Showing posts with label President Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label President Obama. Show all posts
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Why Obama Is Breaking Up With Democrats
Obama's not a progressive, Democrats are all talk and 2012 is right around the corner.
Why Obama Is Breaking Up With Democrats
by David Swerdlick |The Root
If you need proof that President Barack Obama got what he absolutely had to out of the tax-cut deal he made with congressional Republicans, listen to the sound of silence coming out of Sarah Palin's Twitter feed.
That she and Republicans couldn't find anything to immediately blast Obama for explains why he took the ass end of a "compromise" that swapped two more years of Bush-era tax rates for an extension of expiring unemployment benefits. He figured out that Republicans didn't really want tax cuts -- they wanted to beat him up with a six-week argument about tax cuts that would run right up until five minutes before the State of the Union.
Obama didn't give it to them. That's what he got out of the deal.
Writing for the Washington Post, the Nation's Katrina vanden Heuvel wrote that doing the tax deal would be "political self-immolation." Wrong. On Saturday, Senate Democrats couldn't pass a bill raising the top marginal rate from 35 percent to 39.6 percent for households making over $250,000. They couldn't even pass it when the line was drawn at $1 million.
No, "self-immolation" would have been Obama's barnstorming around the country at Christmas trying to sell a middle-class tax cut and then having every Republican and the same five Democrats who voted against the deal in the first place vote against him again.
So the president took -- er, left -- the money and ran. If he's smart, he'll take this opportunity to make a clean break with progressives. OpenLeft's Paul Rosenberg is cautioning progressives that the president isn't their boyfriend: "Ergo, he didn't dump you." But Obama might be an eHarmony match who caught their eye and then turned them down for a date. If progressives are smart, they'll accept a few realities that will make the end of their affair with Obama a little easier to take.
Read the Full Essay @ The Root
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Cathy Cohen: A Message to President Obama
Special to NewBlackMan
"Now is not the time to veer away from those who supported you today—Blacks, young people, Latinos and Asian Americans.”
A November 3rd Message to the President
by Cathy J. Cohen
“With the Republicans in control of the House and increased numbers in the Senate, the question now is what do the President and Democratic Party need to do to correct their course before the 2012 election?
First, they have to listen to the economic fear that voters expressed in exit polls and set their focus on the creation of jobs, jobs, and jobs.
Second, they have to deal with the fact that they lost white women and independents to the Republicans and find a way to explain to those constituencies why the adoption of health care reform, wall street reform, credit card reform, and other parts of the President’s agenda have impacted their lives in a positive way.
Third, we have to hope that the President does not pander to the center, making silly statements like Representative Boehner did in speaking of some homogenous “people’s agenda.” There is no people’s agenda, instead there are conflicting interests and preferences among the American populace. It would be easy for this administration to point to the losses among progressives such as the defeat of Russ Feingold as a lesson about the negative consequences of moving too far left from the center. President Obama and the Democratic Party must remember that they have to work to secure those parts of their base that supported them today, especially Blacks, young people, Latinos and Asian Americans.
This will mean taking on issues such as immigration reform and support for urban cities, while remembering that if individuals are provided a living-wage job they are more likely to support a progressive agenda.
A November 3rd Message to the President
by Cathy J. Cohen
“With the Republicans in control of the House and increased numbers in the Senate, the question now is what do the President and Democratic Party need to do to correct their course before the 2012 election?
First, they have to listen to the economic fear that voters expressed in exit polls and set their focus on the creation of jobs, jobs, and jobs.
Second, they have to deal with the fact that they lost white women and independents to the Republicans and find a way to explain to those constituencies why the adoption of health care reform, wall street reform, credit card reform, and other parts of the President’s agenda have impacted their lives in a positive way.
Third, we have to hope that the President does not pander to the center, making silly statements like Representative Boehner did in speaking of some homogenous “people’s agenda.” There is no people’s agenda, instead there are conflicting interests and preferences among the American populace. It would be easy for this administration to point to the losses among progressives such as the defeat of Russ Feingold as a lesson about the negative consequences of moving too far left from the center. President Obama and the Democratic Party must remember that they have to work to secure those parts of their base that supported them today, especially Blacks, young people, Latinos and Asian Americans.
This will mean taking on issues such as immigration reform and support for urban cities, while remembering that if individuals are provided a living-wage job they are more likely to support a progressive agenda.
***
Cathy Cohen is the David and Mary Winton Green Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, co-principal Investigator on the Mobilization, Change and Political & Civic Engagement survey, and author of Democracy Remixed: Black Youth and the Future of the American Politics
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