A President Adrift

[villager]

A President Adrift: After a week of presidential humiliations and capitulations, Michael Tomasky suggests that Obama will soon pass the point where he can be taken seriously as a leader.




More dispiriting news, this time about the White House overturning the EPA’s proposed new rules on smog. That comes a few hours after the jobs report from Friday morning, one of the bleakest yet. And it comes a few days in advance of what everyone expects will be a small-thinking, modest, blah jobs speech by the president. It’s not only getting to the point where it’s getting hard to see him winning reelection. It’s getting to the point where it’s hard to imagine people taking him seriously for the remaining 14 months of his current term.

The smog decision is a real low. The story behind this includes the fact that, as Brad Plumer reports environmental groups were going to file a lawsuit in 2009 about Bush-era ozone rules, and the Obama administration told them, in effect, “Wait, don’t hassle us with a lawsuit, we’re going to propose stricter rules soon.” So the stricter rules were proposed, and the White House has now said, “Sorry, changed our mind.”

We can’t calculate yet how this will reverberate through the environmental world, but we can imagine. This is the kind of thing that sticks with people. A promise was made and broken. And you know how partisans say sometimes in anger that we’d have been better off with the other guy? They say it for effect and don’t actually mean it. But in this case, it’s literally true. Bush-proposed standards in 2008 were tougher than the 1997 standards under which companies will now operate. I doubt environmentalists will forget this one.

And not just environmentalists. Even the Center for American Progress—the leading Democratic think-tank, an organization that is very, very close to the administration—issued a statement criticizing this decision (apologies—it was emailed to me, but without a link). That may be a first for CAP, which called the decision “deeply disappointing” and said it “grants an item on Big Oil’s wish list at the expense of the health of children, seniors and the infirm.” And the timing of it could not be worse, coming at the end of a week that included a stupid unforced error (the speech fracas) and leaks indicating a set of small-bore proposals to be offered next week.

<snip>

http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/72-72/7289-a-president-adrift

[cilla4progress]

1. I see it as this:

Either he really doesn't want to be re-elected (didn't he intimate as much?), and is perhaps ill.

OR there is ANY skill left in his strategy team, it is about timing.

Remains to be seen.

[bemildred]

3. I do give his "advisers" a lot of "credit" for this debacle.

It was far from necessary.

[xchrom]

2. recommend

[PonyJon]

4. Had you voted a STRAIGHT DEMOCRATIC TICKET in 2010 you would have little to snark about. nt

[villager]

5. Not sure who's snarking, or who your comments are directed at?

:shrug:

[Donnachaidh]

6. define who *you* is toots?

Really, such outrage surely can be tracked, right? :sarcasm:

We'll wait.

[Fearless]

8. This is DU... We did.

The fact is that the Democratic Party does not stimulate the average voter and thus we lose. We will lose again in 2012 if they don't do something very soon.

[sabrina 1]

10. Go tell that to the Independent voters who deserted the party

in 2010, angry over the shift to the right, but not party loyalists enough to hold their noses the way most people here did.

Sad you are attempting, unsuccessfully since most people here are not easily fooled, to rewrite what happened in 2010. The Dem Leadership has also failed to take the lesson they should have taken from their loss of the House, and it WAS they who lost it. Failing to know the facts appears to be making it likely they will make the same mistake again in 2012, unless there is someone, somewhere in the administration, who can force them back to reality.

Most Progressive Dems held their seats in 2010. Who do you think voted for them?

Most of those who lost were Blue Dogs. Why do you think that happened?

[blkmusclmachine]

7. Adrift? Hell, Obama's capsized:

In shark infested waters. Maybe his BFF, Mr. Boner, will throw him a lifeline. Yeah, right...bi-partisanshit only goes in one direction!

[Fearless]

9. There was so much potential in 2008... and we got a dud for a president.