When he ran for president, Barack Obama's effervescent campaign was about hope, optimism, national unity, and, above all, the future. He offered a vision of a new world cooperatively shaped by a new generation. The message was mostly positive and upbeat, in part because it was obvious that outgoing Republican President George W. Bush had made a hash of the economy and led the country into two controversial wars. Americans, Obama strategists felt, wanted the uplift of looking forward.
Two years later the president is tentatively unveiling the strategy he and fellow Democrats will pursue in this fall's election season, and it has a heavy dose of ... looking backward. It's going to be as much about history as hope, and more about attacking Republicans than promoting his own vision. The goal is to give pause to independent voters eager to punish Obama for their economic insecurity by voting for GOP candidates. The message: we can't return power to the very people who gave us the catastrophic Great Recession to begin with.
Head.... bulging.... Pressure.... buidling..... Must keep head from exploding........
Let's take a look at just a couple of these sentences:
"It's going to be as much about history as hope, and more about attacking Republicans than promoting his own vision."
We've now seen Obama's vision for the nation and he and everyone else now knows that a vast majority don't like what they see. First of all, he's not up for election, so I'm not sure why anyone is expecting him to waste his brand of political campaigning on anyone in the Congress. He owns Hope and Change, and by the time of the election he will have been in office for almost two years. No one on the left wants to point to the lack of Hope or the brand of Change that we actually got (rather than what what was sold to his supporters.) And if there is a lack of Hope and Change, then it's equally the fault of both Obama and the Congress, who can (and have) rammed their agenda through despite protests from Republicans and the citizenry.
"The message: we can't return power to the very people who gave us the catastrophic Great Recession to begin with."
Excuse me? The Clinton administration and Democrats in Congress were the ones who forced banks and mortgage lenders to make risky loans to people who couldn't repay them. It is completely false and wholly unfair to say that Republicans are to blame for the Great Recession. Remember - Democrats have controlled the Congress since 2006. The twelve years prior - the years of Republican Congressional control - were some of the best times economically our country has ever seen.
This is the Democrats trying to whip the dead horse that is George W. Bush yet again. They've created this notion that he was one of the worst presidents of all time and are trying to make hay out of that while they still can (personally, I think his father was worse). It's simply a diversionary tactic to try to throw light away from the Democrats' actions the past couple of years: the unpopular health care reform bill, TARP, waste-fraught stimulus bills, illegal immigration, cap and trade and their actual culpability in the causes of the recession.
Then, I almost vomited when I read this:
Elections are always a game of comparison, but attack politics are not supposed to be part of the Obama brand, and they could be undercut by what Americans like best about him: his steady, genial calm.
and this:
There are signs of recovery, to be sure, and most fair-minded analysts would say that Obama’s calm leadership, even before he took office, helped save the U.S. and the world from a more widespread and immediate meltdown.
Funny, Obama has never brought to mind the words "calm" and "leadership" to me. He actually seems in over his head and has seemed at times like fish flopping and flailing around in the bottom of a boat.
What's scary is that I think some people actually believe crap like this about Obama. He's still their savior.
And finally this:
This much is clear: the president can't lead the Democrats in the midterm elections by bragging about the stimulus. But what he can do is remind everyone of the global meltdown that clobbered us all on Bush's watch in 2008—the consequence, in good measure of Bush policies and those of former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan. And he can attack what polls show to be the least popular political entity on the American landscape: the congressional Republican Party.
Alan Greenspan was Clinton's guy. Hello??? I'll take half truths and revisionism for 500, Alex.
And who did they ask in the poll, congressional Democrats? Come on. My B.S. detector is off the charts at that statement.
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