Obama on the Daily Show:
Obama with The Important Bloggers of Our Time:
I think that there may be additional ideas that traditionally have garnered some bipartisan support that we can move forward on. But the point that you’re making I think is really important. Yes, people are concerned about debt and deficit. But the single thing people are most concerned about are jobs. And those jobs are going to come from the private sector. We’re not going to be able to fill the hole of 8 million jobs that were lost as a consequence of the economic crisis just through government spending, but we can strategically help jumpstart industries. We can make a difference on clean energy. We can make a difference on getting businesses to invest in 2011 as opposed to deferring until 2012 or ‘13 or ‘14.
And my only real question: WHERE THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN ALL THIS TIME?
I keep thinking about this election cycle and remembering the half-hour campaign commercial. Remember that thing? It was like watching a Mack truck hit Bambi, watching that thing steamroll the McCain campaign. It was like a knockout punch when the guy’s already on the ground unconscious with, like, three of four limbs missing. It was AWESOME in its unnecessary ferocity.
And since that time, it’s been like … giant black hole. We are FUCKED out here. Fucked. No jobs, no incomes, very little help. And if we’re not going to get a pony under the tree, at the very least we need a guy we like telling us why the pony isn’t there, and how we can go to a pony farm and visit other ponies and it’s going to be awesome in its own way. Instead for six months we’ve had pissy complaining from the press room pulpit that we’re all not happy enough.
As to why that is, I think Res Ipsa’sRussian friend is right on.
Actually, he is very good president. Lots of legislation to help middle class. His problem is he wants to be statesman, not politician.
He’s trying to do stuff. He’s trying to get stuff done. And he is getting stuff done. I personally think we should stop fetishizing the middle class and start helping the poor, but look. He’s not wrong when he talks about accomplishments, but people don’t come to the conclusion they like your shit because your shit’s just good. What do we talk about when we talk about newspapers here? Marketing and distribution. Marketing and distro, cats and kittens. And ain’t nobody, until this past week or so, been marketing those accomplishments to us.
Those rallies have to be CONSTANT. They can’t just be right before election night. It’s too late then. You don’t just market when you’ve got something big going on. You market all the time. There’s a reason there are Coke commericals on the air when, and I don’t think anyone would argue, plenty of people are drinking Coke and people in space are aware it exists. Because people are busy. More than that, people aretrying to keep their heads above the rising flood here. Not everyone lives jacked into the matrix like you and I do. They need it shoved in their faces, information about what’s going on.
We bitch a lot, and politicians bitch more, that the election cycle’s never over, and blah blah blah 24-hour news cycle cakes, but nobody seems to connect that that means the election cycle’s never over. Don’t just complain about it. Act like you understand it and campaign accordingly, because ain’t nobody out here sympathetic to your problems. Obama should have been doing the Daily Show every goddamn night.
A.
Yes. And the painful part is, Obama is so good at the politicing and communicating when he does do it.
frazer, that’s what kills me. It’s the “keep your powder dry” scenario. I mean, this IS a case of emergency, break the glass, use the secret weapon already.
A.
And this is especially necessary in an age when big media is totally in the the (tea) bag for corporate interests.
he needed to do more press conferences, but the media is bound to turn it against him. the gnews must be hunted.
Sorry but o puts me to zzzzzzzzzzz. It’s jobs stupid and it has nothing to do with saving the fat cats on ws. Please save main street, oh to late it’s gone. He and his friends will be coming for SS/Medi-Care next, so hang on kids it’s about to get bumpy even if demodogs win.
I can’t stand listening to the guy speak, frankly; to me he sounds like a televangelist. His vocal method gets me riled up, but not in a good way.
And… I thought he wasn’t much of a fighter last night on TDS. He said a bunch of the right things, sure, but I didn’t get the sense he was really swingin’ and ready to fight.
I feel a little abandoned, and by most standards I am pretty well off. I imagine many people on the edge are thinking ‘to heck with that guy’. They are likely thinking ‘Wow, my kid can stay until age 26 on the insurance policy I wish I had’… and ‘Wow, in a few years the opportunity to buy the cheapest insurance plan for me and my child will only cost me one-half my salary. How’s insurance I can’t afford better than no insurance?’. And I can’t help him a whole lot against such arguments. We can’t tell someone who drained their savings to pay for COBRA (that is now gone) and is also near the end of unemployment benefits to ‘be patient’.
We can always wait until unemployment spikes even higher and longer, then the tea parties can set up food kitchens, too. Hell, they will probably be doing that before the next general election and we will be wondering how we again got outplayed.
