What does that mean?
Ezra KleinAs of yet, Obama hasn't proven very effective at building support for liberal legislation. There are lots of reasons of this, only some of them relating to his sales job, but the fact of the matter is that neither stimulus nor health-care reform nor a more activist government are particularly popular right now. But Obama has proven extremely effective at passing liberal legislation: Though the bills are imperfect and filled with difficult compromises, Obama passed health-care reform, has gotten, at this point, well more than a trillion dollars in stimulus, and leads a more activist and engaged government than this country has seen in many years. I don't think anyone, looking at the Obama campaign in 2008, would expect his presidency to have shown both the strengths and the weaknesses that it has.
So he is strong and weak? The debate is becoming incoherent. Is the weak part because the President isn't calling out Republicans daily?
The furor over the tax cuts compromise is one thing, but the claim that the President is weak or has sqaundered an opportunity, as the new talking point goes, is bogus. Some of the commentary calling for a primary claim President Obama is no Progressive, but they also claim that they knew that all along. What exactly did he squander? The resurgence of the Republican Party has more to do with the media giving them credibility. If the pundits spent more time calling out Republicans as much as they do this President, that would help to dimish them.
Back to the tax cuts. Congress should have taken up the bill before the election, but they chose not to. Last Saturday, the Senate voted on two tax-cut bills, including one that raised the threshold to $1 million, and both failed. Four to five Democrats voted against one or the other.
If the Senate had a better plan that could pass, why didn't they present it? Why wait until the President offers a compromise to start screaming?
If Senators know how to get stronger legislation through the Senate, they need to share their secret with the President and all Americans.
Still, squandered?
RACHEL MADDOW, HOST: Good evening, Keith. I‘m warming up the big election desk for us tonight already, trying to make sure that my knees fit underneath it.
OLBERMANN: Is it heated?
MADDOW: You know, it‘s a little warm.
OLBERMANN: Uh-oh. We‘ll send maintenance over. This again? Does anybody know about that? It‘s like the wiring again?
MADDOW: It‘s not ticking. It is a little warm. I‘ll let you know if anything exciting happens.
OLBERMANN: I‘ll bring my bucket.
MADDOW: Thank you, Keith.
And thanks to you at home for staying with us for the next hour.
At this time tomorrow night, we will be giving you some of the first results from this year‘s elections. Twenty-four hours from right now, I will be sitting in this very spot—actually I think I‘m sitting where Chris is going to be sitting. I‘ll be sitting in a spot really close to this spot, maybe over here, alongside my MSNBC colleagues and we will be reporting what is happening across the country in the 2010 elections.
Now, no matter what happens in any individual race tomorrow night, the aggregate result is sort of clear from here. Republicans are going to pick up seats. Probably, Republican will pick a lot of seats.
In 2006 and in 2008, the last two elections, the aggregate story on election night was the exact opposite. Those were two huge elections for Democrats. And over those last two elections, Democrats picked up a total of 52 seats in the House, 14 seats in the Senate.
If predictions for tomorrow‘s results are borne out, Democrats have a chance at holding on to the Senate but they will likely lose control of the House of Representatives. It is not done a deal, but that‘s what everybody is predicting. That means that we are now at an important moment in this country‘s political history.
It took them a couple of elections to do it, but what the Democrats built for themselves over the last few years culminated in 2008 with a Democratic president, a Democratic Senate, and a Democratic House. That trifecta will likely no longer hold true as of tomorrow night.
When the new Congress that‘s elected tomorrow is sworn in in January, we will likely be entering into a period of divided power in this country. Now, the pundits and political scientists always say that Americans prefer divided power, and maybe that‘s true.
But one government is not divided, like in this past 21 months, when one party controls the executive branch and the legislative branch. It gives you a rare but clear and unobstructed view of what that party stands for, what that party‘s made of, what that party values.
Democrats and liberals especially often criticize their own party for not acting boldly enough when given an electoral mandate.
But in this moment, before it is judged by voters, what did Democrats do? What did Democratic politicians do? What did the Democratic Party do with these last 21 months? What did they stand for? What were they made of?
