Obama should run on this during the election. 'In the past 3 years food prices are up, gas prices are up, healthcare costs are up, your money is worth less, there are less jobs, the national debt has risen dramatically, and none of these figures are predicted to get better any time soon. But I am to blame for none of it.'. Americans will really be impressed with the maturity.
His first two years he had an enormous, virtually insurmountable roadblock. He had an opposition party that made him come up with 60 senators for very nearly every single vote. And he did not have 60 votes. Lieberman was one of those votes. Ben Nelson was one of those votes. I could name 3-5 more Democrats whose votes were extremely hard to corral. And of course he virtually never got a Republican vote. So he had to compromise mightily on every single piece of legislation and as he moved right, he lost votes on the left. No president in the history of the union has been more profoundly -- nor more constantly -- obstructed. This was a strategic move by the Republicans, a decision made at the beginning of the Obama presidency that they could only beat him with weird lies to make him seem like he's somehow un-American and stopping him from doing anything. Never mind the jobless. It was more important to get Obama out of there so we could return to the policies that created the mess in the first place. And the way to do that was to do everything in their power to see that he didn't succeed at anything, even when solutions were desperately needed and even when the solutions the president proposed used to be Republican solutions. Ideologically, Obama has been about directly in line with Bob Dole. But Bob Dole in 2011 would also be "a socialist" as would Ronald Reagan. Anyway, the point is that he didn't have "very little road blocks" as in the post I quoted. He had more significant roadblocks than any president of the last century and I defy anyone here to name another president who was more bitterly embattled by the opposition party in Congress. Bush had enough Democrats to get over what used to be the finish line for passing legislation in the Senate (51 votes -- 9 less than the Republicans now demand of Obama) and he almost never faced a filibuster. Obama, by contrast, has faced the threat of filibuster on every single proposal. In fact, Bush regularly enjoyed bi-partisan support and very little meaningful opposition on things so serious as going to war. Obama has gotten only a handful of Republican votes for ANYTHING in three years.
So your argument is that because he didn't/doesn't have cloture that he is absolved of blame? He has met strict opposition, this is quite evident; however, the president must persuade, and above any other jobs, the presidency is the one with the highest accountability. There is very little chance Democrats pick up 60 seats in the next election, so if Obama is re-elected he and the rest of America should just shrug their shoulders because the filibuster will stop everything? It's incredibly easy to just blame the Republicans. I hope Obama, should he be re-elected, takes a better approach than you.
I didn't say he should be absolved of blame. I wasn't talking about blame. I was only correcting the erroneous statement that he had "little roadblocks." Of course he should do a much better job of talking to the American people so that they will know he is fighting for them while Republicans fight only for the rich, so that the American people will support him in supporting them. But the fact that the required number of votes to pass legislation went from 51 to 60 overnight when Obama took office is worthy of much, much more mention than it ever gets. I agree with you on one point at least though: It is incredibly easy to blame Republicans. But that's only because they are guilty.
I rate Obama a B so far. He's made some mistakes for sure. Namely in dealing with the debt ceiling and health care. What is ironic is that his legislation is so watered down it really is more republican than democratic. The health care law is really republican law...and the financial reform has no real bite. Tarp wasn't even his but it was critical... But his accomplishments are still impressive. Let us review. -Saved the world from a depression... most non partisan economists will tell you this is true. The last time we had a collapse this bad was 1929. The recession ended in 2009. Jobs always lag. And now job growth is finally back...mainly because the effects of budget cuts are over. For us to be where we are in less than 5 years is amazing -Saved the u.s. auto industry. It's absolutely amazing again...there would be no GM and millions less jobs if Obama had not acted. -Obliterated al Qaeda with drone attacks. The list of key leaders dead is impressive. And of course Osama bin laden. -Helped overthrow kaddafi without the loss of a single American soldier. Impressive again -Extended health benefits to more Americans than ever before. Argue what you may...but it is landmark -Supported more democracy movements in the world than any other presidency. The amount of assistance the u.s provided to youth organizers via the state department, CIA, and other channels will not be overtly broadcasted due to diplomatic sensitives, but historians will write about it. One can't completely disconnect the symbol of a son of a Muslim being elected to the most powerful position in the world and giving an emotionally powerful message to the Arab world in Cairo. Does he deserve criticism. Of course he does. But the man has accomplished a lot too given the hand he has been dealt. And he has found his way to be a stronger leader as he finally found how to play football against a very hostile opposition party....probably the most hostile in our lifetime.
In principle I agree with you that the President should be judged on persuasiveness and that said considering how much Obama has passed he actually has been pretty persuasive. He got a stimulus passed, he got healthcare reform passed and he just got an extension to the payroll tax cut passed. Now whether you agree with that legislation or not is another matter but the fact is he got quite a bit passed.
Also the stock market is up, unemployment is trending downward (although not as rapidly as all of us would like), gas prices while fluctuating actually reached their peak in the last year of the GW Bush presidency, and finally US troops are out of Iraq.
Never before in history has a sitting president faced as highly organized, massively financed and even secretively backed propaganda opposition as Mr. Obama. From the unprecedented bias of a designated anti-Obama network news outlet to allowing PAC and Super PAC to raise and spend unlimited money anonymously, buying any ad campaign under any name with any message. The bully pulpit is over matched 24/7 just trying to counter the lies and deceit of the people that can buy the electronic message and dumb it down into crafted sound bites like " no new taxes", job creators" and "death panels" that trick the ill informed into supporting issues that do not serve them with endless repetition of simple mantras when a President must deal with the real complex legislative issues that sadly always boil down to compromises that actually end up pleasing no one. The Republicans are a Punch and Judy marionette show telling the kids to eat their vegetables and go to bed so their plutocrat parents can get back to getting fat, drunk and continuing the party. Ha! saw this elsewhere later in the day:
The Republicans in the 2012 election remind me of the Democrats in the 1984 election. A collection of buffoons, none of whom has an iceberg's chance in hell of beating the sitting President in the election. I don't agree with everything Obama has done, but he has made progress on the plate of dog***** that was left to him by the previous administration. And he's better than anything running on the Republican side.
How is Romney a buffoon? Unemployment, higher Debt and deficit, way higher Inflation, higher Credit rating, downgraded How are you measuring progress?
Romney is a flip-flopping liar of the highest order. That makes him a buffoon in my book. Read Sweet Lou's post above. He is merely stating facts:
None of those are facts except maybe extending healthcare benefits. The rest are opinions, and incorrect ones at that. HEre maybe this will help: definition of fact
This logic is just bad. Four years of 8%+ unemployment is not amazing by any measure. "It would be alot worse" is conjecture, not fact. Giving failed companies my money is amazing? Yeah, you can borrow money in my name and "save" companies with it. What an amazing achievement. Remember when Bush and Cheney were war criminals for all of the civilians they killed with drone attacks? Isn't that supposed to create more terrorists than it kills? Agreed More unpopular than ever. No way to pay for it. Premiums have increased since its passage. They've interviewed all kinds of people on the ground in Libya and Egypt, there is no evidence of this. Not to mention the utter silence when Iran was crushing the Green Revolution in 2009. Again, it's as if Obama's own narcissism has rubbed off on his supporters. No evidence for this at all.
