Yesterday Republicans took control of the Congress. They have a veto-proof majority in the House and a clear majority in the Senate. They already have a partial control of the Supreme Court depending on how Kennedy votes on various issues. The only branch of government that they do not control is the White House.
From being one of the most popular presidents in the USA when he was elected, he has dropped in popularity to the point that at least 33% of the electorate said that they voted against President Obama in yesterday’s exit polls. It is probable that he will go down in history as being ranked in the bottom 10 presidents of the USA.
While there are those who point to the ferrous Republican opposition to him, and the immediate wild reaction of the “take back America” groups, those are not the only reasons for the fall from popularity. President Bill Clinton is a good example of a President who was unpopular with a segment of the country, and was also vilified by them. Yet, he managed to work with a Republican Congress in his second term, have a functioning government, and pass budgets that lowered the deficit he inherited from President Reagan. He actually came out more popular from his second term than he entered that term.
The difference is that President Clinton was a politician. Nowadays, the term has become a totally negative term. The only problem is that we need politicians in power. Why? Because politicians know how to reach compromises. We have seen in both the House and the Senate what it means when we elect people who “stand on principle” which ends up meaning nothing more than that they do not know how to reach agreements even with their own fellow party members.
By making “standing on principle” the end all and be all of our judgments, we have elected a generation of leaders that cannot govern because they cannot compromise and/or do not know how to conduct fruitful negotiations that lead to a resolution that a majority can vote on.
President Obama came out of a community organizer background. Community organizers talk compromise, but are actually oriented to constant opposition to someone or some organization in order to get the resolution they want. He, also, does not know how to conduct fruitful negotiations, yes, how to make back-room deals.
The Republicans dealt with their “standing on principle” people this election, blocked them, and were able to get more party-oriented Republicans elected. As a result, they fielded eminently electable candidates, dare I say politicians. At this point, I think they have the edge on being able to govern this country.
Let us hope that gridlock will stop, if nothing else because the Republicans can now outvote the President. We need a budget. We need to look at the future. We need to pass laws that do not expire in a year and cause a regular cycle of crises every time they expire. We need a functional Congress.
Repeal Obamacare!!!
Actually, I heard that the Republicans do not have a two-thirds majority in the House, which is what is needed for a veto-proof majority.
Perhaps you may be right. We certainly should pray that these Republicans, especially Tea Partiers, would govern wisely. However, I fear they will ruin the country, just as Governors Brownback and Corbett have ruined, and nearly ruined Kansas and Pennsylvania. If this happens over the next two years, a sweeping return of Democrats would be the result.
Can someone please explain to me why it’s such a bad thing to provide healthcare for all? I am stumped and frankly saddened by the continous refrain to repeal Obamacare. I have worked in healthcare for almost 40 years and I have watched families disintegrate and people lose everything they have worked for because of illness. It’s not just “those” people who “won’t work”. Insurance is expensive and won’t pay for everything but it is the only option we have since Big Pharma and the huge insurance companies have effectively ensured that they will always make tons of money off sick people. I’m so sick of the lies and deliberate disinformation put out there by people with a true agenda and deep pockets. I fear for the normal people, the ones who work hard and do everything right but because they weren’t born into a family with capital or influence, suffer and are relegated to the lowest tier because they don’t have the millions to make their voices heard above the fear and loathing being used to manipulate the population…people like me and my family. There was a time when I believed that Republicans had just a different take on life in America and that’s where compromise is good, but not this current crop. Just as you said, it’s no holds barred and a very bad attitude of “I got mine so screw you”. There is no compromise-as if all the millions of Americans who don’t agree with the Republican-no, Tea Party- agenda are not really Americans, not quite as good as them. I am fearful for what might happen…I believe there are many people who would rather see America fail than President Obama look even competent…and that is sad. (btw…it’s Betty Cyrus…apparently my wordpress acct. comes up automatically)
I believe DecodeDC has a much better reality-based analysis, particularly comparing the results of statewide referendums with elections results. I also agree with their analysis that it’s extremely unlikely the GOP will actually get the voter message polling indicates, especially since, ironically considering the election results, GOP approval is even lower than that of the Democrats.
