After several ‘moves’ to the right in the past few days, can we trust Obama to represent the people that voted for him ?

Let’s recap.  Tax funding for religious charities, expanding the death penalty, FISA/4th Amendment, etc. Also let’s not forget his appointment of neo-liberal economists from the Milton Friedman/Chicago school of economic thought.

On the big issues let’s see if he’s any different from McCain/Bush

• Iraq  Let’s be real; he’s backed off from his early fuzzy ‘combat’ troop withdrawal plan. He’s funded the war everytime.  He’s going to increase the size of the military and the incredible waste of tax dollars.  On this issue, I think McCain might be worse, but right now it’s a tossup as they both want to ‘stay the course’.
  
   
• Healthcare McCain wants to destroy the employer-funded health insurance patchwork we have now. Obama wants to ‘improve’ the current system; how is he going to fund his public plan with all the money going to the ‘Defense’ (War) dept ?  McCain is clearly worse on this; however what’s the likelihood of Obama getting anywhere with his watered down plan ? The insurance companies are going to fight tooth and nail once they have to make any real changes.  Don’t count on it, given his cowardice with FISA, etc. Can McCain get away with his plan ?  I don’t think that’s realistic as we would have probably double/triple the number of uninsured people.  We might have a healthcare fueled revolt on our hands if that happens.
  
   
• Taxes/Economy McCain clearly has no clue; his whole ‘plan’ is written by the right wingnuts who are in the current administration.  Obama is better, but not bold enough. Can we trust him to follow through on his promises though ? He’s gotten a lot of money from the financial companies.
  
   
• Social Issues/Supreme Court Again McCain is a lot worse on this on the surface. Will the supreme court reverse itself on abortion ? I don’t think so; the religious conservatives would lose their most powerful issue.  But the real issue is whether Obama would appoint a real progressive to the court; given his track record recently I would say no.  We might get Roberts-like judges instead of Scalia-like judges.
  

In summary, I’d say in terms of foreign policy, there’s going to be virtually no change. On domestic issues, Obama might turn out to be better based on his current positions but who knows what’ll happen when he gets elected; how many more ‘shifts’ in his positions is he going to have?  

I hate being right about people.  Especially when I’m being less than charitable.  I was always a bit leery about Obama and his flowery bullcrap.

Somehow everyone else would listen to his words and think that this guy could do no wrong.  I’d listen to him and hear weasel words like ‘combat’ troops (I’m going to withdraw ‘combat’ troops). Translation: We’re not leaving Iraq if BHO is president.

He capitulates on FISA. He won’t consider impeachment.  He votes for the Patriot Act reauthorization. Over and over he hands Bush a blank check for Iraq.  He wants to expand the military; in a country that already spends nearly 50-60% of it’s discretionary funds on the military machine this man wants to expand it.

Some of the people over at the Big Orange are waking up.  However they’ll still vote for BHO.  We’re the majority; if we decide to actually vote our consciences then Nader can really be president.  At the very least it’ll scare Barack to move back towards the left as he sees the poll numbers shift.