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Originally Posted by MuadDib
Quite frankly, yes. That is if you are talking about a left-leaning moderate. In fact, that moderate will get more accomplished towards those goals than a "liberal" president. The fact of the matter is that the presidency is built for moderates while the place for more extreme liberals and conservatives is the legislature. A moderate can build consensus between to two extremes there and buy themselves gains in the direction they want to go in. On the other hand, more extremely oriented presidents will never accomplish any of those goals because they won't be able to compromise without losing their base unless equally far left/right elements control both the house and senate as well as their own party. That is not the case with the democrats, as the majority in both houses and the party are far more moderate than liberal. That is why the goals you seem to desire will become closer to a reality by a moderate getting elected than not.
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Democratic house and senate leadership in the current congressional term have been models of moderation, exemplary in their restraint and total willingness to accomodate the republican congressional minoirty and the republican president. Please name one example of what that moderate approach has achieved for democrats. Congress has shown itself to be a bipartisan majority supporting corporatism at every turn.
I don't think we have the time that you and mixedmedia impress me as thinking we have to unravel this mess. The currency valuation deterioration and the overall economy, petroleum dependence, housing valuation and bond insurer implosion, etc. all tell me that there is limited opportunity, if any, to confront and wrest corporate political control from the corporatist bloc.
Roosevelt as radical reformer, was a poor substitute for Long in 1933, but he was influenced by Long's radicalism, nipping at his heels, until the day Long was shot in Sept., 1935. Our only hope is deep cuts in military spending and the intelligence and domestic secuirty apparatus, with an immediate military withdrawal from Iraq and a crash program of energy conservation, including severe sanctions againt one occupant commuting vehicles.
A wish for a moderate president, in these times of national emergency, aggravated by corporatist domination of government, seems like pissing in the wind to me. We'll have a $700 billion increase in <a href="http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np">national debt</a>, between 10/1/07 and 9/30/08. Take a look at the <a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=113978">"1992 Redux"</a> thread, and then tell me how I have this "all wrong"......