How do you “hold his feet to the fire”? He doesn’t represent you AT ALL, you didn’t give him record campaign contributions, so you don’t get a say. When McDonald’s gets many people to eat their food, it’s the company that pulled one over on …them, not the people who “voted” for their food. Our elections are not elections at all in any true, democratic sense–they are more fixed than the Soviet elections were and a bigger ideological illusion because they look like they’re real. All the money going into the early primaries decides who the candidates are who you can vote for. When they actually get around to the populous states the choices are narrowed–that is, if they actually hold a primary in your state–the Democrats did not in mine last time. The system is designed to have corporate interests elect the primary candidates, then the voting public, a small subset of the U.S. population who are by and large completely alienated from the system, can put their two cents in effectively voting for McDonald’s or Burger King. And when it’s terribly important whether McDonald’s or Burger King wins, the money shifts to one and the PR machine kicks into high gear and everyone votes more or less as told. The fact that so many high-minded voters believe that their votes matter and they they are actually deciding something is the primary ideological illusion that supports this oppressive system. The OWS movement put a crack in that belief system and now all the panicky Democratic strategists, hired or self-appointed, are rushing to fill the breach. But by all means, vote for whomever you want. Just don’t come back yet again next time, after Obama delivers most of the things on the list of what President Romney was to deliver, and say, once more, that we need to vote for the next great Democratic contender to prevent the reanimated corpse of Ronald Reagan from winning.

Begin rant.

It really makes me sad when I see sensible people bend over backwards to defend an opportunist, bought off, lying war criminal. Sure, I submit that the Dems are on the whole a lesser evil than the GOP. But the “not strong” position on civil liberties is in fact illegal & unconstitutional, the drone program is a war crime, the Libyan intervention violated the War Powers act, the health plan was authored by the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation, and the deportation of undocumented migrants at a rate not seen since Eisenhower broke hundreds of thousands of hardworking families. I’m OK if someone votes for Obama for strategic reasons, especially in swing states, but IMO his policies are way far to the right to justify outright support from anyone even remotely interested in social justice, human rights, non-homicidal foreign policy, and the future of this planet. I’m the first to give the administration credit for the few things they did right, but they pale in comparison with the moves which were proactively conservative, outright reactionary or just plain criminal. And sure, these are arguably fewer than what a GOP prez would have done, but are all the more sinister for being tolerated by otherwise sensible people who’d go ballistic if they were done by Republicans.

I could counter some of your points but others have done so — some are fair, others seem to rely on a very selective interpretation of facts. To me, they reveal how good of a cult of leadership and personality Obama ran in the 2008 campaign, and how strong the fear of not having a viable mainstream political option to support runs among otherwise sensible liberals & leftists in this country. Snap out of it.

End rant.