In some ways, i'm a bit relieved. All the super majority did was to make Joe Lieberman king and cripple Barack Obama. Sure, Obama made his fair share of mistakes - As he is human facing massive shit-storm. But the big picture, the narrative, the atmosphere and perception that brought last night's nightmare - That's all due to a terrible political system, a terrible media, and especially due to a terrible Democratic Party, divided and disloyal. Andrew Sullivan wrote last week: "I hate what the Democrats did to Obama", and i couldn't agree more. Because when Obama just do things by himself, this is the result:
"BY FAR THE BEST FIRST YEAR ON THE ENVIROMENT OF ANY PRESIDENT IN HISTORY"
This week marks the one-year anniversary of President Barack Obama's inauguration. The economy, war and health care are dominating discussions about what he has or hasn't accomplished.
Yet with little notice from the public, Obama has been steadily rewriting a major area of American policy — the environment — from global warming to gas mileage rules, logging to endangered species...
...After methodically reversing many of the Bush administration's environmental policies, with little help from Congress, Obama is drawing criticism from Republican and industry leaders...
"This is by far the best first year on the environment of any president in history, including Teddy Roosevelt" said Carl Pope, national executive director of the Sierra Club, in San Francisco. "Most presidents have done their best environmental work late in their term. This is a very, very strong opening."
The list of what he has done impressed every expert, as they acknowledge that it all got lost in the reality of the economy. But here's the thing:
Most of the changes have come through executive branch rules, rather than laws passed by Congress. As a result, they could be overturned by future presidents.
So Obama did it alone and it may not stick, because HUGE majority in congress is still not enough. And it's not like the corporations are going to go away quietly:
"There's no doubt they have been super active. They seem to be throwing a lot of policies at the wall and seeing which ones stick. But not all of them are going to stick," said Frank Maisano, a spokesman for Bracewell & Giuliani, a Houston law firm that lobbies on behalf of oil refineries, electric utilities and other industries.
Environmentalists, however, are just giddy about this first year. Sadly, they're delusional if they think it will be acknowledged:
"It really is a new day," said Mary Nichols, chairman of the California Air Resources Board. "When things clear up a little bit and people can focus on things other than whether they have a job, he'll get more credit."
Really? Who will give him this credit?
The media? The media celebrate today 365 days of Obama bashing. 365 days of ignoring the historic, transformative investments and steps that he took in areas like education, clean energy, transportation, science, environment, government openness, ethics, and yes, the tough and unpopular decisions he had to take to prevent a second Great Depression.
Progressives? Progressives made the environment a top priority during the campaign, but now they couldn't care less. They're so in love with the idea of using Right Wing talking points to "move the Overton Window", that they can't even see how they push the best vehicle they had in the White House in 45 years, out of the freaking Overton window.
Or maybe the public? Yea, sure, the public. The people of Massachusetts (!) gave Ted Kennedy's seat to a nude model teabagger. The public is stupid.
History. Only history will give this president credit. And historians will spend a lot of time and words on researching how the same country that elected such quality president during one of its worst periods - could give him barely 8 months to fix 8 years of catastrophe, and killed him after less than a year.