answer that truthfully, and you get 2 P&R points.
Its sounds like you saying that the founding fathers were right when they only gave the vote to land owners. But, I would like to hear your answer to your own question.