Differences Matter.

I also want to thank Krishna for starting this discussion.
As for Obama I understand there to be 3 argument so far in favor of voting for a third party.

1. There is no real difference between the candidates (Dator’s position) and that what difference does exist will be nulified in the next term by a president free of the fear of re-election. The powerful variant of this is that while some differences do exist from the perspective of those outside the United States in particular those on the receiving end of U.S. military actions things have gotten worse (Krishna)

2. That voting against Obama will teach the democrats a lesson not to ignore its leftist constituency.

3. We should punish Obama because there were opportunities for progressive action that Obama past up at little or no cost to him politically.

The original article posted by Krishna makes a strong case that Obama has in fact made things worse for civil liberties in America than Bush. The article argues first that Obama agreed to not prosecute members of the Bush administration for violations of human rights. This is not a very persuasive argument for making things worse. The making things worse part of the argument hinges on the claim that had Obama lost the election the horror of John McCain would have coalesced an unbeatable Civil Liberties movement that would have closed Guantanamo, repealed the Patriot Act, and put personal freedoms back on the political agenda. First the majority of Americans before and after the 2008 election support the use of torture against terrorists (70 percent if you ask Gallup but if you doubt their sampling methods the absolute lack of public outcry ought to mostly back of their numbers). The idea that this lack of popular activism is because people are afraid to criticize a black president on civil rights is laughable. If anything is apparent in the current political climate no one left or right is afraid to criticize Barak Obama. The Obama honeymoon from left criticism lasted about 60 days into the first election when he floundered on the reform of Guantanamo.

It is also not true that things have gotten worse under Obama. Obama is pathetic and gutless when it comes to fighting the Republicans on National Security and hawkish when it comes to U.S. military intervention. However Guantanamo is basically frozen. We are not sending more people there. This may seem like small potatoes but remember for all of McCain’s blustering on torture he watered down (no pun intended) his position to the point that he is was only against torture as a ‘policy’. McCain did not support prosecution of torturers, he did not oppose outsourcing the torture i.e. extraordinary rendition, giving people so that our allies such as Saudi Arabia can do the torturing. (Hard to say that there are things worse than water boarding but if there are the Saudi’s are sure to use those methods of pain). Unlike McCain Obama has closed many of the prisons and sent civilian reviewers to increase the pressure on the military to release prisoners.

This article also leaves out that Bush cut 100 percent of the budget for Civil Rights at the Justice Department. 100 percent of the budget was shifted to the defense of small business and religious persecution which as instructed by Bush ought to focus on Christians discriminated against for praying in schools. The Civil Rights division of the Justice Department was immediately reinstated after the 2008 election.

Obama also renewed the efforts of the FBI and Justice Department to investigate and monitor hate groups such as the KKK. Under the Bush administration both division were instructed that the number one domestic threat were environmental terrorists. Obama ended the policy of sending government agents to pose as activists to keep tabs on organizations like Environmental Defense League and the National Campaign to End the Death Penalty. The end of domestic monitoring of progressive social movements alone is a reason to prefer the Obama administration.

Lets add to this the return of funding and enforcement power to the EPA something else gutted by Bush, the end of health insurance discrimination for pre-existing conditions, and an executive order ending drug raids in California, and most importantly drastically reduced the number of ICE raids undertaken by the INS.

As for Obama’s impact on the rest of the world. This is also where I am most disappointed. That being said Obama has continued to fight Republicans and Democrats to zero-out the number of troops in Iraq and is withdrawing from Afghanistan. Lets remember what McCain supported. McCain wanted 5 permanent military bases in Iraq, he supported starting a war with Iran, bombing North Korea, and a ruthless surge in Afghanistan that relied less on Afghanistan cooperation and more on the demonstration of military force. Included in this was stepping up the bombing of civilian poppy farmers to ‘strangle’ the financial support of AQ. Obama ended ariel bombing and spraying of poppy farms. McCain also unequivocally supports the use of drones. Also any increase in drone use from Bush to Obama, again while disappointing, is not a policy change but the fact that technology has vastly improved and the size of the drone fleet has more than tripled. This would have occurred as much or more under McCain. One can only imagine (or whatever the active verb version of nightmare is) all of these scenarios under the leadership of Sarah Palin.