https://soundcloud.com/decodedc/episode-59-gop-wins-bigbut-theres-more-to-the-story
With that said, your comment about Obama going down as one of the 10 worst presidents strikes me as laughable from a historical perspective. History focuses on the major achievements and failures of an administration. So far, at least, Obama really hasn’t had any of the latter — certainly nothing like Nixon or some of the others in the bottom ten. And he has some major wins in the plus column. What do people think of first when FDR is mentioned? The New Deal, of course, of which social security is one of the enduring aspects. LBJ? The Great Society, with its linchpins of medicaid and medicare. And while it falls short of those two measures, the ACA is easily third on that list for the past century. At least, I can’t think of anything else comparable. And the ACA is here to stay. Witness the way Mcconnell had to prevaricate in Kentucky on the issue just to get reelected or the comments of Kasich in Ohio. Moreover, Obama knows it’s his signature achievement, so I expect him to defend it.
Outside that, though much less sexy, Obama did achieve moderate financial reform. Dodd-Frank certainly isn’t the return of Glass-Steagal, which is what we really need. But it does have some real teeth and is a significant improvement over where we were. The Treasury Department and other agencies do now have real power to act in a crisis, which was a major question and issue in 2008.
He’s been fairly typical of post-Vietnam presidents on foreign policy. He’s at least avoided embroiling us in a foreign ground war on questionable pretexts like his predecessor, so that’s a plus. That could change still, I suppose, but hopefully not.
I’m not a particular fan of Obama and really wish a different Democrat had been president these past six years. I don’t believe anyone would have been much more effective against the scorched earth tactics of the GOP, but someone more seasoned might have avoided some of the mistakes Obama made during the first two years when he actually had a Congress in which he could accomplish something. The comparison to Clinton in the 90s is really an apples to oranges one. The GOP he worked with largely knew it still had to govern and tended to set some of its rhetoric aside once elected. (That was true even of the firebrands like Gingrich.) It looks like many of the current crop actually believe the nonsense they spout and intend to actually try to implement, which as Kansas and Pennsylvania have demonstrated, is a disastrous course.
I would tend to rate Obama right now somewhere in the middle of our Presidents with one really big, game-changing achievement.
Given that the GOP is unlikely to hear the actual voter message and nothing in their underlying demographics changed in this election, I predict they’ll continue their current course. And 2016 looks likely to follow the course of the last two presidential election cycles. Hopefully Democrats will learn something, but I’m not particularly optimistic about that either. Everything has been reduced to winning the next election and pretty much everything else has fallen by the wayside. Not sure what it would take for things to change.
It doesn’t help that we’re mostly down to two or three wings of one party rather than two actual parties. Democrats have mostly become the Wall Street friendly moderate wing of the Republican Party (with a few exceptions like Al Franken here and there). That’s certainly where Obama lies on the political spectrum. I guess when the GOP purged all the moderates from their party, they had to go somewhere. The GOP now finds itself almost in a war between its far right conservative wing and radical right wing factions. That’s the reason Boehner has had such a hard time since 2010 and I don’t see things improving with this election. As they’ve repeatedly demonstrated over the past four years, to the radical right wing faction, ‘compromise’ means getting what you demand in full without giving up anything. That’s why the GOP leaders have continually been forced to renege on negotiations. Personally, I don’t think that’s been all bad, since I thought some of the compromises Obama and the democrats were willing to make in 2011 and 2012 were phenomenally poor ones. We were saved by the radical right wing’s apparent inability to accept victory with a few token concessions. The problem with no meaningful, organized pull from the left is that the starting point for any negotiation is actually right of center. So today, moderate right-wing policy victories like the ACA are decried as ‘liberal’ because they are somewhat to the left of the almost entirely far right GOP. (For anyone wondering, the actual left wing position for health care reform has always been some form of Medicare for everyone.)
At this juncture, I think the odds are in favor of at least one more government shutdown next year and perhaps more. I don’t expect much else to happen and I expect the plight of the American people to worsen. And I think plight is a good term for the current state of things. Most Americans now believe the next generation won’t do better than their own. And unless things dramatically change, I tend to side with them.