Sorry to say it. As proud as I am that the United States did actually elect Mr. Obama, I can no longer support the jelly man himself.

The feeling inside me now is hollow and abandoned. Like I just lost a game of Three Card Monty and know I was jobbed. Sorry Pres. Obama, but it seems you were a red herring all along. The oligarchy that runs this country has never lost its grip, even for even a second.

It's obvious that the bold, sharp progressive Barack Obama we all elected to become President is a thing of the past, a memory of the 2008 campaign season. The Obama we have now panders to the very same people who have done nothing but give him hell ever since he took office, and will call him a "socialist", even as he bows to their demands. All the while, he further alienates the same progressive base that elected him in the first place! These days it looks like Obama truly will be a one term President- not because of the Republicans, but because he alienated his own base and us progressives looked elsewhere.

The Republicans are primarily responsible for this economy . I cannot believe that they are using a condition they created, joblessness, as a bargaining chip for extending tax cuts for the wealthy. It defies all common sense that our president is not fighting this tooth and nail. Thank you Bernie Sanders for filibustering this outrageous bill.

Sanders-Nader 2012, the Democratic ticket for progressive change!

(They both need to registers as Dems for
this progressive campaign)

For us, out on the west coast, it's kinda late to be thinking about flying into and out of D.C. What is planned for the west coast?

Sign me up!

I couldn't bare to vote for him the first time (voted third party) and I refuse to vote for him again. Maybe Obama needs to be voted out and worse case, a Republican takes office, maybe America needs another 4-8 years of Republican rule to finally get the hint that we need a Bernie Sanders, Dennis Kucinich, Cynthia McKinney... heck, at this point I'll take a Ron Paul over another Obama/Clinton-type employee of the banking and military industry.

Anyone who says a Republican would be worse than Obama look at that list again: increased war-profiteers in Iraq and Afghanistan, $9 trillion in bailouts, sold middle-class Americans to health insurance companies, continues torture, renditions, bombing sovereign nations... The only good thing we've gotten from Obama is decent Supreme Court appointments (granted, that's huge).

Obama needs to change or we need to vote for change in the next election.

I'm sure more would sign the petition if they didn't have to agree to Care2's terms of service. What the f*** is this? Kinda like, "if you want to vote you have to say I'm a really good guy too", or you can't vote !

When does the middle class rioting begin? Seriously, the economy is a self inflicted wound created by the Dems and Repugs and we are lead to the slaughter like a fatted calf ... all while we are told to give them our money before we are sacrificed? The G.O.P. has swallowed that pill, but I will opt out.

President Obama cannot be the President to "only" the Progressives in America. I considered myself a Progressive until this week. Reference the article by David Brooks:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/opinion/10brooks.html?src=un&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjson8.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Fopinion%2Findex.jsonp

President Obama does not have the votes in the Senate of the Lame Duck session to pass the middle class tax cuts and the unemployment benefits as the Democrats would like. Starting Jan 1, he has even less chance of passing them with a GOP controlled House. Tell me how then does he ensure that those who are unemployed receive benefits any other way than to compromise with the GOP?

Yet now, he is considered a traitor as a President to the Progressives (ie comments on here, the liberal press and Michael Moore's article). We live in the real world where people suffer and need to provide food and a roof over their family's heads.

The Congress should have passed the middle class tax cuts and unemploment benefits extensions BEFORE the Nov 2010 elections, but were too chicken to run on these. They left no choice, but for President Obama to compromise with the GOP to ensure the unemployed and middle class were not hurt! The Progressives act like he can ONLY do their bidding, but he is the President for ALL Americans. He should be applauded instead of constant lambasting!

"Hope is a longing for a future condition over which you have no agency; it means you are essentially powerless."

Derrick Jensen

'Nuff said...

There is a need to recognize the difference between the ideal and the possible.

You guys want us drop everything, and blow every cent we've got flying across the country. We won't be able to get cheap flights because 6 days notice in the middle of holiday travel season on a major event...to be at another DC protest nobody watches.

You keep playing the same card from the activists deck over and over and over and over for 40 years straight, and you act surprised when the Feds yawn when you plan the same thing once again.

For Gawd Sake, devise some kind of political action other than a DC protest. Anything!

