Jophiel wrote:
gbaji wrote:
His politics are paper thin, essentially designed to appeal on the surface to a broad audience, but lacking any real substance.
Have you actually bothered to look into any of his stances & plans or are you basing this off of what you've caught in the air?
Well. I haven't sat down with the man and asked him personally, but I have seen a number of his speeches, and I've read many transcripts of his conversations and interviews.
The one consistent factor with Obama is that he works hard to hit the classic "talking point" that's currently popular with the Left. Now, that's not unusual for a politician (obviously, Republicans would hit points popular with the Right, but you get the point), but in Obama's case, when you look past that, you see one of two things: Either a fairly radical take on socio-economics, or nothing at all. By that I mean that when he's asked more pointed questions, or allowed to elaborate on exactly what he'd do within some area, he either falls back on rhetoric ("move forward", "change the status quo", "push for progressive change", "not follow the Beltway mentality", etc...), or he falls into positions that are radically liberal and I don't think it's because he wants those things, but ends up supporting them purely because he gets cornered semantically on them.
Some examples:
When asked about his speech at the DNC: Quote:
Obama said he'll use his 20 minutes on the convention podium to counter Republican accusations that the Democratic Party stands for big government and big spending. Instead, he will argue that the party stands for helping people and using government to do it.
Ah... I see! So instead of standing for big government and big spending, he stands for helping people by using government. Um... Isn't this exactly what I've said a million times is the "trick" Social Liberalists use to get people to expand the size and scope of the federal government? Why yes! It is.
It's also meaningless. He's concentrating on the "talking point" (pursuing the "cause" of the moment), while actively avoiding talking about the mechanism used to achieve that goal (bigger government). This is shallow political rhetoric at its worst IMO.
His position on Network Neutrality Classic Liberal position held by politicians who find that "supporting neutrality" must be good, regardless of what the actual law says. He's naive because he'd end up supporting a legal change that would effectively hand control of content to the local providers (the very cable and TV companies he thinks/claims he's opposing) while blocking actual free content competition on the internet (which is what's made it the ultimate example of how a true free trade environment produces benefits well beyond the profits by those who invest in it).
His position is a perfect example of a politician, who, through a lack of understanding of an issue adopts what appears to the the "popular" position, and makes things worse in the process. He's clearly just repeating what someone else told him he should say. Don't get me wrong, there are some valid arguments for the network neutrality position. But his are so surface level, that they don't even address the real issues. It's pure pablum.
His positions on wealth He actively and enthusiastically believes in the economic ideology of folks like Warren Buffet. Great and all, but I don't think he really understands that he's effectively quoting Karl Marx in the process. He's either politically naive on this subject, or he really is a radical socialist who believes that wealth (capital) isn't actually property to be protected as a right, but is instead some sort of social obligation to the welfare of the people as a whole.
I'm actually not sure which is true, but either one puts him in the "I don't want this guy to have any real power" category. I do strongly suspect, however, that he really doesn't have more then an academic understanding of the economic policies he supports. Just based on the way he talks about economics. He seems to actually believe that this somehow represents what Americans want.
I can go on, but that's enough for now.