I think I have made it abundantly clear what my agenda is: issues.  What comes with that is judging the politicians - of any and all varieties - by the choices they make on those issues, and how well or how poorly they represent the things that matter to me, things which I believe matter to lots and lots of other people just like me.  I am a greater good kind of person, an FDR liberal and I believe those are good things to be.

I have also repeatedly made it clear that I believe the system itslef is broken, that we are engaged more than ever in a kabuki show democracy where the people vote to elect candidates who, once elected, go about serving the corporate and special interests who bought them.  That as long as we have a system where big money is allowed to buy influence, and the people are willing to settle for an ever-lowering metric of least bad, we are doomed to be screwed.

Obama is the face of the Democratic Party, a party he has moved farther to the right than I ever in my wildest dreams believed Democrats would allow themselves to go along with, a party that has thrown under the bus issues that used to set Democrats apart as the party of the people.

I am not working to bring Obama down, but if he goes down, he has only himself to blame.  He is the one who chose insurance reform as his biggest priority, not jobs.  He is the one who chose to shoot low on the stimulus - and don't even bother me with the standard but-but-Congress-wouldn't-vote-for-anything-bigger excuse, because he never even once tried - he is the one who has sided, over and over again, with Wall Street and the banks, he is the one pushing like crazy to get the biggest and most utterly criminal of the lending banks immunity from their actions, he is the one who talks endlessly about the safety net, he is the one who convened the Deficit Commission, who worked his fanny off trying for a grand Austerity bargain.

Those are his policies and his actions - and that's what I object to - that these are the choices he's made.  I object to your belief that we should act in ways that don't piss off Wall Street too much - a statement that still just floors me, and one I know you made because you see it as Obama's best choice.  I object to your emphasis on Obama's political fortunes at the expense of the people his "leadership" has harmed, and they are many, and growing in number.

You're right about one thing: you are transparent.  We know that all that matters to you is getting Obama another four years, and in that, you have proven yourself to be as much a say-anything Obama cheerleader as Obama has proven himself to be a say-anything president.

Good lord.

Tell me the last time, politically, that you were wrong in a genuinely profound way?

But here is the deal.  You are not issue driven or motivated.  You are not policy driven or motivated.  You are driven and motivated to re-elect Obama.  That is the long and short of it.  You are Obama centric.  Period.

You therefore assume that everyone is Obama centric.  In that assumption you are so off the mark that we don't even have a common vocabulary.  

I, like many here, am issue oriented.  I chose the Democratic party in the long ago because their priorities were in alignment with mine.  Now that they no longer are, I have "unchosen" them.  I haven't changed -- the party did.  At the present time I am completely unrepresented politically.  I have an exceedingly strong aversion to the Republican party.  I can never, ever support them.  I have an increasingly strong aversion to today's Democratic party.  And I cannot support the current leadership.  

I won't lift a finger to help either party.  Whichever party succeeds at the polls does so without my help.

Until I have representation, my only option is to raise my voice in objection.  I can bear witness to, for example, the fact that we, as a nation of individuals, were not always so supine and accepting of the invasions into our personal life.  I can be the voice of one crying out in the wilderness.

That wilderness is getting smaller, though.  Many voices are becoming enjoined.  I am finding a new home.

So call me an Obama hater if you wish.  But you battle a straw man.  Obama is just one of many who sold us down the river.  Unfortunately Obama the Weak is still (so far) the most powerful man in the world.  That makes him pretty darn effective when it comes to selling us out.

You say "it is easier to paint his supporters as unthinking robots."  You think that because you are Obama centric period.  You think pushback of your constant advancement of the man means that we object to the man.

The man is just a symptom to us and a symbol.  A great big glaring, neon flashing, symbol of how the oligarchs have taken the reins of this country.

And based on your past history I'm willing to bet that, should you desire to respond to this comment, your response will have no less than two straw men and/or will be completely non-responsive to the point(s) I'm trying to make.  

And I was thrilled when we caught Saddam and thrilled when we killed his sons.