There aint one repub in Congress or running for the Presidency who is worth one bucket of spit!

What the hell is he supposed to do when we have a goddamn idiot for a speaker who goes to the single biggest NAZI in the country--rusho--for advice!

I would consider voting for a primary opponent, should a respectable challenger from the left emerge.  Because I live in a safely blue state, I would consider voting for a third party candidate, were one to emerge that would better and more credibly represent my beliefs and opinions.  I would not do this, however, is polling emerged to show that New York is suddenly in play and a possible Republican pick up.  In short, I will vote for Obama as the lesser of two evils if it is absolutely necessary for me to do so.

If a primary challenger emerged but had no chance of winning and I liked the challenger better, I would vote for the challenger to register some protest.  If a primary challenger emerged, who I better identify with and has a serious chance of beating Obama I would support them enthusiastically.

For President Obama:

1. There are tangible differences between President Obama and any Republican, beginning first and foremost in the courts.  I'm sure I'm not the only attorney at dagblog who continues to appear before justices appointed by President Reagan.  They have lifetime tenure and they make life-changing decisions.  

2. The notion that frustration with a Republican president will learn us once and for all is not only tested and untrue, but will leave us with Republican appointees in the executive and judicial branches for  years to come.

I know I've written this before but forgive me because it's apt.  I turned 21 in 1980 and I had missed being eligible to vote in 1976, when I was 17.  I knew it all back then of course, and I particularly knew that President Carter was a sell-out, John Anderson was a pretender and still a Republican, and Ronald Reagan couldn't get elected.  I voted for the Citizen's Party candidate, Barry Commoner, who I think was to the left of Bernie Sanders.  And I helped elect Ronald Reagan.  My apologies to my future grandkids (amended per superstition to add G-d willing of course).

I will be voting for Obama because I believe that this nation is still horribly divided and has not come to a workable understanding about the role of government in the lives of people, and that Obama is best candidate of all the legitimate contenders to deal with this divide.  He is more to the right than what I would like to see in a president, but I don't believe "my" president (a) winning a general election, and (b) being able to be effective if he or she were elected.

Another facet is that the more successful Obama is, the better it will be for the Democrats on the ticket.  Some of these will be far more liberal than Obama.  And if we are going to make any progress in the coming years, we will need the Democrats to keep the Senate and to either cut into the Republican majority in the House or even to retake the House.  This is not saying achieving this will usher in a new progressive era under the Democratic leadership, merely that we might be able to make a little positive movement forward.

As far as the primary goes, I will also vote for Obama because the more battered he is within his own party, the more the opposition will be able to paint Obama as unable to lead, etc etc leading to damage to the downtickets.

This comes under the heading "nothing new here," but you asked.

I will be voting for Obama, and the worse the repubs behave, the more enthusiastic I become. I have recently gone from "I'll vote for him, but I won't work for him and won't send money," to having sent some money with the intent to send more, and have pretty much decided to give him time, as well.

The President I want, cannot get elected at this time. The country is too conservative. So I have to settle for Obama, and I will. Although there are many things I still like about him, there are areas where he has disappointed me greatly.

If the happenings in WI and other states, and what is going on in the house has taught us anything, it should be that the repubs have been overrun with total nut jobs. When Ronald Reagan is now too liberal to be elected as a repub, when the repubs answer to Grover Norquist, and the repubs (boehner-who is supposed to be one of the more normal ones) stand up on prime time tv and call the President a liar and basically tell him to fuck off, there is something very, very wrong going on this country, and there is no reason to believe that by electing more of them that will change for the better.

I have mentioned more than once, that if for no other reason I would vote dem just to keep the repubs from nominating any more conservative judges to the SCOTUS. In case you haven't noticed, that 5-4 majority has now given corporations personhood, which will now embolden the corporations even more to buy elections. Worse yet, they will continue to have the say over ALL issues that we hold near and dear to our hearts. As Bruce mentioned, this goes down into lower courts, as well.

I think trying to make a protest vote in a blue state is dangerous. What if a whole bunch of other folks do the same thing, and we actually lose? It's not like you can get together and decide who will, and who won't and be sure of getting it right.

This is not the republican party I was a part of for so many years, the one, that although often misguided, was willing to negotiate when they weren't in power. This is a new, dangerous, and I would contend possibly even evil, party. Consider Norquist's words "I don't want to just shrink the size of the government, I want to get it so small I can drag it in the bathroom and drown it." These are not the words of a patriot. People like this cannot be allowed to take control of the country.

So unless you truly believe that we need to let them burn it to the ground and hope we can rebuild it, I don't see how anyone could do anything that would get another repub elected to any office.

You asked.

There is no election this year.

I pose this question, and not because I want to be provocative, but having read through the thread over and again, I simply cannot understand why anyone to the left of President Obama would not support him, and vigorously so, in the upcoming presidential election.  I see nothing convincing, other than folks who are disappointed in many of his decisions.  But, respectfully, really respectfully because I understand passion, why would we want to impose a Republican executive on the people whom we purport to speak for and understand, i.e. our brothers and sisters who are embroiled in a structural economic disaster not seen in this country since 1940?  Why is that position any different than, forget it, I'm taking my ball and going home and then I can say I told you so?

I posed another and related question in another thread, in response to an extraordinary assertion that by most metrics Obama has been worse than Bush.  I asked for elaboration, got none, and I assume that the assertion was made out of understandable frustration.  But the assertion is flatly wrong on the merits.

There is now a real possibility that President Obama could lose the election next year, and then what?  Four years of judicial appointments made by Mitt Romney?  Executive agencies financially strangled?   More tax breaks for corporations planting the flag in Southeast Asia instead of in Indiana?  

I don't get it.  I really don't.  The political process is not a science experiment.  It's ugly, imperfect, and it is what it is.