I'm still hopeful we can get some of the help to Clean Energy, Education, and the States back into this bill. I haven't given up. But regardless, I don't think this turned out the way we planned.
So am asking: What do you think we should learn from this, so we do better next time? I've posted 2 of the major lessons that I think we should take forward, but I want to hear what other people think.
btw please abstain from ranting things like "Nothing works, this is hopeless, it's stupid to try, this is a dumb diary/ you are a dumb person. etc... Say that stuff somewhere else. I am trying to ask for METHODS, not insults. I am curious about specific ideas you may have of what we can do differently next time.
It sounds like Obama's finally getting serious about saving the "recovery" part of the recovery package. But for example, the video he made blasting the tax cuts section was released on Saturday morning (like it always is) and the Senate already came up with their "compromise" on Friday night.
Isn't this a case of shutting the gate after the horse is gone?
I mean, I hope I'm wrong but it seems to me that if Obama refuses to accept the so-called compromise then HE will be the one who is accused of breaking the bipartisan pledge. The time to go to bat for this package was 2 weeks ago, when it was still in the house.
If we had passed a truly great bill out of the House, which we could have done, then even if we watered it down in the Senate, it still could have been pretty good. Instead we spent so much time trying to win over Republicans that Obama hasn't spoken like this until it was already done being watered down in the House, and mostly done being watered down in the Senate.
If there is some genius plan that Obama has been using up until now. Well I just don't see it.
I don't want to be pessimistic; I'm still hoping we win this. But I also want to learn from this, and the lessons I am drawing are:
- We need to pass ultra strong bills from the House so we have some wiggle room in the Senate.
- We need to aggressively sell our bills from Day 1. The Republicans had a 2-week head start on us in framing this issue to the press. The press began covering the "controversy" of the Bill instead of the fact that a majority of Americans wanted it too pass. No one in the press has ever quite seemed to catch on the fact that the Republican's plan was basically Bush’s economic plan. And (this is the important part) we bear some of the blame for that, we should have tried harder to tell the press that. The Press is pretty dumb, they just repeat whatever their told. We already knew that. If we don't tell them anything, they just repeat what Republicans say verbatim.