WASHINGTON – This is what happens when Candidate Obama is unleashed.
From Art, who covers the movement progressive beat over at my place and runs a Democratic group in Texas.
color me relieved frankly by his debt details…
Relief isn’t exactly a rousing call to action, but perhaps it’s a new beginning.
For David Brooks, it’s decidedly not.
I’m a sap, a specific kind of sap. I’m an Obama Sap.
So, Obama gets the base to react even if what he’s proposing is exactly what the “professional Left” has been advising for ages. Ideas Pres. Obama has shunned, his team has derided, while he offered back door proposals that sell Democratic Party principles out completely, as the elite media applauded bipartisanship on the Right’s terms. Yes, I’m reiterating these points yet again, but they’re the whole ballgame, even if Team Obama won’t admit they were wrong all along.
Pres. Obama and his reelection team have figured out he can’t get reelected with only his loyal fan base, because it’s dwindled significantly since ’08, so he’s got no choice but to do what every single politician seeking reelection must do and that’s rev up his base and those fickle Independents, a very large swath who vote on persona more than anything else. Without them, which includes a lot of die hard progressives who make a difference on the ground, Obama would be a one-term president. Because you can bet Republicans are planning to do everything they can to make that happen.
From Ezra Klein yesterday:
The administration was initially pleased to see press reports detailing their willingness to compromise and surveys showing the American people thought the GOP far more intransigent. In their theory of politics, that meant they were winning. But they soon learned that voters aren’t interested in compromises that don’t lead to results. Obama looked like a nice guy, and that kept him personally popular. But he looked like an ineffectual leader, and that led his job approval to dip below 40 percent in some polls. […] The White House could have been hammering that message since the day the House Republican Conference passed Ryan’s budget. They didn’t. The truth is, they didn’t want to. The president doesn’t think of himself as that kind of Democrat. He believes that there are sensible cuts that can be made to both Medicare and Social Security. […] But the second-best outcome isn’t necessarily looking like the most reasonable guy in the room. It’s looking like the strongest leader in the room. – Ezra Klein
Democrats and progressives from all quarters are “relieved.” That’s the word I’m hearing and reading.
If you’ve been listening to Republicans they are not. Candidate Obama resurfacing this far out from 2012 is their very worst nightmare.
However for many, it’s almost like the last 2 years never happened, proving why regular voters usually end up coming home to their political party of choice. Candidates always sound better when railing about large injustices and the differences between them and that awful man/woman from the other side. It’s when they have to govern they end up looking so spineless, because most won’t stand on a line to fight and die on principle, doing the job they were elected to do instead of worrying about their reviews.
A while back I wrote that Pres. Obama had until November to turn things around.
His jobs pitch in the well of the House last week didn’t do it. Yesterday, Pres. Obama began to make a much stronger case, the best reelection pitch he’s made. He’s quit trying to out Republican the Republicans, pivoting and hitting the target on the differences between the parties. It took him long enough.
Pres. Obama has been chased from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Candidate Obama is now running the show.
The question is after Pres. Obama’s dismal leadership the last two years whether people beyond his base will choose to believe again.
Taylor Marsh is a Washington based political analyst, writer and commentator on national politics, foreign policy, and women in power. A veteran national politics writer, Taylor’s been writing on the web since 1996. She has reported from the White House, been profiled in the Washington Post, The New Republic, and has been seen on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, CNN, MSNBC, Al Jazeera English and Al Jazeera Arabic, as well as on radio across the dial and on satellite, including the BBC. Marsh lives in the Washington, D.C. area. This column is cross posted from her blog.