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This should not come as a shocker to anyone. A new Washington Post/ABC News poll shows that Americans have significantly lost trust in Democrats’ ability to deal with the big problems facing our country:
When compared with the early months of Obama’s presidency, the GOP’s overall gains are striking. A year ago, Democrats held a 26-point advantage on dealing with the big issues; that lead is now six points. At the one-month mark, Obama’s lead over the Republicans on dealing with the economy was 35 points; it’s now five points.
Who could have guessed this would happen? All Democrats did was spend the better part of a year working on a very big issue called health care reform, and messed it up terribly. They wasted months and fought among themselves like children in an effort to protect the special interests. They removed the very popular public option and repeal of the anti-trust exemption to make the private insurance companies happy, and let a handful of senators hold the bill hostage until they filled it with all sorts of unpopular giveaways, pork, and carve-outs. Even after doing all this, they still failed to pass a bill. As a result of wasting months on health care, Democrats were unable to get another jobs bill passed, deal with finance reform, or fix our student loan system to help middle class families.
Democrats attempted to deal with a big issue and failed. Amazingly, the American people, as a result, no longer trust Democrats’ ability to deal with big issues. Failing to govern has done incredible damage to the Democratic Party’s brand.
Now, ask yourself, if you were Republicans, would you throw Democrats a lifeline by agreeing to a bipartisan compromise on health care reform? Politically, it would be a terrible move to actually give the American people the idea that Democrats are capable of governing by helping them pass any form of compromised health care reform. That is why bipartisan health care reform will not happen. Proving that Democrats are incompetent is more important to Republicans than any policy changes on health care that Obama could offer.
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I fear repubs will be voted back in for a long time. At least there was hope for change before but now no where to turn to.
This president has totally changed since being elected.
Mass made a mistake, they should have elected a green party to give the message instead of repub.
We will never get healthcare. Still hoping against hope.
There’s got be some obscene amount of money behind the scenes. The amounts offered up to those few obstructionist senate dems does not justify just ignoring the will of the people and Dem party principles and values. Something else is going on. This is just craziness.
The WH has calculated that progressives and other Democrats have no where to go thus they do what they want.
Jon – your last several posts showing how Obama’s bogus brand of bipartisanship is the enemy of progressive change are outstanding. Collected, they would make a great article.
Must have been that the election of Brown confirmed their strategy to marginalize liberals in their party. With 25% unemployment among the young voters, Financial reforms not worth a dime, and at best a worse then Nixon’s offer of Health care – good luck with the moderates Obamarhama!
After bush any democrat would have been elected. Too bad they were all eliminated in the primary early on. Hillary would have been no different… she’s a fascist neo-con. Edwards would have been a philandering Clinton redux… Imagine his little bastard crawling around the oval office while his wife and mistress looked on. That leaves Kucinch… Imagine what could have been had the American sheeple not let the Media and the rigged electonic voting machines dictate which puppet would be foisted on a thouroughly dumbed down, doped up and increasingly gullible American public. Political Athieism and mandatory lie detectors for would be (wannabe)candidate are the only hope for this rapidly crumbling democratic republic.
How would you say the calculation is different now? In the low expectations of expectation, about the issue of the bigger issues.
Ok, I think the difference now is one of magnitude. The gap between expectations and action is huge.
What does that suggest, about what the strategy is? ” What happens does for a reason”qt._______?
Could it be… (To demean expectation.) To squelch that emotion in general?
To drive down the will to power that exists in the free radicle of the population, that is “progressive.” Those who are thoughtful, correct, and seek p-r-o-g-r-e-ss, but marginalized as immature or held to seem nagging and bothersome, like a demanding… wife, child, dependent etc.
Why is it such a huge flagrant demonstration at every turn, unless the message is, what it is, in the media of observation. so to spk.
Frusteration as object lesson.
The calculation is fundamental Watson. right?
Jon, the proposition that Obama is still crying for bipartisanship because he thinks it’s going to result in a HCR bill is not tenable. The WH knows the R’s are not going to play along with even their corporatist HCR bill, because it violates their fundamental tenet (“we want power back”).
Obama and his WH crew have asked themselves the same question, “how do we not lose power after this fiasco we just oversaw?” And evidently their answer is “get more votes from the center than we lose/lost from the base by pointing out the R’s as obstructionist.”
Personally I think this tactic is looney it’s so destined to fail, but then I’ve come to think everything these guys do (as opposed to say) is beyond comprehension.
I just read Obama’s statements about how he doesn’t begrudge bankers their multi-million dollar bonuses and how that’s “just the free market.” Not only is this inconsistent with reality, it’s inconsistent with the Obama who ran for office, and it’s politically tone-deaf. He’s utterly lost right now. He’s going to call for “reason” and “sensible discussions” and “calming down” and “bipartisanship” until his presidency fizzles out, and he’s steamrolled by the populist anger stolen by the right. He doesn’t get it and he never will.
To paraphrase a true Nobel Laureate: “Oh.My.God”
So where is Tim Kaine and the DNC apparatus. We are well into the beginning of the 2010 campaign season. Healthcare and the job bill are hanging out in media limbo. Tim Kaine is AWOL or MIA. I thought he might have passed away, except I caught a brief glimpse of him in the background of the DNC retreat. I guess he had to show for that. So who is going on the warpath to contradict the Republican lie machine. I guess they are planning to start the media blitz in 2011. They will get much better ad rates then. Actually the only ad campaign I have seen them be responsible for was Ben (I wish I was a Repub) Nelson’s against the public option. It is time to fire this bozo and let him spen more time with his family.
A very good question, indeed. Where is Kaine? After Brown’s victory in MA, I did a very unscientific random questioning of some of my pals (both progressives & conservatives) asking if they knew: a) who is chair of the RNC, and b) who is chair of the DNC. I’ll give you one guess as to who my liberal, progressive friends knew about… only assclown Steele.
We can point at & mock Steele all we want; at least he’s out there doing his assclown thing. Does anyone anywhere ever see or hear about or know Kaine? I’m amazed that you picked him out of the background at the DNC retreat. I don’t know what he looks like, so I wouldn’t even be able to do that.
I’m a political junkie (as is obvious by me posting here), and the fact that I don’t even know what Kaine looks like speaks volumes, esp after the success of Howard Dean.
What it says to me is: we progressives are “retards” being marginalized by the corporate “wing” of what the so-called “Democratic” party has become. We don’t see Kaine bc what does it matter? We have a one party system with two sub-groupings, and each sub-grouping is there to do it’s bit in the Kabuki show.
Howard Dean was great in GOTV for the Rahmbama bait & switch machine; now they don’t want him around – he doesn’t fit into their plans. I have no idea how Kaine fits… probably is out their shilling for big corporate bucks or whatever. So why should peons & non-entities (aka voters) even know about that? We’re beside the point at this stage.
It is too bad. I told someone a long time ago that if President Obama did just half of the things he stated he would do people would love him. This guy has not been able to do anything. Part of problem is that he doesn’t have any communicators within his administration such as a Carville or Begala.
Bingo.
And amen.