What about a second term. Then things get really interesting. A second term will be characterized by frequent assassinations and the end of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns. A mixed bag for sure. However lets look at the possibilities under a Republican president. Not a single Republican supports an alternative energy or Climate initiative. The Republican party is still chomping at the bit to attack Iran. Perry would like to invade Mexico so that U.S. troops can be directly involved in the now almost civil war going on between the cartels (one of those cartels being the Mexican government). Mitt Romney has  crusaded against the START treaty and would have the opportunity to reverse the progress made towards nuclear arms reductions. Also this is not a hypothetical improvement. Republicans are in support of nuclear modernization and the restarting of tritium production which means that Uranium mining and milling on native lands and the eventual testing of new nuclear devices on those lands will begin again as the Republican are also opposed to the ban on nuclear testing. Republicans would also like to 're-surge' Iraq. Republicans are in favor of a new SOFA agreement with Kuwait as a base of operations and a dramatic increase in troops. Although Republicans disagree on this finally number it ranges from 10,000 to 30,000 troops.

All of the Republicans have promised to crack down on illegal immigration. This makes a huge difference for the daily lives of the people that do the majority of U.S. agricultural work (amongst other things). It means harassment at the border and at their workplaces but it also means increased power of coyotes to extort, rape, and murder laborers that have to resort to increasingly dangerous measure to get passed border patrol or fences. It also means strengthening the INS and Border Patrol. These agencies are their own special form of governmentality. If you think Guantanamo is the top of the prison reform agenda you have never been to one of the hundreds of immigration detention facilities in America. Immigrants under Bush (much less under Obama) were denied lawyers, appeals, and basic human rights. Under Bush the increase in the numbers of children put in such conditions sky rocketed.

As for as Obama's neoliberal tendencies, these are undeniable but not nearly as destructive as the Republican alternative. Obama has proposed and will likely win deep cuts to U.S. farm subsidies a favorite pork barrel of Republicans and many Democrats. U.S. farm subsidies have devastated the global food market and are responsible for agriculture sector collapse and starvation through out Mexico and South America as well as Southern and West Africa. Farm subsidies have also been devastating for the U.S. environment as they have paid for agribusiness to pollute and subject illegal immigrants to horrifying toxic environments of disease spreading shit lagoons and dangerous pesticides directly subsidized by the Department of Agriculture. Obama has also negotiated and used trade agreements differently. Obama pushed for Labor representatives and Environmental representative at CAFTA negotiations and was the first President to file a trade dispute on behalf of worker treatment as in the case of Guatemala. It is not 'fair trade' but it is a long way from the Bush CAFTA agenda which  contained no worker standards or environmental concerns. Obama has also pushed through two huge debt forgiveness plans for Haiti and Egypt both of which were called 'moral hazards' by Republican opponents.

I would add to this that Obama budget deal has put the Republicans in devils gambit between making deep cuts to programs such as Defense or raising taxes. The tax agenda generally disappointing to those of us that want major changes has stopped an onslaught of Republican austerity measures. The stimulus package had a lot of problems but it created almost 3 million jobs. Neoliberal? Yes. However Obama believes in Keyesian economics and puts it to use even if he squanders billions on corporate bailouts. The Republican alternative would have been all bail outs no jobs.

I think that answers the first argument.

As of the second argument that we should teach Democrats a lesson.

Truman overthrew Mohammad Mosaddegh creating a precedent for violent covert and overt regime change by the United States.

The Kennedy administration nearly invented nation building and gave birth to the developmentalist foreign policy that was seized and militarized by neoconservatives under the Bush administration.

Johnson vastly expanded the war in Vietnam and began the massive bombing campaign of Cambodia that the Cambodians are still struggling to clean up.

