President Barack Obama at his press conference today drew a stark contrast between his administration and the Republicans in Congress who are dedicated to obstructing any sound economic program for purely short-term political advantage. He also made a convincing case for ditching George W. Bush's reckless, deficit-ballooning government relief program for rich people and corporations. It was a great economics seminar on how the Republican/Chamber of Commerce "free market" policies over the past decade brought the country down to the sorry state it now finds itself. But as a political salve for suffering Democratic congressional and state candidates it didn't do much to change the dominant narrative.
Unfortunately, the president stopped short of making a dramatic announcement that he was appointing Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren to head the new financial consumer protection bureau. That announcement would have energized the Democratic base and provided candidates at the local level with evidence that the administration in Washington still has a pulse with respect to the interests of middle-class Americans.
But on Professor Warren's future job prospects he was cagey -- unnecessarily so.
"I'll have an announcement soon about how we're going to move forward," is all he said. The only thing this stance accomplishes is to reinforce the narrative that he is still leaning toward Tim Geithner, Larry Summers, and Rahm Emanuel instead of Professor Warren on the central economic issues and attitude toward Wall Street. Elizabeth Warren is quite simply the only person affiliated with the administration in any way who has clearly stood up for the vast majority of Americans who earn $50,000 a year or less. She's been a fighter against the Wall Street interests that Obama seems committed to coddling. Memo to White House: Coddling Wall Street is not very popular these days.
Professor Warren is the "Change" Obama talked about for two years while he was running for president. If he doesn't have the guts to appoint her and names someone else to head that agency it will take even more of the wind out of the sails of the Democratic base going into the elections. He ducked the Warren issue and thereby missed a great opportunity to bridge a small section of the yawning "enthusiasm gap."
The only questions that matter politically right now are: How did the president's press conference today help politicians like California Senator Barbara Boxer, who is being savaged in a barrage of mean-spirited and inaccurate television ads paid for by out-of-state money from the national Chamber of Commerce? And how did the President's remarks today help candidates who are targeted by the $100 million post-Citizens United corporate slush fund managed by Karl Rove called "American Crossroads?"
The Afghanistan portion of his press conference was by far the weakest. The idea that Hamid Karzai is going to do anything to curb "corruption" is a foolish delusion. For a moment the President's eloquence left him and he seemed to be channeling George W. Bush. Someone has got to get through to him that a country that is reeling economically cannot continue the costly illusion of being a global hegemon. The military budgets and the costs of the wars are bleeding the U.S. treasury dry.
The supreme irony here is that there shouldn't be any kind of "enthusiasm gap" going on at all because, let's face it, Obama is the very best president we could ever elect in our corrupt and money-soaked political discourse.
Obama's political hack Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, who sparked Sarah Palin's saccharine wrath by calling progressives "retarded," (whose leaving would be the best development for the Obama White House since the inauguration) has been whispering in the President's ear for two years that there was political gold ($$$) by playing nice with Wall Street and screwing over his progressive base; hence, the great "enthusiasm gap" of 2010!
Remember the lengthy primary of 2007-08? A great many Democrats who comprise the base of the party believed they had cast their vote against Hillary Clinton in order to block a Clinton restoration. Yet it seems a Clinton restoration is what they got. It's not surprising then that two years later these same base voters lack "enthusiasm." The spectacle of a Democratic president forsaking those who elected him to court an imaginary "center," or to "reach out" to a recalcitrant and belligerent Republican minority has an aura of déjà vu to it.
Dispirited Democrats might be a little less dispirited right now if President Obama had beaten up on Wall Street a little more, or forced banks to renegotiate underwater mortgages, or fought for single payer health care, or held to account former Bush officials who were responsible for some of the more egregious abuses, or appointed an Education Secretary who values teachers, or withdrew U.S. military forces from Afghanistan, or . . .
There is an "enthusiasm gap" between Republican and Democratic voters where there shouldn't be. But there also appears to be an outbreak of American amnesia. It wasn't long ago when we could see James Carville on CNN nightly denouncing people who switched their votes from Clinton to Obama as "Judases." In Fall 2010, the meta-text feels like a widespread understated longing on the part of the chattering classes for a 1994-style Republican route. Obama must continue to talk directly to the American people but he also must take concrete steps toward reinvigorating public institutions, unapologetically, and throwing a lifeline to a drowning middle class.
Follow Joseph A. Palermo on Twitter: www.twitter.com/N/A
If you are reading this, Michelle Obama, it's long past time to knock your hubbie up the side of his head and tell him his Presidency is doing a whirlpool 'round the drain and sinking fast. One thing we know about leaders, when they lose the trust of their followers they never get it back. Barry, you've pretty much lost the trust of those who elected you. You have one chance left and that will require a RADICAL CHANGE in leadership style and you'd better hope you retain both houses of Congress.
Where are the naked women?
in America so people will ignore the republican obstructionists & vote them in.
It's OK with me. :) It will be fun to see what they got besides giving billionaires
a tax cut. Have a nice Sunday. I can't fan you again but faved anyway.
It'a a performance gap. He's more like Bush than Clinton.
The problem is that he isn't serving the people that voted for him. He knows it but he thinks he get away with it by blaming the GOP and fudging a bit.
I think he has very low opinion of the average American. I don't think he cares much about us.
But here in California we've got fairly aggressive term limits in the state legislature, and it means that the politicians have an incentive to do stuff that looks good up front, but won't be around when their programs fail or keep spending money the state doesn't have, and the Republicans have an incentive to never raise taxes because that's the Rove/Norquist mantra, and don't care that the Democrats have raised spending (as have the Republican-built prisons and longer prison terms.)
And the lobbyists are the only people providing any semblance of political continuity in Sacramento, so they end up running things much more than if we didn't have term limits.
Here are some bottom line facts, for you to mull over. Enjoy the graph.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show/#39107968
Yeah, like the proverbial money tree. We can have an Interstate road system, a standing Army, Navy, Air Force,and Mariners, and we can pay for it by,......here it comes,....a tax reduction.
And we allk now, tax breaks pay for themselves because the first thing rich people do with their tax break money is invest it in jobs for the middle class.
You gotta wonder if these people ever truly listen to themselves.
Are they really that stupid, or do they think we are???? I guess that's rhetorical.
Fanned, by the way, for being awake
These things are obviously beyond his control. And,it just keeps getting better.Doesn't it?
The ended Obama for me. It’s a guarantee that the Bush crap continues.
The more rational of our Muslim brethren and sisters believed what they saw, and not what they were told by a conservative mullah-cadre. The concept that the capitalist system is inherently flawed is immediately felt by a remarkably creative intellect for business opportunity in the first place, for the lie that it Must be. Instead it was commented over very strong espresso that "it was natural that the vice-president placed by the corrupt capitalist Halliburton, somehow manipulated the declaration of war from his office. Of course, this is how all Arabic dictators operate as well."
The American electorate quite naturally assumes that its federal government, despite its corruption and myriad collateral flaws, honestly has our best interests at heart. Bless the Naive, for theirs will be in the coffers of those at the reins of the bought-and-paid-for Demo-Republican Congress.
Take your government back from the corporate oligarchy. They can buy your congressman, but they can't buy your Vote!
I can't stop laughing...
I hope Obama speaks non-stop between now and November.