Their time would be better spent IMHO electing a progressive Democratic-controlled Congress to deliver those items to President Obama. If Obama doesn't get re-elected they're not going to get them and if President Obama is re-elected but with a Republican-controlled Congress, those things aren't going to happen either. Focus people, focus! Stop wasting time on symbolic measures that will accomplish nothing. Even if President Obama were to swear a blood oath this very minute to getting single-payer enacted, it would be a hollow promise without a Congress to send him the bill.

though that's not really his job. OTOH in this day and age- with Fox News Zombies free roaming through this land of ours, I guess that every Democratic politician has got to trumpet their accomplishments so that the whole universe can hear them!

Visualize, if you will for a moment, the ticker-tape parades and the celebrations that would have been demanded had Shrub taken out OBL?

Another meme that I hear a lot that bothers me is that Obama apparently doesn't "schmooze" enough with Republicans and even some Democrats as if it's a.)his job or b.)he should WANT to spend time with people who smear him relentlessly. I'm not just talking about the usual political back-and-forth but I mean the people making these complaints have usually said some pretty vile and disgusting things about him, so they are obviously too clueless to realize why he might not want to hang out with them. I know I wouldn't. Plus I imagine that if he were "schmoozing" more, his critics would probably be complaining that he was "schmoozing" too much and not getting any work done, so, as with most Obama criticism, he's essentially damned either way.


As to your last point, Obama has made some pretty good plays against the GOP Tea Party but every time he gets the better of them they just get angrier and more hateful towards him. Obama is seriously under appreciated and underestimated IMHO.

What is the point of these kind of threads? We're almost a year out from the election and threads like this, at least to me, seem de-motivating, self-defeating, and assume the worst possible outcome. Based on what we all have observed and experienced, we can all agree that if there is a route back to power for the GOP, they will try to exploit it to do so. The question for us becomes (or should become IMHO), what can we do to stop them? There is NO guarantee of a Republican in the WH this time next year, there is NO guarantee that the Dems are going to lose the Senate, and there is even an increasing uncertainty about the Republicans still controlling the House. A lot of people around here seem instead to just expect the worse to occur and then go right to speculative stuff like this. Why?
To address the substance of this OP and other people's thoughts on the subject, has anybody here even been paying attention to the GOP Primary Debates?! If anybody here actually thinks that "nothing is going to change" if the Republicans win the WH next year, well, let me ask you this question: Can you imagine Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or most any other Democratic Senator or Congressman saying/supporting any of the same far out things as Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, et. al? If you can answer yes, then, well, I suppose that proves your point but seriously?

OF COURSE THINGS WILL CHANGE IF THE REPUBLICANS WIN THE WH AND/OR CONGRESS NEXT YEAR!!!!! AND IT WON'T BE FOR THE BETTER!!!!

We already went down the road of "both parties suck" and "both parties are basically the same" back in 2000 and, we all know now who (and where) THAT got us. Let's not try for a twofer, ok? PLEASE????!!!! Can anybody credibly argue that 4-8 years of Al Gore as POTUS would've been just as bad as having George W. Bush? If not, the next 4-8 years under a President Romney, Perry, Paul, Santorum, Gingrich probably won't convince anybody that having President Obama (for another 4 years) would have been the better choice either I suppose.

or does it seem like the right-wing/Fox News pundits have been recycling pretty much every (valid) criticism we had about then-President George W. Bush to attack & smear President Obama?

1. Taking too many vacations- Check
2. Not smart/incompetent/doesn't know what he is doing (show us your college transcripts!)- Check
3. Too divisive (this one actually makes me laugh out loud because it is so laughably false)- Check
4. "Out of touch"/living in a bubble/shielded from "the real world"- Check
5. Big Spender (singlehandedly driving up national debt/deficit)-Check
6. Pretty much everything that the teabaggers spew about President Obama seem, at least to me, to be valid criticisms of George W. Bush that they are consciously or unconsciously (probably a little of both) projecting onto Obama.

There's probably a few more I'm missing out on (feel free to add to the list). I know that they lie pretty much 24-7-365 about all manner of things (esp. RE: Obama) but these are the kind of lies- the ones that are deliberately (and very clearly) crafted for propaganda purposes- that REALLY get under my skin for some reason.