If Obama caves in to the right, might he be challenged on the left?

Just wait, the fun is just getting started….all the other twists and turns that have yet to unfold that will be needed to pay down this massive deficit debt he has amassed will make your head spin. Obama is toast…stick a fork in him he is done.

Only if he brings his knees in tight & maybe affects a pelvic thrust. I’d love to see him & Biden doing the time warp. :¬)

He will always be challenged – something he expects, I’m sure.

President Obama also talked about reducing partisanship in government. It’s upsetting to think of it as “caving in” if the strength of a Republican Congress means that there’s an enforceable contrary perspective to a Democratic President.

What I think is the real problem here is that the President gets blamed for much, much more than is really proper. The executive branch is really, in many ways, the workhorse branch of the government. It is the legislature that write the laws that the executive branch implements, and they often get to do it with a sense of anonymity because no one really tracks their voting behavior. The President, in the end, HAS to cave.

Not attempting to ignore or completely shift the blame off the President – let’s just recognize his function.

When I read about this, it said it was a bipartisan idea that the deficit reduction panel came up with (the co-chairs of the panel are a Republican and a Democrat). There were several other things that they came up with as well in their draft.

Regardless of what happens, Obama will be blamed for it.

First off, the catfood commission won’t make a full report until December 1, and the bits that have been released are ideas that have been promulgated by its two chairs, Bowles and Simpson. These ideas don’t have the support of many of the committee members, and many of them probably won’t get enough votes by the full commission to make it into the final report.

There are an awful lot of Democrats, notably Nancy Pelosi, who are dead-set against the idea of cutting Social Security and lowering taxes for people who don’t need the money. The chances of these proposals clearing Congress are negligible. They will not even be taken up in committee before 2011, and the Republicans will be too busy trying to repeal HCR and conducting witch hunts to be bothered with any kind of new legislation.

It is thus completely premature to be talking about a primary challenge for Obama based on anything coming out of the catfood commission. This doesn’t mean the left are particularly happy with him. The administration’s aggressive defense of DADT, back-pedaling on a withdrawal date from Afghanistan, and empty posturing on the Bush tax cuts have given his critics on the left plenty to be angry about. If Obama is to avert a primary challenge, he’s going to have to start fighting harder. We should know by the end of this year if he intends to do that.

I think that’s why so many people are disappointed with him: he caved too easily to the right.

Instead of pushing for a single payer system like Canada and the UK, as everyone wanted, or at least allowing anyone to join medicare/medicaid, he compromised and implemented something that doesn’t take effect until 2012 and won’t be any better than what exists now, and may even be worse than what exists now.

IMO Obama was damned from the get go. Fact is this country was and is in a pickle and no matter whether we had a Dem or Rep president this term, it was and is not a fixable mess….not in 2 years and maybe even 4 years is not enough. Whoever was going to be President this time out was a sacrificial lamb who is going to bear the brunt of this enormous economic problem we are in and I’m not sure whether Obama knew this or not and I have to think he did.

In order to get elected he HAD to make all these promises of hope and change and people bought into that. I didn’t because I did not see one shred of evidence of what this “change” was and more importantly how this “change” was going to be paid for by a bankrupt country!!

Now the public is beginning to have a better understanding just how difficult and expensive fixing this economic problem is and had Obama come out and said “hey folks….to fix this problem we are going to tax and spend our way out of this mess and add Trillions more on our deficit” he never would have made it past the primaries!

Had McCain been elected, he would be the one being booed and there would be no tea party. Obama’s biggest mistake so far and he is still making it, is his failure to connect with the Republican party or at the very least to grow a pair and start making the real tough decisions…..the unpopular decisions that will turn the tides on this economy. He is going to have to make them now….when it is really too late in the game to take credit for anything and he will be crucified for this come the next election.

I would hope so. No one is above being challenged. I think this Keith Knight cartoon just about sums it up for me. There’s conciliation and then there’s foolishness. If you said you’re going to do something, then, dammit, do it, and fuck the detractors.

Speculating with puppet a regime in place is an exercise in futility.

Any POTUS is going to be challenged by both sides regardless. In this case, Obama is getting it from the Left for not doing enough on his promises, and from the Right on general principle. Whether he caves or not, he’s fucked and the Left will hate him.

@ChazMaz Yeah, I though the same thing during the Bush-43 years. I might’ve said the same thing today were I not so jaded.