Ryan Lizza writes about President Obama's first term in office and proceeds to make the case for the President's reelection...
Obama didn’t remake Washington. But his first two years stand as one of the most successful legislative periods in modern history. Among other achievements, he has saved the economy from depression, passed universal health care, and reformed Wall Street. Along the way, Obama may have changed his mind about his 2008 critique of Hillary Clinton. “Working the system, not changing it” and being “consumed with beating” Republicans “rather than unifying the country and building consensus to get things done” do not seem like such bad strategies for success after all.
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The article is a well written look into just how fucked up things have gotten in DC.
The President has not done what I would have done if I had been in his shoes, but I understand why he has done what he has done. The article talks about how the President chose a lot of middle ground solutions and also got frustrated with the fact that even if he was to do something he wouldn't get credit for it anyway.
Lizza also quotes a political scientist that says that the President does not have as much power as we think and is stuck being a facilitator and not a director. The bully pulpit is not a place where the sale is made to the public. You can't move public opinion and we are offered examples from the past to back this up. FDR, JFK and LBJ all faced losing midterm elections and stagnant legislative agendas.
I have my own opinions as to what I would do, but that is neither here nor there. We are at a point where we have to deal with what is. And what we have is Republicans who are nuts, ones who will not budge at all, and think they are right all the time...
Two well-known Washington political analysts, Thomas Mann, of the bipartisan Brookings Institution, and Norman Ornstein, of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, agree. In a forthcoming book about Washington dysfunction, “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks,” they write, “One of our two major parties, the Republicans, has become an insurgent outlier—ideologically extreme, contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime, scornful of compromise, unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science, and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”
Folks, it is not our fault. We are reasonable people dealing with unreasonable opposition. That opposition needs to be marginalized and defeated.
I am back on board. A week or so ago I said I was out, I had enough, I was rolling it up and packing it in. Fuck that, I'm back baby!
I am going to knock on doors, I am going to drive people to the polls, I might even do some phone banking.
In order to fix what is broken we need to get rid of the cancer that is the Republican party and then we can work on dealing with the legal corruption of our Democratic party. Don't think I am forgetting that. I just know that one problem is bigger than the other.
So that's it. Obama and the Democrats are our only solution at the moment. Not exactly inspiring but it's all we got...