Too all those hoping for a progressive candidate NEXT TIME, remember that it's the system. It wants you to think that you actually have a choice of candidates- candidates that have really been chosen by the system. It wants you to think that a corporate candidate packaged as a progressive for your approval will actually change things by saying s/he will. It doesn't want you to think or know about the $billions it takes to run, let alone win an election and where s/he got the money from. As long as the financial elite run this country, the (s)elections and the PR, also known fondly as democracy at work, this and fascism is our future. Why don't YOU run? Gassroots activism is the answer. Read this:
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/12/09-6

Please refer to the other party as the RepubliKLAN Party or the GOPranos.

go to www.democratz.org

Those calling for a primary challenger are going about it wrong. That will fail. You need to pressure the current administration to change direction not give up on it two years before the election or else things will not change.

let the tax cut expire for all!!!

do nothing congress!!

that should be easy for you!!

@2:49

You're not paying attention, Sir. Obama does indeed have a backbone. He wields anger and muscle freely; at the Left. He hates the Left. He despise Liberals and Progressives.It's to the Left that his rage goes because OBAMA IS A RIGHT WING REPUBLICAN. For those who cannot see this after two years of his leadership, which has been insistent, unambiguous and strong all toward Right Wing policy making, you need help with learning how to see "what is". To see "what is" is really simple. You just don't overlay reality and facts with your feelings, opinions, fantasies and beliefs.

The White House counts on fear of Republican alternatives to carry this bipartisan bystander clown in 2012. I'd vote for him again only if Palin were the Republican candidate. As Senator Harken said, she can save him. Even if Huckleberry ran--scary as that is--I'd look at a third party candidate. And as for the least bad alternative, as much as I disagree with Romney, he's not crazy and he's not Obama.

continued...

As long as we keep merely supporting someone who doesn't fight for us, we will keep losing battle after battle. We should continue to support the good things he does, and he had done some good things. But we should also keep demanding that he respect us, listen to us, and help us move in a positive direction, instead of letting the right-wing extremists and evil corporations control the direction of the country.

The Republicans keep holding the country hostage, and Obama caves because he is too afraid to call their bluff. What he needs to do is stand his ground and expose what the Republicans are doing. The Republicans would suffer greatly if only he would stop being so polite and let people know they are willing to sacrifice us all just to get their way (which means more money for the rich and the big corporations that enrich the rich).

Someone should ask Obama why he has made US the enemy and become partners with his opponents. Cooperation is a good thing when both sides cooperate. But when one side does nothing but fight, the other side must fight back, or it will lose for sure. And we are losing big time. So if Obama won't fight for us, we need to fight for ourselves, even if it means fighting against Obama to keep him from helping the enemy.

Make no mistake, they ARE the enemy, because they are doing far more damage to our country and world than a million terrorists could do. It is no longer a political fight, it is a fight for our lives, literally.

Well, as Japhy Ryder once said: "Register your absence with The Null and Void Trust Company."

I'm sure glad that I live west of the Sierra Nevada. The Democratic Party IS splintered.....

I was around for the Goldwater-Johnson election. A co-worker complained afterwards that it was widely claimed that if he voted for Goldwater, we would be bombing North Vietnam and defoliating the jungles with Agent Orange. He did vote for Goldwater, and sure enough, we were bombing and defoliating. Of course it was supposed to be funny. Johnson was doing exactly what people thought they were voting against.

All this is just a long way to say that history has repeated itself. We thought that if we voted for McCain, we would be getting a third term for Bush. That is, the two wars would continue, Bush would turn more of our Treasury over to Wall Street banksters, and the detention and trials would continue in GITMO.

So we voted for Barack Obama and guess what? Everything we voted against continued and expanded. And don't tell me we wouldn't have gotten the medical "reform" bill. Don't get me started on that one. Who says that making private health insurance mandatory is reform? Insurance companies are middlemen, making money by charging ever higher premiums while denying more and more needed care.

The only way Obama can win a second term is if he changes his party to Republican (not a principled switch for a man without principles) or a caribou-killing ding-bat runs against him.

It is time to abandon this fool. He has already abandoned us and his campaign positions.

We are the fools if we continue to make apologies for him.

(Johnson at least had the good sense to resign.)

