Is President Barack Obama a Progressive?

Post Reply New Topic

A modern-day progressive in the United States is someone who supports substantial reform to ensure equal opportunity by race, gender, age, religious belief, socio-economic class, sexual orientation, etc. Generally, they'd emphasize humanistic (and animal/environmental) issues and quality-of-life issues over issues of merely maximizing economic productivity, so they'll tend to see a role for social welfare and regulation of business. They would usually oppose war. From government, they want openness, democratic responsiveness, and a lack of corruption. Lastly, they are liberal on social issues (sex, religious belief, lifestyle, gender roles, etc.). Their outlook tends to be mostly compatible with those of liberals, social democrats, humanists, civil-rights activists, feminists, environmentalists, animal-rights activists, charitable groups, the New Left, secularists, and some religious groups like Unitarian-Universalists.

Most conservative movements and groups are organized around opposition to some of these attitudes and principles. The Tea Party in particular despises many of the things progressives stand for.

So in office, has Obama shown himself to be willing to promote progressive ideals?

Obama is a typical DLC Democrat in all but name, following Slick Willie's model of being Republican lite.

Hell, Obama admitted his healthcare plan is what the Republicans offfered Clinton.

He is in no way progressive and if he is concerned about welfare it is about the welfare of corporations.

Downloadable Content?? Come on, that's being insulting to the gaming industry. Most DLC is pretty good.

Obama has a steaming pile of s*** for brains and I'm not sure why any movement would want to be associated with him.

At least he writes his own material.

Progressive is a BS term that gets distorted for political agendas.

"Freedom" is a term that gets distorted for political agendas, "liberty" is a term that gets distorted for political agendas, "the constitution" is a term that gets distorted for political agendas, "the Founders' Intent" is a meaningless fiction that is abusively used for political agendas, etc.

I don't see what the problem is as NeantHumain defines, with concrete examples to buttress abstract ideals, what a progressive is.

Not a progressive/liberal, which was clear from his positions on policies when he ran during the elections. I have no idea why he was portrayed as some great liberal hope as he was clearly very moderate before he was elected and now even more so, becoming the typical Democrat of today, full of concession and compromise.

Obama is a corporate welfare statist whose chief accomplishment (and this is a horrible accomplishment) has been the demobilization and dejection of the netroots left while ensuring a corporate welfare bill masquerading as universal healthcare is enacted.

Last edited by Master_Pedant on 04 Jun 2010, 9:05 pm, edited 2 times in total.

He was an early opponent of the Iraq war, which if I remember correctly was voted on in the Senate before he was a senator, which got a lot of progressives on-side at the very beginning of his campaign. It helped him compared to Hillary Clinton and John Edwards who both voted for the war.

Last edited by Hector on 04 Jun 2010, 9:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

From what I understand, he took down the address condemning the Iraq War pretty quickly and didn't really popularize his anti-War stance until running for primary - when it became a political boon to do so.

I think Obama probably makes those who voted for him feel progressively stupider as the days past his inauguration fly.

I was advocating a political strategy for American electors of voting Obama in swing states but Nader in solid states to send a message in 2008 and was rather pessimistic about his future executive record. I think a primary challenge is what the Centrecrat needs to see that now's not the time for corporate welfare.

Not to nitpick but progressives opposed to war? All the American presidents who have been described as progressive have been pretty pro-war iirc.

But yea, I agree with the description of Obama as a corporate welfare statist.

Okay, well for the 2012 election if you don't mind trying to convince all the liberals to vote for non-democrat liberals that could really help with getting another Republican elected, which would probably be a better thing for everyone even if the media were to nitpick any possible flaws of the guy.

Have you ever noticed that when a Democrat is in office, such as Clinton or Obama, that the media will provide good publicity for the dude and go easy on mistakes, yet for Republican presidents and candidates they will amplify any flaw that they can possibly dig up so as to attempt character assassination?

The point is that the "progressive" voters of 2005-2008 were uniformly against the Iraq war, and would be even less sympathetic of a candidate of they voted for it in Congress.