I ask, not to pry in your personal business Kossacks, because I want to make sure you are able to witness the long faces on CNN, MSNBC (especially Morning Joke), and Faux News when President Obama signs health care reform into law.
This diary is a spin-off from President Obama is My Guy. After the diarist read an article from Bob Shrum, they wrote about why they, a card carrying progressive, support President Obama now more than ever.
Some responded that the diary was just a cheer leading diary for President Obama. Which is a funny sentiment, because I've seen numerous Obama bashing diaries on the wreck list, that are deep rooted in conjecture, but actually have no facts at all.
What I conclude from those that dismissed the diarist is that they didn't actually read Shrum's article. I did. And Shrum is on the money.
Is Obama winning takes a look at President Obama's first year, and his approach versus the conventional Washington wisdom.
Shrum writes:
On the economy, the green shoots of recovery, seeded more than a year ago, may now have their spring. On health care, the Obama renaissance is real—a historic achievement is within reach. And as these events unfold, the media, in an act of swift revisionism, may conclude that the White House, rather than falling victim to an internal conflict between idealism and pragmatism, has instead married them to advance its ambitious agenda.
This is exactly how, then, candidate Obama ran his campaign. It possessed the idealism that the country had been yearning for since President Kennedy. Were were reminded of what it was to be a hopeful nation. Yet at the same time, we heard from a practical candidate Obama. One who suggested policies that were rooted in common sense.
-We shouldn't be in Iraq, yet we do have real enemies that we know, without a doubt, are trying to attack us on the homeland again.
-The middle class should have the tax breaks, companies who ship jobs overseas should not. We should engage in trade, but it has to be fair and enforceable.
-Women should be paid the same wages as their male counterparts, nothing wrong with high standards in our schools, but progress shouldn't be measured only be a single standardized test. And the list goes on.
Shrum says specifically of President Obama's handling of the Economy:
The devoutly conservative Larry Kudlow, of the Reagan administration and CNBC, insisted on Obama’s inauguration day that markets were the most reliable predictors of the future. He was right. With unemployment down from peak levels and job losses ebbing, with housing prices stabilized and other indicators pointing up, the Standard & Poor’s stock index has soared nearly 70 percent since its March 2009 lows—and nearly 40 percent since Obama took office with an economy teetering on the brink of depression. .....
During the interregnum between passage of the stimulus bill last year and its impact this year, the president was urged to focus solely on "jobs, jobs, jobs"—as though the mantra itself would create them. But his policies had already averted the depression and begun to reverse the decline. More stimulus would help, and it will come—not in a largely symbolic jobs bill but in the Keynesian deficits of Obama’s new budget.
Obama refused to play to a public gallery angry at the bailouts that have proved indispensable to saving the financial sector. And he has defied the ill-informed clichés and partisan complaints about deficits. The fiscal outcry will fade as the economy strengthens, and a vindicated president will take the credit—and begin to close the budget gap.
Shrum is right, the green shoots are sprouting. I am a witness. I was without a job the entire 2009. Now I am working my dream job.
Psst republicans, the extended unemployment benefits is what kept me from slipping into abject poverty. We weren't looking for a hand-out from government, just a hand-up.
Shrum says on Health Care Reform:
Massachusetts supposedly sounded the death knell for a bill devoid of death panels. Washington wisdom, appearing triumphant, congratulated itself for having predicted that the smears would win in the end. But the president has a longer attention span than the cable networks. Instead, he pushed ahead, and harder, echoing the compelling clarity of his campaign voice in 2008.
Where was this full-throated champion of reform last summer? Tending to legislative strategy—patiently seeding Washington’s parched terrain. Obama had to try working with the GOP to convince enough moderate and Blue Dog Democrats to go along.
.....
Obama’s strategy, partly shaped by events, also reflects the combination of qualities that brought him to the Oval Office—and makes it more than likely that he will reach the goal that has eluded the nation since Theodore Roosevelt first proposed national health care in 1912. Obama has been "a steel fist in a velvet glove"—Carl Standburg’s description of Lincoln. The president who doesn’t panic, didn’t.
If its one thing I have learned from being a former O staffer, its that there is always a method to the Obama/Axelrod/Plouffe madness.
It always defies conventional wisdom.
And when this health care bill passes, I hope this is something we will remember as Progressives/Democrats/Independents/Sane Republicans. And maybe be a new blueprint for getting things done in Washington.
Shrum ends, where I would end if these were my words (of course he says them better).
The first electoral verdict will come in the voting booths of 2010. Despite the dire predictions, the Obama comeback could be cemented as early as November. Assuming those jobs materialize, Democrats could minimize their losses and hold both Houses of Congress.
By 2012, with a full-blown recovery and wide ranging change achieved, it may well be morning in Obama’s America. And the Republicans, desperate to explain away prosperity, or still fulminating against socialism, will once again descend ungently into that good night.
There is something about them that seems comfortable with the darkness.
Isn't this what Ali did to Foreman? Rope-a-dope.
The commentator of the Rumble in the Jungle.
"He's been taking it easy on him, and then suddenly the moment came. Watch it. And. That was no phantom. That was no phantom punch. And he's down and out. However many times you look at that, its the clearest punch you could see. George Foreman down on the floor. No phantom punch. A punch of real power. He softened his man up. They said Ali didn't have a killer punch, well that was it!"