Was Obama a Sellout

I keep hearing this implication, that Obama somehow capitulated on his progressive principles. Let's be clear, Obama, as well as Hillary as well as Bernie as well as most Democrats would all like to have a single payer system, if we could just wave a magic wand; it is simply not possible unless we have a 65 to 70 seat majority in the senate. Please remember back to 2009, for a short time Democrats had a 60 vote majority in the senate. Remember Joe Lieberman who was hanging out with John McCain and flirting with switching parties. It took every one of those 60 votes to do anything. Obama and others suggested a single payer system or a public option but there were about 5 Democratic senators including Lieberman who were absolutely opposed. Therefore, Obama, being a pragmatist instead of a rigid ideologue, sat down with these conservative Democratic senators to hammer out a system that they would support and that would make life better for millions of Americans – Obamacare. For this, Obama has been called a sellout.

For Bernie or anyone else to pass a single payer system would require not just a 60 vote majority but probably a 65-70 senate majority. Short of this super-super majority in the senate, Bernie's big bold talk about single payer as well as breaking up the big banks or reforming Wall Street is just that – talk.

A president being a rigid ideologue will accomplish nothing; that is why Bernie for all his years in the legislature has never accomplished anything.

Would you rather have a president who will hold tight to his progressive principles or a president that will work with others to make people's lives a little better even though we don't get everything we want?

Why I Am No Longer a Republican

I don't know anyone who is for abortion as a preferred method of birth control. In fact, most progressives know that we could get elective abortion down close to zero if we would simply provide free birth control and counseling to all women.

Every woman's situation and pregnancy is different with a vast array of different conditions such as numerous possible health issues affecting the woman and the fetus along with a host of differing social and economic issues involving the age of the mother, lack of family support, education status, employ-ability, father abandonment and other societal pressures.

My abortion position comes down to this: Who is in the better position to weigh all the different pressures and conditions to arrive at the most sensible outcome, the woman who is intimately involved or the government with a one size fits all proclamation?

Should a woman be forced by the state to carry to term and give birth to a mentally retarded child? Or a child with a deformed body? Or a rapist's child? Or her father's child? What if she is only 15? Should she be forced to quit school and get a menial job to try to take care of a baby alone? Every situation is different and the woman is in the best position to weigh the variety of conditions and make the choice; not the government.

Now if Republicans were serious about reducing abortions to near zero, that could easily be achieved by providing free birth control and education in its use to all young girls approaching puberty as has been done in many other countries to great success. But no, Republicans almost always oppose freely available birth control while insisting on abstinence only and at the same time demand that all women be forced to carry the resulting pregnancies to term, this is cruel and misogynistic and this is why I am no longer a Republican.