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The primaries are the stage for ideals. Candidates give us their 'best of all possible worlds' vision. If the candidates were 100% honest, they would be issuing caveats, maybe's , provisos and cautions all day long.. In a competivie, field,of panderers, no candidate that honest could possibly win.,
In the primaries, we vote for ideals, bui it's up to us to see them as such.
To gauge how a candidate witll go about reaching for those ideals, you have to place them in the context of his broader approavh to problem solving and his general philosophy of politics, governance and life, in general. To gauge the primary talk, you have to bring that perspective with you.

What I brought with me to the primareis was that Obama has a clear vision of where the country is now, where he would like it to be, and how he would proceed to go in the direction of his ideals- as a realist, a pragmatic approach to goal achievement.
I was actually hoping that he didn't mean, verbatim, everything he said during the primaries, because that would have been the real,reversal from what he gave every indication of being..

Going forward, I'm prepared to be disappointed at times and to disagree totally with Obama at other times. What I will always look for is his core philosophy of inclusion of ALL voices, even as he tries to turn our creaking ship of state in the direction of his ideals.

I have no illusion that he will get there completely. I have high hopes that he can point us in the right direction.

Now it's up to everyone to decide if they want to help keep the ship aiming for the ideals, or do they want to jump ship every time we hit a rough patch of disappointing results..
It would be good to remember that killing the captain won't be very helpful. A little of that happens every time a disappointment is translated into a betrayal.

I also agree that for some folks, the Obama they thought they were supporting doesn't exist. OTOH, the Obama they thought they were supporting probably had no chance at all to win the presidency (imho).

That's not said to slam anyone's positions or ideals. Rather, I think that one cannot expect to win the support of a majority of the country on an ideologically extreme platform. And while I realize that those who hold these positions don't see them as extreme, a majority of the country does, I think.

I read his campaign website, so I never mistook him for a progressive or even for a left-tilting Dem. But I did think he'd hold the line on FISA, along with his supporters Biden, Feingold, and Dodd. I didn't think he'd back off the statements he made on NAFTA — not that I think NAFTA is really the whole problem. But he could have explained his position when campaigning in the Rust Belt instead of just saying what Hillary said.
I already knew his position on extending the death penalty for child rape, which is one of many reasons why I — who oppose the death penalty at all on religious grounds — didn't see him as 'my' candidate. I don't expect him to back off that position.

But I can see why the progressives who supported him are shaken up.

It's their fault for not reading the fine print. They wanted to be swept off their feet by the message of change, which many assumed — without looking carefully at his platform or his website — that this meant he was going to lead a progressive revolution.

They mainly misled themselves, but his statements on FISA and NAFTA are two instances of reversals. He's also reversed on other issues. By which I mean, he MADE PUBLIC STATEMENTS that were at odds at times with his website. He has now backtracked — kind of a 360.

I don't think they think they 'own' him. They thought they were supporting an Obama that doesn't exist.

Oh but you do Runasim. You just give yourself too much credit

You have never understood a single word I've written to which you respond.

I would agree with this.

I'm sorry that you find it necessay to live and think in such a world, but I will not join you there. I will not play your games.

Life moves along, and we deal with what's on the plate right now.
Sloppy labeling adds to the confusion,

For these voters, you're not talking about a bunch of people with mushy positions, but rather a statistical variation within a group of voters who individually hold widely disparate sets of concerns. As conditions change, it is to be expected that certain issues will take precedence over others; that doesn't mean that individuals are conservative one day and liberal the next. Sloppy talk about the two-party system leads to a perceived bi-nodal polarization, but the truth is that there is a wide spectrum upon which most of our political inclinations fall.

But it did reveal the overwhelming underlying anger that the progressives have felt for 7 years.,

is to put everything on a credit card, things like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yet in Obama's world he is going to raise taxes on the rich and give it back to the not so rich, and then hes going to welfare us back into the poor house.

The only difference in your scenario Runasim is who gets the benefit of the debt.

My scenario is how about we balance the budget, pay off the debt, Drill for oil, lower gasoline prices and let the economy take care of itself. Then when we get a healthy economy that is not riddled with debt we can take on the problems of Global warming or health care. Once weve tackled that successfully we can go on to something else.

It is not the governments business to regulate peoples personal lives. Yet the nanny staters just can't resist the need to tell us what we can and cannot do. I laugh when the GOP talks about how they believe in personal freedom and then Nanny state us to death with their version.

We cannot be all things to all people. We just cant. There's no longer enough money for that.

The list of things your ideal candidate, and, by extension, your ideal coutnry AIN'T
pretty mudh covers everyone and evrything, except you and the equally irresponsible. It negates the basic idea of one nation, because it allows for no diversity,
You lay claim to all rights, but refuse to talke any responsibility. i.e.,
“it ain't with the Democrats and their knee-jerk “Legislate, Regulate, and Tax” agenda.”
We are witnessing the results of don't regulate, don't tax and don't legislate even as we speak. You must be thrilled with the resulting current economy !

You don't like entitlements, but you don't have anything to say about how to deal with the resulting social instability. Maybe we should give guns to the elderly and let them shoot their way our of their difficulties.

The alternative to taxes to fund what the country needs, for those of us who still want to have one country, is to put everything on a credit card, things like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now we need to rebuild the infrastructue, from which you will be benefting. I guess it's time to whip out the credit card again,

I'm looking for a realist as a candidate and am hoping for a realsitic country.
Rights have to be balanced with responsibilities. One person's rights have to be balanced against the conseuqences tto others by the exercise of those rights.
I'm not looking for paradise for ME. I'm looking for a fair deal for me AND for everyone else. It is a country for everyone, you know.

There is such a wide gap between no taxes and too much of taxes, between no regulation and too much regulation. Only a realist can hope to find the workable balance needed. Extremists need not apply. for the job.
,

For once I agree with you Runasim.

Huffington lives in a world of those progressives who only know what's wrong. They have no clue about what it takes to make anything right.

This is like Bill Maher giving campaign advice: good with the punchline, lousy on substance.

It gets tiring voting for the candidate least likely to get everything they want.

This has been Obama's strength and weakness. He has formed a coalition of people that resent each other politically. The people that brung Obama is more then far lefteners. Way more. However it is going to be a battle of wills over who gets to influence Obama the most.

That is why I opined just a couple days ago that Barak Obama is going to be a ping pong ball in the game of power to see which group gets to claim the majority of his attention in the next few months.

This is part of the overall feeling Im getting from the country about Obama and his shift to the middle during the last week or so.

There is a lot of anger and these people on the left have staked Obama as their own. Any move to the center for them is going to feel a betrayal.

Does she think the campaign was closed to people who were not Democrats? However much the partisans might have wished the campaign closed to people who were not Democrats, the Obama campaign was reaching right out us independents and moderates.

I resent her thinking enormously.