A very powerful piece of writing that I wish wasn't so accurate. I don't know which meltdown was worse: the Clinton campaign in 2008 or the Obama administration now. As an ABC journalist said, how can a community organizer lose the people's support to the irresponsible, lying, rich-serving GOP?
Obama has been too reactionary and un-aggressive. If he approached other issues like he approached the bailout, then maybe we would get somewhere. It's not like he's not giving full effort, but obviously it's not working. His campaign was innovative, focused, forward-thinking, and agile - everything his administration isn't. But that shows that campaigning and realpolitik are totally different worlds, and just because he is good at the former doesn't mean squat. Bush was a great campaigner too. Obama was supposed to be The One. Health care will probably be his Waterloo. He deferred to Reid and Pelosi too much, pushed imaginary bipartisanship too much, and squandered the summer that was fairly crisis-free (his biggest non-economic worry at the time was what, the Somali pirates?). "Health care" can't be the mission of his presidency (it's big but not enough), especially when he already anointed his campaign as a "movement". He needs a vision for a better America, like FDR and Reagan had. He needs leadership. Really this stuff should be obvious to anyone who got a B in Intro to Poli Sci.
He didn't get his own house in order. How can these few Blue Dogs destroy a super-majority? You didn't see centrists like Snowe and Specter railroading the extremist Bush agenda. As a friend said some months back, corporate interests run antithetical to democracy and progress. Their servants in both parties will see to that. Dems capitulated during the first Bush term and lost Congress anyway. The country suffered for it. I think the GOP took note of that and maybe labeled Obama as "too big to succeed". But the country is in a different place now, and the Congressional impasse is hurting us worse than our belly-flop in Iraq maybe. If this government was back in the 1930s, they would have extended the Great Depression another decade (if WWII never occurred). I feel really down actually, worse than when Kerry lost. At least Kerry was always the underdog, and didn't squander a huge advantage. Do you think it's too late for the Dems? Not that the GOP can field any compelling leaders for 2012, but where do you see the rest of his presidency going?
Other comentators are saying to liberals that this is our fault for pinning our progressive aspirations on a centrist who is further to the right of Hillary. We wanted him to be the liberal crusader he just isn't. Maybe it was just GOP nonsense, but didn't they say that Obama had one of the most leftist voting records in his brief time in the IL legislature and Senate? Well the source below shows that Obama's Senate voting record made him #16 in 2005, #10 in 2006, and #1 most liberal in 2007. So is he a centrist or a liberal or what? He might as well be centrist (or GOP) because he hasn't done much for his liberal base. He's already told the Latinos that he's delaying immigration reform until health care is passed. He didn't fight to get abortion restrictions out of the health bill. He hasn't done much for the poor (Pelosi mostly spearheaded the S-CHIP expansion), though he tried to get 30M more of them insured by 2014. He has really disappointed the anti-war Dems (and just imagine how more belligerent he would need to be if Abdulmutallab succeeded). Many gays feel like he took their vote for granted, and he's too scared to touch "don't ask don't tell" this early and repeat the Clinton mistake. Well, Obama probably figured these folks wouldn't vote for a GOP no matter what he did. But on the other hand, if he didn't treat Wall Street and the Pentagon right, that would cost him in 2012. He's also losing idependents' support like it's going out of style.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/news/2008/01/obama_ranked_most_liberal_sena_1.html
I don't think real change comes from a centrist who is risk-averse. Obama did promise to bring America together too, and it's only gotten more polarized (not all his fault obviously). Much of that is GOP backlash against him (some of it racist-inspired I think) from his many opponents. Maybe Obama doesn't know who he wants to be either. Clearly he is a different politician than 2 years ago, but of course the pressures of the office change a man. But if politics were a baseball game, clearly the Dems just blew a 5-run lead in the 8th inning.
http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R201001200900
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