Carter actively supported the Shah also was no opponent of international neoliberalism.

Clinton established a sanction regime that killed more civilians in Iraq than all of the military occupations under both Bush’s and Obama combined. He also sabotaged any international effort to respond to the Rwandan genocide, destroyed the welfare system, and reinstated the federal death penalty not mention with the Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty act instituting all of the infrastructure that made the Patriot act possible. Clinton also vastly expanded the Reagan missile diplomacy of the 80s. If you want to look for the predecessor to the Bush Drone program research funding for automated warfare was vastly expanded under Clinton and in the mean time Clinton used cruise missiles to do what drones were not yet capable of.

All of these Democratic presidents were committed to what we now call neoliberalism or third way economics. They were free trade, international development champions, and oversaw and encouraged some of the most dangerous military advances on the planet.
So I am not sure what the prospects are of getting a ‘better’ Democratic president are.
Unless you go back to FDR (who was no friend to the Global South) every Democrat since Truman has watered down or dismantled social programs and expanded U.S. imperial capability and intervention. This strengthen’s Krishna’s argument in some ways that the status quo is too awful to distinguish between Democrats and Republicans but I think on average Obama has done better than the Democratic average even if he has been vastly disappointing in comparison to what he promised. It is also demonstrates that 'teaching the Democrats a lesson' is unlikely to do much. What is the better Democratic candidate that is likely secure a nomination. All of the criticisms made by Krishna and Dator are as true or more true of Hilary Clinton.

The third argument that we should punish Obama is to me just a variant of the second argument. The exception being I am sure while initially disappointed Obama would find the time off much more rewarding than the fight he will face against Tea Party Republicans for four years. However this is the most important difference for me. The radical wing of the Republican party is increasingly well organized and already well armed. The fever pitch of their hatred and their glee for the suffering of others is likely to produce a legislative agenda that gives the backlash against Reconstruction a run for its money. The Tea Party wants more war, more guns, more executions, no social safety net, more prisons, harsher punishment for non-violent and violent crimes, legalized discrimination against immigrants and religious minorities, an end to abortion, a number of terrifying amendments to the constitution, more protection for corporations as legal individuals, less privacy for actual individuals, and a total disregard for the suffering of people abroad not to mention a near hostility towards the natural environment. Romney will complain about the more extreme of these proposals, then spin his opposition as being principled but not sufficient to justify a veto. The worst of these Obama without worry of reelection will veto, veto, veto. He will also use the bully pulpit to speak out against such measures. That is a real difference for people everywhere.

The final argument in favor of Obama is what I would like to call the flinch factor. If real change from below emerges anywhere in the world Obama will flinch before he crushes it. I think this played a significant part in the MENA uprisings. They were, for me, less about the authoritarians that they overthrew and more about a refusal and revision of the global system underwritten by U.S. intervention, security assistance, and security guarantees. I am not claiming that these uprising were inspired by Obama but that after Obama's Cairo speech apologizing for the U.S. overthrow of Iran and pledging to become committed to self determination that many more people were hopeful about the U.S. simple remaining silent or less proactive than they have been in the past. In the case of Egypt I do not think this can be underestimated. Without that shift in the ethos of the United States (if we want to engage in counter-factuals) I can imagine McCain calling the uprisings Islamic, the Western Media buying and supporting that description, and the U.S. directly assisting and even intervening on behalf of Mubarak and Gaddafi. McCain was until after his defeat a vocal defender of both when negotiating arms deals and played a significant role in propping up Musharraf among many other unforgivable dictators. I think this is also true at home. Under a Republican administration activist in the U.S. will feel less safe and will be less safe. Under Bush militias like the Oath Keepers and Hutaree Militia became military powers that could compete in the global arena. Bush would have already sent in National Guard to break up the Wall Street protest. Under Romney the same would occur. Obama's silence is much valued at a time when the Tea Party says they want to water the ground of liberty with the blood of liberals.