I think everyone posting here should start by saying who they voted for in the last 8 US presidential elections when the country was ruled by ruling class Democrats or ruling class Republicans, during which the rich always got richer, in which the US government was always active in global destabilization and economic blackmail, in which Democrats worked to "end welfare as we know it" and US capitalist-imperialism ran rampant across the planet.
 
What is so very sad is that this "left establishment" if it is not leading us to Obama again in 2012 will be encouraging us to vote for Hillary or whomever else the vetted Democratic candidate of the "two-party ruling class consensus" happens to be.  Unfortunately even some of those signing this open letter -- as evidence, their own words and history show -- will be among those voice that, rather than getting behind a third party or at least non-establishment, dissident Democratic candidate (Kucinich, for example), will give us "vote for the least of two evils" argument that they have before.  And unfortunately I am referring there to Chomsky, Zinn (now deceased), Media Benjamin, and many other names.  http://dissidentvoice.org/2008/10/chomsky-zinn-and-obama/

http://www.therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=2593

As I have said before I don't vote for the Democrats. Have not and will not.  Every two years the people of the US get their 10 minutes of so-called "democracy" voting for Democrats and Republicans for national and state office.  That adds up to 8 hours and 20 minutes (500 minutes) of "democracy" in a century. The remaining 99 years, 364 day, 15 hours and 40 minutes belong to the two-party ruling class consensus.  The point of pretty boy, eloquent Democrats like Kennedy, Carter, Clinton, and Obama is precisely to put the US people to sleep, to placate the people when the US capitalist-imperialist project gets to ugly and can no longer be stomached.  Prior to the 2008 elections the people of the US were tired but angry and ready to revolt.  Instead we elected a ruling class Democrat named Barack Obama and got just what could be predicted -- variations on the themes of imperialist war; domestic spying; and government of,by and for the corporations, among many other themes.  Now the wolves are back for another bite with the US populace more confused and less able to think itself out of the box of corporate propaganda, media misdirection, and political discourse entirely devoid of class consciousness or analysis. The people of the world increasingly understand the role that the US plays in the world.  Unfortunately they are without their one indispensable ally, a class conscious and aroused US populace willing to kick the bejesus out of our current masters.  Be forewarned -- regardless of how badly Obama deceives us, The Nation, Noam Chomsky, Media Benjamin, and so many other radical/progressives will do again in 2012 what they did in 2004 and 2008, i.e., lead the young and the old, the confused and the desperate to a ruling class Democrat.  Are you ready to vote for Hillary Clinton?  That is what your Democratic party will offer up in 2012 or 2016.   Will you never be sick enough of innocent civilians maimed and killed by your tax dollars abroad?  Will you never be disgusted enough by wealthy millionaires and billionaires getting more wealthy while the  pain and desperation intensifies in our land?  I predict that from now on and ad infinitum the cowardly US ignoramus -- i.e., the US electorate -- will continue to play the two-party game, two-party trap set for them by the ruling elite.
 
Unfortunately too much of the "left-establishment" and the non-establishment will be there saying, you have no choice so vote Obama/Hillary/Kerry/etc.  

"...Clinton centrist..." elder jane, i think u just proved david brookbank's point. the ignorant bitter irony of it all is a little more than enough to make a man throw himself away.

Odd, isn't it? The greed and burning desire for power over a country in such disrepair in all it's manners and forms. It's like watching little kids fighting over a deflated torn up ball in a dirt lot somewhere. The politics of gluttony is obscene at best.

I haven't read through all of this very long comments list, but am I the only one who has noticed that, though this initiative is supposed to come from Michael Moore, it is Chris Hedges by-line on the article and Michael Moore's name does not appear on the list? Does this really have anything to do with Michael Moore? What gives?

Dear Anonymous on 12/16 at 16:19 - no, this letter is TO Michael Moore, so he read it and signed it, as did others. 'Nothing wrong with that; 1st Amendment, etc. The problem is hardly anyone in these comments - nor Chris Hedges, whom I believe has gone off the deep end - realizes that the biggest tool in the Criminal Oligarchy's box is the Electoral College. It will take a Constitutional Amendment to abolish it; that will take years, undoubtedly more than two double-Presidential terms. If you allow Hillary to become President, any of you who are working-class can kiss your job, your healthcare, and your pension good-bye. You guys who think National Elections are just like the Shopping Channel need to learn to take the long view.