So, How Do You Write-In A Vote On Those Electronic Machines?
I’ve tried. For 3 years now I’ve tried to see what my fellow democrats fell in love with in President Obama back in ’08, but still it escapes me. As full disclosure, I was for Clinton last time around in the primaries, and in the general election only voted for Obama as a vote against the McCain/Palin ticket.
Now sure, President Obama is smart and pragmatic, and that has been refreshing, but is that really all it takes? Aren’t there times when a leader should make bold and gutsy moves? How about being able to negotiate? That seems like a desired skill in a political leader.
Sadly, there’s been neither bold moves nor effective negotiations from this administration to date, so what is it people fell in love with?
Sure, we got a national healthcare reform bill, but in an attempt to pull support from the right democrats allowed the heart to be cut out of it, and the whole bill to be effectively rewritten into a windfall for the Insurance companies. And that support from the right that democrats caved in to get?–Well, at crunch time when the vote came down they backed out anyway, smiled and said “Gotcha!”
Was a lesson learned from that? Did democrats and the administration finally see that starting negotiations in the center and moving right while their opponents were starting on the right and moving further right through the dealings was a bad strategy? Nope.
How about with the debt ceiling negotiations of late, how did the administration do there? In my opinion, they dropped the ball by not tying a raise in the debt ceiling to the continued tax breaks for the wealthiest 2% last winter. Everybody knew then that the debt ceiling was getting close and going to need raising soon, and after seeing how republicans had acted time and again in negotiations up to that point they should have leveraged the republican’s desire to protect those tax breaks for the rich at all costs by getting a debt ceiling increase then.
That appears to have been a serious missed opportunity now, and President Obama compounded that missed opportunity during the recent negotiations by again starting with a reasonable, centrist offer that allowed republicans to force the deal further right as time went on, and then completely blew it by chopping his own legs out from beneath himself during the negotiations in stating that he would not consider a 14th amendment solution if a deal couldn’t ultimately be reached.
As a negotiator, you don’t necessarily have to be willing to go over some arbitrary line, but keeping your opponents in the dark over whether or not you would cross that line is a fundamental tactic. Showing your cards before the bets are placed is just bad poker.
So, I’m done trying to find what my fellow democrats fell in love with in Obama. Even if I found it somehow, the fact is I’ve learned that he’s in ineffectual negotiator, and that alone disqualifies someone from holding any political office in my mind.
It’s sad to me that no serious democratic challenger has stepped forward so far to offer our party–and the country–another option. I know there’s still lingering fears born out of the debacle that tore the party in two when Kennedy challenged President Carter’s re-election bid, and we all watched as Pat Buchanan’s challenge weakened Bush enough in ’92 to create hope for a hillbilly democrat from Arkansas (if only there were another like him with resolve and fundraising capabilities, hmmm), but this is a different time in America, and with the 24/7 news cycles voters like me have seen enough to know President Obama just can’t get the deals done, and are ready to gather behind someone with a little backbone and skills.
And lacking someone like that to rally behind, I need to know how to cast a write-in vote on these electronic voting machines, so that I can show my support for Elmer Fudd, the serious cartoon candidate.
About Scott Bannon
A conservative liberal with a perspicuous perspective on American politics.
Scott's writings have been published on dozens of news and opinion outlets both online and off.