It turns out what they were made of was historic.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
moreWith the passage of financial regulation in Washington today, President Obama took to the very un-momentous setting of “Twitters,” as he called it yesterday, to say this, quote, “Last night‘s House Senate agreement on Wall Street reform represents the toughest financial reform since the Great Depression.”
It turns out that a lot of things that have happened in the less than two years of this administration are the biggest or first or most important in generations. On the occasion of the Wall Street reform announcement today, Taegan Goddard at “CQ Politics” wrote, “Not since FDR has a president done so much to transform this country.”
Even before today‘s historic Wall Street reform agreement, President Obama, of course, did what politicians have been trying to do for more than 60 years. He passed health reform, which, for the first time, establishes government responsibility for the health care of American citizens.
Consider also the stimulus bill. It didn‘t just throw a lasso around our entire economy and yank and yank it back from the brink. It also pumped about $100 billion into the crumbling embarrassment of our national infrastructure and transportation system.
It was the largest investment in infrastructure since Ike. For solving our country‘s energy problems, something Obama has compared to man walking on the moon, it contained about $60 billion in spending and tax incentives for renewable and clean energy, also a historic investment.
It also included an unheralded but giant investment in science and tech, amping up the budgets at NASA, the National Science Foundation, and an experimental energy research agency that was created under President George W. Bush, but never funded until now.
President Obama also expanded state kids‘ health insurance to cover another four million kids. He signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act amending the 1964 civil rights act for equal pay for equal work.
He signed a nuclear arms deal with Russia that would reduce both countries‘ arsenals by a third. He created a new global nonproliferation initiative to keep nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists.
He set forth an international way forward on that radical left-wing proposition of Ronald Reagan, a world without nuclear weapons. Then there are the legislative and policy achievements that don‘t just build on previously-set precedents, but set new ones.
The Hate Crimes Prevention Act, also known as the Matthew Shepard Act. It had languished in Congress for years. The Food and Drug Administration permitted for the first time to regulate tobacco.
Better late than never, he dismantled the scandal-plagued Minerals Management Service, broke it into three parts so that the folks who collect money from oil leases aren‘t the same ones regulating the industry. And now, it will actually investigate the industry that it was busy schtupping and doing drugs with during the last administration.
Obama fired two wartime commanding generals in little over a year. He overhauled the astonishing stupidity of the student loan system in which banks were being subsidized to give loans that were guaranteed by the government anyway, a license to print money.
That was ended in the savings put toward actual aid to students. He canceled a weapons program that was bloated, unnecessary and totally irrelevant to either of our current wars, the F-22. Why even mention the cancellation of a single weapons system? Because that never happens. Weapons systems never get canceled. The F-22 did, which is itself a miracle.
In each of these achievements and in the list of things he has yet to do - “Don‘t Ask, Don‘t Tell,” closing Guantanamo - in each of these things, there is room for liberal disappointment. I sing a bittersweet lullaby to the lost public option when I go to sleep at night.
But presidential legacies are complex. Not even the Reagan administration‘s legacy is pure as the conservative-driven snow. But Taegan Goddard at “CQ Politics” was right today about nothing this big happening since FDR.
The list of legislative accomplishments of this president in half a term even before energy reform which he‘s probably going to get to is, to quote the vice president, “a big freaking deal.” Love this administration or hate it, this president is getting a lot done.
The last time any president did this much in office, booze was illegal. If you believe in policy, if you believe in government that addresses problems, cheers to that. Good night.
link- In June 2009, U.S. Forces occupied 357 bases. U.S. Forces currently occupy 121 bases, and are expected to reduce that number to 94 bases by the end of August.
link...He canceled a weapons program that was bloated, unnecessary and totally irrelevant to either of our current wars, the F-22. Why even mention the cancellation of a single weapons system? Because that never happens. Weapons systems never get canceled. The F-22 did, which is itself a miracle.
linkCalling out the right, not sqandered:
Obama: Fox News is 'destructive' to America Obama slams GOP for obstructing economic progressObama Blasts Republican Economic Policies: GOP 'Snake Oil' Could Jeopardize Economy This Presidency isn't over, and it's completely unclear, incomprehensible, why the determination is being made that it has failed so badly that it needs to end.
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