“Aren’t there things Obama & Co. could have done differently?” Howard Fineman writes in the current issue of Newsweek (9/20/10). “Election Day is still seven weeks away—but it’s not too early for a ‘pre-mortem.'”
No, never too early—especially since Fineman’s column offers the same advice corporate media pundits have been giving to Democratic politicians for at least the past 30 years: Move to the right. “Obama’s 2008 victory was a personal one,” Fineman quotes Bill Clinton adviser Bill Galston. “It wasn’t a vote for a more expansive view of the role and reach of government.” You may have thought that enacting healthcare reform was a central promise of the Obama campaign, but no–apparently we just voted for him to hang out with us.
Instead, writes Fineman, “Obama—an overachiever, the guy who fills up a second blue book on the extra credit question—tried to do it all.” For example, he foolishly tried to address the global catastrophe of climate change, pushing the House to vote for a cap-and-trade bill: “With this one early vote, the president exhausted his chits with Blue Dog, swing-state moderates and the coal-staters, who were then reluctant to help him on other matters.” If only he had saved those chits!
If this doesn’t make much sense to you, then you may suffer from another malady Fineman diagnoses in Obama: He hasn’t “seemed all that curious about what makes Democratic insiders tick.” That’s certainly not Fineman’s problem.
Wow! The pomposity, stupidity and idiot certitude are comical–Fineman really does think he’s one of God’s gifts to us heathens outside the beltway. Another clown who’s been fantastically wrong or dense about many, many things over the past few years but is still treated with respect and a sinecure (albeit at an increasingly rotten rag) that pays him a small fortune week in and out to lie and otherwise treat reality and the truth with contempt. I hear the natives are restless in France, Mr. Fineman–set ’em straight, and pronto!
The time seems long past when government figures, let alone columnists, really paid any attention to what the people think. Whenever there’s a poll whose results are contrary to conservative conventional wisdom, they’re just ignored. Over and over again, people said they wanted single-payer health care; again and again they say they don’t want the rich to continue to have the Bush tax cuts… and so on and on. (But of course there’s always a poll that will say the reverse, whether through intent or incompetence, and those are the ones that make the news.) I think it was only once that I saw a reporting of the fact that Manhattan residents were in favor the “ground zero mosque.” No, the figures were always lumped together with all the boroughs. Now wasn’t it at least worth noting that the people who lived in proximity to it all had no trouble with the idea? But don’t get me started.
It kind of makes one wonder if anyone is listening, until…BINGO we have a revolution “out of nowhere!”
this makes little sense…the democrats in the house have passed all sorts of bills post cap and trade….it’s the senate democrats who have balked at doing much of anything
“Arent there things Obama and comp could have done differently”?Um yeah they could of used their good will card to make America the most business friendly country in the world. Exploding the economy and rebuilding wealthThen……………. maybe tried to inch in more nanny state ideas.Instead they attacked on all fronts with a spending not seen since aunt Ethel found uncle Fred in bed with the morning waitress of the slippery spoon and stole his credit card.