Salon: You know, 2010 wasn't a bad year for Obama

[Pirate Smile]

Quote:You know, 2010 wasn't a bad year for Obama
He was showered with cries of "Betrayal!" from some of his allies, but he achieved more than you might realize

By Steve Kornacki

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Nothing better illustrated this than the last two months of the year, after Democrats suffered massive election losses (63 seats in the House, six in the Senate and a host of governorships and state legislatures, in case you've forgotten). The last Democratic president to withstand such a midterm drubbing, Bill Clinton, had no idea how to respond, and spent months searching for a way to redefine his presidency. But Obama barely skipped a beat. He acknowledged that the election had been a "shellacking," then enjoyed some of the most productive weeks of his presidency to date.
The key to this productivity was a compromise -- one that was reviled by many liberal commentators, some of whom had been ardent Obama supporters in 2008. With all 41 Republican senators vowing to form a filibuster-proof blockade on all Senate activity in the lame duck session until and unless the Bush tax cuts -- set to expire at year's end -- were extended for all taxpayers, the president opted to make a deal: Republicans would get their tax cut extension, but only if they would cough up what amounted to $300 billion in new stimulus money (in the form of a cut in the payroll tax, an extension of unemployment benefits, and a series of tax credits).

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But it was also quite possible for liberals to live with the deal. After all, Obama had also pledged as a candidate not to let the Bush cuts expire for every American who isn’t part of the wealthiest 2 percent; without cutting his deal, that pledge would have been broken. And the stimulus money that Obama wrested from the GOP was hardly insignificant. The stimulus enacted in the earliest days of the Obama presidency had clearly helped the economy, but it has also proved woefully inefficient -- in part because it was watered down at the insistence of the "centrist" senators whose support was pivotal to enacting it. From that moment on, the idea of passing a second major stimulus program -- no matter how badly it was needed -- was out of the question, at least as far as Capitol Hill was concerned. And yet, here was Obama, weeks after a truly devastating election, announcing that Republicans had agreed to support $300 billion in new stimulus money.

Thus, it's not surprising that the initial outrage of elite liberal opinion-shapers didn't trickle down to rank-and-file liberals. As the details of Obama's tax compromise spread, in fact, polls showed wide support for it -- even among Democrats, and even among self-identified liberal Democrats. Most liberals, it seems, didn't think that the president had sold them out at all.
There was even more reason for liberals to reach that conclusion as December wore on. By agreeing to terms with the GOP on taxes, Obama ratcheted up the pressure on the Senate's few moderate Republicans to break with their colleagues on several big ticket items. Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins and Scott Brown had been willing hold up repeal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy and ratification of the new START treaty when the tax issue was unresolved, but Obama's deal made it impossible for them to rationalize further obstruction on both issues. Within days of the tax deal's enactment, the military's ban on openly gay service members was history and the new Russian treaty was agreed to.

Here, too, Obama's long game came in to play: Liberals and gay rights advocates had railed throughout his presidency that he was willing only to pay lip service to the cause of DADT repeal. Actually, though, he was being wisely patient, winning over helpful support from military leaders by refusing to rely on an executive order or the courts and commissioning an exhaustive Pentagon study on the effects of repeal. That report's release, cleverly timed for the start of the lame duck session, [b]utterly eviscerated every reasonable-seeming concern that opponents of DADT repeal had been touting. Combined with the tax cut deal, it made it utterly impossible for moderate Republicans like Brown to stand against repeal.

No modern president has seen his party lose as many seats in a midterm election as Obama did this year. And yet, no modern president enjoyed as productive a post-election congressional session as Obama just did. There are plenty of areas where his 2008 supporters can and should feel let down. And while the achievements of the lame duck session (and of his first two years as a whole) were significant, he also gambled by kicking the can down the road on some major issues, like funding for the government. But the last two months should give those who would cry "betrayal!" pause. Obama demonstrated in 2010 that he is still committed to doing much of what he set out to do -- and that he's still capable of accomplishing a lot of it.

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_r...index.html[quote]

[spazito]

Very good article, encapsulates President's long game and the successes accomplished by not taking his eye off the ball.

Thanks for posting this, it is a very good read.

[nofurylike]

thank you for posting this, Pirate smile!
it is very interesting, with much due credit given, but talk about Give with one hand, take away with the other! i guess it is a bit of a pleasing surprise to see any pundit give President Obama ANY credit, though.

sheesh! his coming through the obstructionist crap topped off by the whiner crap having accomplished ANYTHING, much less how incredibly much he did accomplish - and still kind-hearted and smiling at that! - entitles him to GLOWING kudos!!

[jaxx]

I'd call 2010 a very good year for the Democratic agenda. Much was accomplished, and it took guts to push the reforms through. I was glad to see the lame duck session so productive too....and loved it when the newbie teabaggers yet to be sworn in whined about not getting to vote no. LOL sometimes the small things are worth finding.

[Change Happens]

We know how much done! I am glad someone is wrting about it now...