There is no double standard, right?

[ProSense]

David Sirota writes a piece criticizing Melissa Harrs-Perry.

By seeing this record and then explaining away declining liberal support for President Obama as a product of bigotry, Harris-Perry exhibits the ultimate form of both denialism and elitism.

Really? Who is in "denial"?

From Sirota's piece.

Taken together, we see that Obama -- as opposed to Clinton, who at least paid (often empty) rhetorical homage to liberalism -- has proudly and publicly stomped on the very progressive promises that got him elected.

Got that: Clinton's empty rhetoric was special and deserving of some praise, but Obama, who has achieved much of what he promised, is different and deserves to be roundly criticized, even rejected, because he didn't pay "(often empty) rhetorical homage to liberalism."

He worked in the Clinton WH, and is doing the same BS that Perry points out, introducing an excuse for Clinton.

Perry's point isn't that people weren't critical of Clinton at the time, it's that some of Obama's current critics are all too willing to excuse away Clinton's actions, including his policy failures, while harshly criticizing Obama, who has in many cases reversed or moved away from some of those policies.

No matter how many people try to hi-five and ignore it, the fact is that it exists. There are examples of it all over the Internet and in the MSM from people pining away for Clinton and begging Hillary to run, and I'm not talking about Dick Cheney. Many of these are critics who attacks Obama for not being progressive. They attack him from the left. They use Clinton's economy to criticize Obama.

Case in point, this 2011 article by Robert Kuttner: Black and Bleak

What a terrible irony this Labor Day that under America's first African-American president, black unemployment has risen to its highest level since the early Reagan years, and decades of black progress on homeownership have been wiped out.

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A rising tide does not necessarily lift all boats, but African-Americans made great economic progress in the late 1990s, when overall unemployment was low. In those years, the black-white wage gap and unemployment gap narrowed. Full employment and tight labor markets are always good medicine.

Bill Clinton was facetiously said to be the first black president, not just because of his comfort level with the black community and his appointment of African Americans to senior positions, but because of this very real material progress -- now largely reversed.

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The problem is less Obama's failure to target black unemployment per se than his weakness on the jobs issue generally. Race comes into the equation because of an almost pathological aversion to conflict on Obama's part, which has been widely attributed to his wish to bridge racial and ideological gaps.

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The President's race has nothing to do with African American unemployment. Kuttner credits Clinton for "very real material progress" for African Americans, and blames Obama for a situation that is a direct result of Clinton's deregulation policies.

Now let me quote Clinton on the economy, from this piece:

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Voters may not care, but it’s worth pointing out the truth from time to time anyway. As Bill Clinton explained on “Meet the Press” last weekend, “First of all, he became president just a few months after the financial crash. Now, keep in mind, even before the financial crash, in the eight years before the financial crash, we had almost no new jobs. Only 10% as many as we had when I was president. Real family income was lower than it was the day I left office. The economy was weak as could be. Then you had this financial crash. Historically these things take five years to get over…. The American people are not used to waiting five years for anything good to happen, but that’s what we’re facing. And if you want to speed it up, we got to do things in the government.”

High expectations are one thing, but a double standard is quite a different thing. Sometimes it's deliberate, but not always. Still, it exists.

Even this from Walsh's piece merits attention:

The difference between Clinton's booming economy and today's broken one creates political problems for Obama in another way: He was largely elected due to Americans' fears that we were headed into an abyss, and their faith that he would bring the economic change he promised. Like a pilot taking over with a plane in a nose dive, Obama kept the economy from crashing, but he hasn't lifted it into smooth skies. Maybe it makes me an unrealistic and entitled white progressive -- that's pretty much what black author Ishmael Reed called Obama's white critics -- but I think it's clear that even with a recalcitrant Congress, the president could have done more than he did to dismantle the rigged system that let Wall Street destroy the economy, as well as more to help its casualties.

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Walsh's piece is an attempt to rebut Perry's commentary of a double standard. Here, she's basically saying that Obama should have accomplished more with a Congressional majority similar to Clinton's, who failed to accomplish much in his first two years.

Filibusters

111th Congess (2009-2010) - 136

103rd Congress (1993-1994) - 80

The polls

President Obama's support is now above 50 percent among all but whites, whose approval is more than 20 percent lower than the other groups.

Gallup, Sept 12 - 18: Obama's approval climbs 6 percent among Hispanics (previous week)

Male: 36% (41%)

Female: 43% (45%)

White: 31% (35%)

Nonwhite: 65% (63%)

Black: 82% (86%)

Hispanic 53% (47%)

November 2009: Obama's Approval Slide Finds Whites Down to 39%

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It is important to note that this pattern is not unique to Obama. For example, Bill Clinton averaged 55% job approval during his presidency, including 52% among whites but a much higher 76% among nonwhites and 82% among blacks.

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That average is more than 20 points higher than Obama's current approval among that group.

To Perry's point:

The relevant comparison here is with the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton. Today many progressives complain that Obama’s healthcare reform was inadequate because it did not include a public option; but Clinton failed to pass any kind of meaningful healthcare reform whatsoever. Others argue that Obama has been slow to push for equal rights for gay Americans; but it was Clinton who established the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy Obama helped repeal. Still others are angry about appalling unemployment rates for black Americans; but while overall unemployment was lower under Clinton, black unemployment was double that of whites during his term, as it is now. And, of course, Clinton supported and signed welfare “reform,” cutting off America’s neediest despite the nation’s economic growth.

Today, America’s continuing entanglements in Iraq and Afghanistan provoke anger, but while Clinton reduced defense spending, covert military operations were standard practice during his administration. In terms of criminal justice, Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act, which decreased judicial disparities in punishment; by contrast, federal incarceration grew exponentially under Clinton. Many argue that Obama is an ineffective leader, but the legislative record for his first two years outpaces Clinton’s first two years. Both men came into power with a Democratically controlled Congress, but both saw a sharp decline in their ability to pass their own legislative agendas once GOP majorities took over one or both chambers.

Again, Perry's point isn't that people weren't critical of Clinton at the time, it's that some of Obama's current critics are all too willing to excuse away Clinton's actions, including his policy failures, while harshly criticizing Obama, who has in many cases reversed or moved away from some of those policies.