‘you know, 2010 wasn’t a bad year for obama’

Steve Kornacki (Salon): It would be wrong to say that 2010 was a resounding success for Barack Obama … but while 2010 provided plenty of reasons for his allies to doubt him, the bigger story of the year was how much Obama was able to accomplish…

…..Nothing better illustrated this than the last two months of the year, after Democrats suffered massive election losses …. the last Democratic president to withstand such a midterm drubbing, Bill Clinton, had no idea how to respond …. 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.

…..Tax compromise …. 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…..

….Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell … 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, utterly eviscerated every reasonable-seeming concern that opponents of DADT repeal had been touting….

…. 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.

Full article here

plucked

Thank you cat48 🙂

‘obama bested gop in extraordinary lame duck session’

Washington Post: So this afternoon, the Senate voted to ratify New START after months of partisan wrangling and passed the bill giving health benefits to 9/11 heroes … on the same day that Obama signed the repeal of don’t ask don’t tell, a civil rights milestone. All in all, a pretty productive day.

It’s obvious enough that Obama’s rebound was remarkable, in that he has defied expectations of gridlock to rack up a fusillade of major accomplishments that have placed him in a stronger position than many expected. But there’s more: It turns out he will also emerge from the session with far more kudos from the public than Republicans have earned.

So finds a new CNN poll, which seems to confirm that Obama “won” the session hands down. It finds that voters approve of his handling of the session, 56-41. By contrast, only 42 percent of Americans approve of the GOP’s handling of it, versus 53 percent who disapprove.

The poll has more. It finds that Americans think that Obama has done enough to compromise with Republicans, 59-37. By contrast, a big majority, 68 percent, thinks Republicans have not done enough to compromise with Obama, while only 28 percent think they’ve done enough.

…It’s an extraordinary and remarkably smooth conclusion to an extraordinary and very bumpy two years.

‘the lame duck wins are adding up for Obama’

Salon / Steve Kornacki: Despite their leaders’ bluster, Senate Republicans do not have the votes to block ratification of the New START treaty. When a vote to end the GOP’s filibuster was called on Wednesday afternoon, 11 Republican senators broke with their party. With a total of 67 senators voting to kill the filibuster, the path now seems clear for the chamber to formally ratify the treaty, which calls for the U.S. and Russia to pare back their nuclear arsenals over the next seven years, on Wednesday.

Needless to say, this represents a significant political victory for Barack Obama — and not his first one this lame duck session. The White House worked intently to win over Republican support, which was more crucial than usual on START because of the two-thirds requirement for treaty ratification, and overcame a series of increasingly creative objections from some GOP senators who were intent on denying Obama a key item on his December wish list.

…. START still needs to be officially ratified, and the fate of the 9/11 bill is still up in the air; there are signs that Democrats have the votes to pass it, but Republican Sen. Tom Coburn is threatening to kill it with procedural delays. If the bill ends up clearing Congress, it will serve as another clear victory for Obama.

…Think of it this way: If you had said in the immediate wake of the November election …. that by the end of the year, the START treaty would be ratified, DADT would be history, and $300 billion of new stimulus would be authorized by Congress (with Republican support), you probably would have been laughed at. But it will all soon be a reality — and there’s a real chance that passage of the 9/11 healthcare bill will be too.