I’m glad to that the president sees things about exactly the way I see them. At a fundraiser last night, he let loose on the Republicans and the way that the media covers Congress:
“You’ll hear if you watch the nightly news or you read the newspapers that, well, there’s gridlock, Congress is broken, approval ratings for Congress are terrible. And there’s a tendency to say, a plague on both your houses. But the truth of the matter is that the problem in Congress is very specific. We have a group of folks in the Republican Party who have taken over who are so ideologically rigid, who are so committed to an economic theory that says if folks at the top do very well then everybody else is somehow going to do well; who deny the science of climate change; who don’t think making investments in early childhood education makes sense; who have repeatedly blocked raising a minimum wage so if you work full-time in this country you’re not living in poverty; who scoff at the notion that we might have a problem with women not getting paid for doing the same work that men are doing.
“They, so far, at least, have refused to budge on bipartisan legislation to fix our immigration system, despite the fact that every economist who’s looked at it says it’s going to improve our economy, cut our deficits, help spawn entrepreneurship, and alleviate great pain from millions of families all across the country.
“So the problem…is not that the Democrats are overly ideological — because the truth of the matter is, is that the Democrats in Congress have consistently been willing to compromise and reach out to the other side. There are no radical proposals coming out from the left. When we talk about climate change, we talk about how do we incentivize through the market greater investment in clean energy. When we talk about immigration reform there’s no wild-eyed romanticism. We say we’re going to be tough on the borders, but let’s also make sure that the system works to allow families to stay together…“When we talk about taxes we don’t say we’re going to have rates in the 70 percent or 90 percent when it comes to income like existed here 50, 60 years ago. We say let’s just make sure that those of us who have been incredibly blessed by this country are giving back to kids so that they’re getting a good start in life, so that they get early childhood education…Health care — we didn’t suddenly impose some wild, crazy system. All we said was let’s make sure everybody has insurance. And this made the other side go nuts — the simple idea that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, nobody should go bankrupt because somebody in their family gets sick, working within a private system.
“So when you hear a false equivalence that somehow, well, Congress is just broken, it’s not true. What’s broken right now is a Republican Party that repeatedly says no to proven, time-tested strategies to grow the economy, create more jobs, ensure fairness, open up opportunity to all people.”
In other words, the Democratic Party is behaving as a center-left party consistent with the long history of this country since the New Deal. The Republican Party is behaving as a radical party that has no parallel in the 20th Century. There is no equivalence between the two parties in terms of who is at fault for gridlock. Unless you basically reject the post-war consensus on how to run the federal government, you have to see the problem as 100% the fault of the Republicans.
#republicansHateYou
Obama is best president ever !!!
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Enjoin with my kids on this website
Hats off to the President. Every Dem candidate for office this fall needs to read this. Then they need to repeat the President’s words every time they are talking to folks on the campaign trail. It’s not that difficult to grasp, but to clear away the media smokescreen, this has to become our mantra. If we don’t hammer this home to the American people, there is no one else out there who will. If it’s not there already Booman, perhaps you could export a copy of this to Big Orange?
Very nice. It’s been two years since Mann and Ornstein wrote their classic opinion in the Washington Post in parallel with their excellent book:
Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.
I was also happy to see from a link that Greg Sargent put a name on a too common simplistic notion about presidential power:
My question is – Can some pounding on this narrative over the summer help Dem chances at the polls in November?
Do you know why certain quarters believe in the “Green Lantern theory”? Because there are certain issues, usually not domestic economic ones sadly, that the President can get what ever he wants. Say C- Augustus waging war. Or the NDAA Act.
I think it’s because when we have presidential elections, it’s all: when I’m president, we’ll have universal health care. We’ll have equal pay for equal work. I’ll close Guantanamo on day one. I’ll fix our broken immigration system. I won’t get us into unnecessary wars.
They don’t say: well, the president only has so much power. I can only keep promises on the domestic front if both houses of congress make the laws to do what I want. And even on foreign policy, I only have so much power. I can mostly keep us out of stupid wars, but I might not even be able to close Guantanamo because of the cowards and obstructionists in congress.
In 2008 Ezra Klein wrote an interesting article on that called “The President Doesn’t Matter”:
http://prospect.org/article/president-doesnt-matter
The President has the power of appointments if he can get them past the Senate, and the way the game is rigged we have seen that that is hardly a guarantee anymore. Since JFK was gunned down in the Capitol of Oil in 1963 foreign policy has been controlled by the CIA, the military and the corporations that control them. It will remain thus until it is exposed and the will of the people breaks this alliance. I don’t see it happening in my lifetime.
You misread the green lantern theory if you assumed it meant the President holds little power on all issues. No, it is just the recognition that many assume the Prez has more influence over Congress than he/she really has. Sargent has an interesting theory why the GLT is perpetuated in the media. The link to Sargent’s piece on that is here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/04/30/why-the-green-lantern-theory-of-presiden
tial-power-persists/
But then most Americans have little idea how federal government works, so out of convenience they buy into the “Prez runs the whole show”. See the link I gave to Watergirl on that.
Yup. All the stories about how the anti-bulk spying bill is now so bad it EXPANDS INFORMATION COLLECTION mentioned how hard the white house pushed for the changes.
Funny, when it comes to ripping the soul out of this country executive power seems so effective!
The President has become more and more truthful and succinct in his rhetoric. I wish he had begun this way, as soon as the Republicans decided to say “no” to everything. This is how he should have been talking when the Democrats pushed through the ACA. He should have taken on Wall Street and the intelligence community. There should have been a sense of at least attempting to achieve justice which, if thwarted, would have been on the hands of the Republicans.
But that’s all water under the bridge. Despite his mistakes, Obama is a well meaning and very effective president who has done a great deal of good despite unprecedented levels of obstruction. I hope he spends the rest of his days speaking truthfully about the problems before us. He still has important regulations to promulgate in his second term which will need to be defended. Beyond his presidency, he can be an effective voice in support of the Democratic worldview.
And then the media ran to Cruz and asked him what he thought.
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The Republicans’ only tool is a sledgehammer. With the exception of border security, I don’t think there’s a single problem that they don’t want to solve by demolishing the government.
Meanwhile, the Democrats are perfectly willing to engage in demolition where it’s really necessary, but they’re also interested in building things. That’s the critical difference here. The Republicans have come to the position that the only legitimate function of government is to dismantle itself.
Yes President Obama has come out swinging trying to set the record straight. Here is the problem behind this one. He is the President and he cannot do this alone! Everyone needs to push their Democratic members of Congress to join in and push the points that President Obama brought out. By push I mean multiple joint press conferences, Town Hall meetings. It is past time that so called Independents be pushed to see the truth about the GOP and the media.
If all unitedly push this message hard we can keep the GOP on the defensive.
At least we get to vent to our Congressmen abouttheir being quiet.
There may be no American parallel (?) but there are indeed numerous parallels – we just dare not speak them in polite society for fear of being deigned unserious…
They definitely have the tactics down.