Until Obama figures out that all this “pay the money men and let the shit trickle down” stuff hasn’t worked, he’ll go on saying he’s trying to help, but it takes time. Of course it takes time–what’s the fuckin’ definition of “trickle?”
In the meantime, thefilthy rich big boyz at the top are getting much, much richer while everyone else is told to suck it in.
I’ve always worried that his having spent so much time in the Univ. of Chicago law/economics school greatly influenced his economic state of mind, and these past two years have pretty much convinced me that he’s a firm believer in Raygunomics.
Which means we’re fucked, and plucked.
You’re right, Athenae, it is emergency time. But at the end of the day, it’s the Congress that has to actually get the laws passed. And the combination of the filibuster rule and an insufficient number of genuinely liberal Democrats in Congress has left us significantly behind where we’d like to be. But consider the alternative if the Republicans had won in 2008.
But consider the alternative if the Republicans had won in 2008.
Yeah, just imagine…
Why, we’d still be at war in Afghanistan, and Iraq. Plus I’ll bet that McCain would’ve extended the conflict into Pakistan, or Yemen.
And you know McCain never would’ve gotten rid of DADT, or ENDA.
Plus, you know those Republicans sure love Wall St. dough. They would’ve just given away money to Wall St. corporations that crtashed the economy, instead of jailing the worst offenders, and attaching conditions to bailout money.
Yeah, just imagine if the GOP had won. That would be awful. Thank fucking fuck that the Obama administration is so different.
He was right, back in the months between when he won the election and when he took office, and he quoted LBJ.
He told us, “If I walked on water, the headlines would just say I can’t swim.”
Every last comment above here just reinforces that.
BlackSheep, you’re god damned right.
There’s no “I” in “team,” but there’s a couple in “whiny-ass titty-baby.”
FIRESIDE CHATS! o has to cut out the gnews.
Spot on, Athenae.
So damn frustrating.
Obama seems to put on whatever face best suits the particular audience he happens to be addressing. He might talk a good game when he visits the Daily Show, for example, but actions are what matter. So far, Obama has done little to show that he is any different from the long line of corporatist presidents we’ve had since at least Reagan.
Yeah, he is getting things done. Covering up Bush torture, torturing in Bagram, arranging kangaroo courts to extort show trial confessions from child soldiers for “war crimes” defined (and re-defined) by an ex-post-facto law in contradiction to settled law and international agreement, claiming the right to have bureaucrats draw up competing kill lists for death squad assasinations at JSOC and contractor-run drones at the CIA, and placing any and all criminal and unconstitutional acts under the shroud of stated “state secrets”. Or, if you couldn’t care less, his Fed and Treasury are colluding to channel trillions “worth” of worthless fraudulent securities Bernanke needs to get off his balance sheet to the GSEs, with Geithner announcing an unlimited taxpayer backstop on christmas, in contradiction to the congressional record and decision and with no legal backing and mandate whatsoever.
Bygones Habeas Obama sure gets things done for the middle class and everybody else. Just go on clapping.
I disagree that “he’s right about his accomplishments”. Obama’s accomplishments and policies have been shockingly Republican, as other commenters here have detailed. Far more right wing than what he ran on as a candidate.
The really tragic part is that this approach has been terrible for the economy as well as everything else. It’s not just that I object to Republican policies because they’re Republican, but because they’re wrong. Pandering to Republicans and not pushing for a large enough stimulus package backfired. The Republicans were never going to be placated, and most voters just care about the economy.
Experts tell us that the stimulus, even too small by half, reduced unemployment a few percentage points. Twice as much stimulus would have dropped it a few more points, and if unemployment were 7% now, the snake oil being sold that “Democratic policies are bad for the economy” would have been much harder to sell to the voters.
As it is, they hear it, they see unemployment higher than the Administration even predicted in its worst-case scenario without stimulus– and they believe the Republican lies.
Even “growth isn’t going to come from government” is mealy mouthed parroting of Republican talking points. If this were entirely true, then the massive spending of WWII could never have lifted us out of Depression. Of course growth comes from the private sector, but this can be created by the public sector pouring funds into the economy, even just hiring people like the war did in the 1940s, essentially, because people with money spend it, and the places they buy things from increase their production and staff, and upward it goes. If you believe it can’t happen, then you must believe that WWII and the resulting boom years of the 50s and 60s never happened.
Obama has failed, politically, economically, in every way. Not entirely perhaps, he’ll probably get elected again, but in the meantime he’s doomed us to years of Japan-style stagnation, because now, — well just read Krugman’s latest piece.
Grade for Obama, on how he did, what he did, compared to what he claimed he was going to do as he campaigned? D minus.
I am opposed to both legal and illegal immigration. This country is overpopulated, and 21 million Americans are out of work.