Is the Obama administration headed for a train wreck?

[pscot]

This article is from Grist. It's thrust is environment policy, but his conclusion frames a larger issue.


http://www.grist.org/politics/2011-04-28-policy-in-an-age-of-post-truth-politics


Obama can back centrist policies all day, but there is no mechanism to convey that centrism to the broad voting public. There is no judge settling disputes or awarding points. His strategy -- achieve political advantage through policy concessions -- has failed. His approval ratings are down and the government is headed for a train wreck.

Yet still there seems to be this craving, in Obama and sooo many other self-styled pragmatic, post-partisan moderates, to take the politics out of politics. To have an Adult Conversation. To be Reasonable People, to draw forth other Reasonable People with the power of ideas and together transcend petty partisan squabbling and move forward with a Commonsense Agenda based on Shared Values. (Are you tingling yet?)

[Trajan]

1. Is stagnation also a train wreck ?

It wont be a train wreck - It will be just more of the same stagnant policies with the same petty opposition ...

IF Obama had actually stood his ground on some liberal issues, he might have light a fire to ignite the left side a bit ....

Less a train wreck, and more a balloon about to deflate and land like a limp washrag in the deck ...

[Armstead]

29. It's a slow motion train wreck...But a train wreck nonetheless

We are on a destructive course on all fronts.

The status quo will continue on that course. And thus the shit will hit the fan over time, unless we change course by changing the status quo.

[Trajan]

33. That slow motion train wreck has been running it's course since Reagan

Something has got to give, but I greatly doubt we should blame Obama for this ..... Sheesh .. He's only been in office for two years and had divided government for 1.5 of those years ....

[Armstead]

35. I blame him and all "centrist" Democrats For their collaboration

I can't see where they should be let off the hook because of their past and present role in creating this mess, in collaboration with the GOP.

They are doing no good at stopping the train wreck...And I often wonder if they want to.

The centrists have also been stifling the great liberal/progressive Democrsts who have been trying to change course, but are ultimately prevented by their own party leadership.

[saras]

2. It's a train wreck headed for the bottom of the canyon.

[Davis_X_Machina]

3. Tell me the 180-day trend in U3 90 days before the election...

...and I'll tell you how he does in the election.

Presidential elections are referendums on the economy, period.

And anyways, people, real people, not the people on DU, or who read Grist, like compromise. Independents particularly like compromise, and Democrats, for example on the budget battle over the continuing resolution love compromise, most of all.

You can't complain about politicians doing what the polls tell them their constituents want them to do.

[patrice]

8. U3? please and thank you.

[Davis_X_Machina]

10. The official unemployment rate...

...U6 is probably a better indicator, but its records don't go back as far, so poli-sci types tend to stick to U3 in their work.

[leveymg]

15. The Q3 '08 Wall St meltdown was 90 days before the election - Sept. 15, I recall.

U3 was about three and a half percent lower than it is today. IMHO, it won't be much less on 09/15/12, and may actually rise several more points in the next year and a half as the broader structural effects of inflation take hold.

[patrice]

17. Does it matter that that all went down in a fundamentally different public mindset compared to now?

i.e. before general awareness of what the derivative crash was and its relationships to how people lose their jobs, let alone the fact that we were going to be paying for it on the installment plan out of our taxes?

[Davis_X_Machina]

24. No.

That level of sophistication in the general population would make, for example, the 'government needs to balance its budget every month like you do around the family table' unsellable -- and it manifestly isn't.

Too complicated. There is no general awareness of what the derivative crash was.

[Davis_X_Machina]

25. Trend matters more than absolute numbers...

...cf. Reagan's second-term blowout. 7.5% at the election, historically very high -- but down from 10.5% a year-and-a-half earlier.

[napoleon_in_rags]

4. Policy in an age of post-truth politics

Yup. That title pretty much nails it, on all fronts.

That's exactly what's happening here. The birther issue is a conspiracy that really is an INSULT to conspiracy theorists of the normal stripe, its an absurd celebration of pure messaging POWER that it was accepted by so many people at all. The whole thing reveals that in this day and age its completely about post truth politics, how loud you can lie.

But they left needs to realize they are also a part of it. I remember a post here a few days ago, where some DUers were celebrating that Cenk got Ron Paul to "admit" that he didn't support Social Security and Medicare. Of course its absurd, because Ron Paul has always admitted this, and his prime political trait that makes people admire him is that he has an intellectually consistent political framework which doesn't change based on who's asking: He doesn't lie about his politics, just like he didn't lie about the same question when Spitzer asked him the night before, even when the truth is impolitic. But the wording wasn't knocking his right wing policy stance, they were knocking the fact that Cenk got him to "admit" his policy stance. That makes him weak. There's a celebration of good liars that crosses the whole policy spectrum, a celebration BY PROLES of the ability of leaders to fool the PROLES they are part of but don't identify with. Until this culture changes nothing else will change.

[ProSense]

13. Do

...they admire him enough to vote for him?

"Of course its absurd, because Ron Paul has always admitted this, his prime political trait that makes people admire him is that he has an intellectually consistent political framework which doesn't change based on who's asking: He doesn't lie about his politics"

Ron Paul is all about demagoguery. His positions are all based on his anti-government stance, but sometimes he has trouble reconciling the two, like with his love of earmarks.

He's no different from his son. They claim to be anti war, but it's just another issue for their demagoguery.

From Rand Paul's budget:

War funding from 2001 to 2010 has cost the taxpayer $1.109 trillion. That amount doesn’t include the $159
billion that will likely be spent funding the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for FY2011. The proposal seeks to
reduce war funding for FY2011 by $16 billion, in other words to provide $144 billion (President Obama has
requested $117 billion for FY2012, $27 billion dollars below our proposed level).

