Obama told the nation and the world that he wanted to "fundamentally transform the United States of America". What do you think he meant by that?
What did Glenn Beck mean when he said it?
(ed: I did not realize how that phrase is a fucking dog whistle for the right. you want to see 40 odd pages of seriously paranoid shit just google it)
I'll answer your question by the way. Here's the quote, although he's had different riffs on it:
"After decades of broken politics in Washington and eight years of failed policies of George Bush and 21 months of a campaign that's taken us from the rocky coast of Maine to the sunshine of California, we are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America."
So what do I think he meant? I don't think it's mysterious. I think he meant that the popular perception of Washington is that it's a cesspool of corruption and waste, partisanship and personal attacks, nasty rhetoric and any particularly worthy accomplishments are very few and far between. He meant that nearly all politicians are viewed as lying opportunistic shits who only look out for number one. He meant that political campaigns are about backstabbing cheapshots and spun numbers.
And he meant that it was his intention to change this. Recall, hope and change. Turn the page on the old politics. Turn the other cheek. While Hillary was attacking him incessantly, for months he was being called weak and idiotic for not hitting back in the same way. He spoke of bi-partisanship, transparency, accomplishing compromise, disagreeing without being disagreeable.
Now you can believe he was sincere, or you can believe, as I do, that it was simply not going to be possible to accomplish much change given exactly how fucked the situation actually is and is perceived to be. Maybe he bought into his own hype a little too much. Either way, what I believe he meant is that he wasn't going to play the game as it's been played, and he was going to try to improve the way the discourse works. He said it would not happen overnight, that change was hard and would take a very long time, but that he was going to give it a start.
You can believe he was full of shit, and you can believe he failed even if he was sincere. But what doesn't make a whole lot of sense is taking that one little phrase and assigning to it his intention to turn the US into the USSR. His positions were almost identical with Hillary's. The main reason he gets this paranoid shit is the whole "black, other, muslim, hussein" thing. The paranoia on this is monstrously huge.
What exactly has he done that you would consider more transformative to our political system than SCOTUS' decision in Citizens United?