When they talk about cutting defense, it's to cut VA, etc.

It's a joke to believe Ron Paul is anti-war. He's anti-government, not anti-war. The Pauls would support pirates and mercenaries if given free rein.

[ProSense]

5. Interesting.

"There is no judge settling disputes or awarding points. His strategy -- achieve political advantage through policy concessions -- has failed. His approval ratings are down and the government is headed for a train wreck."

"His approval ratings are down"

Obama job approval hits 5-month low in Gallup poll

"(T)he government is headed for a train wreck"

There’s no skipping out on debt bill

Seriously, this is what this entire doomsday scenario is based on, a Gallup poll and the debt ceiling debate?

People knew the government shutdown and debt ceiling debates were going to be issues with a Republican majority in the House.

On the executive side, this was a pretty good week for policy.

Obama Administration Announces New Clean Water Protection Policy

Significant Court Win Clears the Way for Better, Cleaner Car Standards

Appeals Court Restores Federal Funding Of Stem Cell Research

As for climate change legislation, when Democrats had a chance to do something, there was little support for Kerry-Boxer let alone Kerry-Lieberman (see, nothing is not better than something).

[Davis_X_Machina]

7. You're not helping..

...the OP has a theory, dammit, and you keep standing in its way, saying 'Hey, wait a minute...'

[Tarheel_Dem]

12. +1

[AtomicKitten]

34. Glad you still bother. Thanks.

[elleng]

6. ONLY if fools ignore reality and enable it to do so.

[alcibiades_mystery]

9. Bookmarking

For the purpose of laughing at fools in November 2012.

[leveymg]

11. Obama is the trolley they had running a month after Hiroshima was nuked.

Headed for a train wreck? He's rolling through a catastrophe.

[patrice]

14. Wondering if the train for this kind of thing didn't already leave the station

quite a while ago.

[leveymg]

16. I just had a really strong sense of deja vu. We've had this discussion at DU before.

I seem to recall it was in 2006 or 2007.

[patrice]

18. Which means that there actually isn't any train. I'll go with that, but we may

disagree about how to build one.

It appears to me that some people want to begin with the ticket machines for something that isn't there, CAN'T produce results, when they ought to be working on who's going to bring what to build the engines, the cars, the rails, on what kind of timetable and with SOMEKIND of accountability/consequences.

Seeing only the most general very sketchy outlines of stuff that could develop into something like this kind of collaboration and, then again, might not.

[patrice]

20. P.S. Re my last sentence: as OP and a couple of things I experienced recently on FB

pretty clearly demonstrate: Single-issue voters trying to extort all of the other issues, by threatening to hurt Obama if he doesn't comply. Pretty stupid because all they are doing is driving each other away by promising to hurt each other through hurting this administration. No one goes anywhere; instead of figuring out how to benefit each other and thus acquire the kind of power over government that is used against them all of the time.

Yes, the whole frakking thing is corrupt, but that doesn't mean that a large enough of a voting block can't get some things for themselves. It just means that getting that voting block is harder and trying to extort one another works against that.

[pscot]

23. You really think the OP

and/or the article referenced are single issue extortion? There's an election in 18 months. The economy is in the toilette and the country is drifting. It wasn't the left that sat out the last election. Judging from the responeses here, y'all seem to feel everything is hunky dory. That strikes me as hopelessly Painglossian, but if it makes you happy, good luck.

[Arkana]

19. Spoken like a group of people who have no idea how to govern.

Governing is the very act of bringing people with disparate opinions together. Nothing gets done otherwise.

It's sad that so many people who consider themselves "enlightened" don't understand that.

[Armstead]

30. Today, governing is the exercise of power. Enlightenment is realizing that.

if the Republicans and oligarchs were reasonable, you would be correct.

They are not, and you are not in today's climae.

Look at Wisconsin it is an exercise on pure raw power by the GOP.

If they do not ultimately get what they want, or are tossed out on their asses, it will not be because the Democrats in that state "negotiated" in good faith. They will only succeed by using pure power politics to combat pure power politics.

That increasingly hold true on the national level. The GOP are using power games of resisting and blocking as the minority, and using their power in a completely un compromising way in the majority (The House).

"enlightened" means being aware of reality. And the necessity of fighting power with power IS the reality today. Attempts to compromise with them are utterly futile and lead to defeat.

Sad but true.

[BlueIris]

21. I think the only question is how devastating the trainwreck will be.

Not sure I have an answer for that one, but it makes me grimmace.

[patrice]

22. I've decided the question is: What train? There isn't one. Obama is operating in a

system that is really much more of a fleet of private jets, because that's the system he inherited.

[FrenchieCat]

26. This country has been heading for a train wreck for years now.....

Obama was able to put on the breaks....for now,
but I can see that as fucked up as we are as a country,
we would prefer to crash......

and I'm sure with the help of many here,
we will.

[NorthCarolina]

27. I think the people really voted for what they thought would move the country to the left

Instead, they got well-right-of-center that repeatedly seeks middle ground compromise with the ultra looney right wing. The country is only a "center-right" nation to the delusional, and those in complete denial.

[Armstead]

31. +1.

[bigwillq]

28. It's already a train wreck.

Has been for many, many years. Way before Obama.

[Armstead]

32. The article is sad but true

If the Democrats really want to block the GOP and oligarchy, the only way to do so is to fight them in the same way.

[Avant Guardian]

36. The end result of 'centrism' is a comb over

That does not address the root causes of the hair loss

[Name removed]

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