From
http://www.newdeal20.org/2010/11/03/rules-of-our-society-should-not-be-bought-and-sold-roosevelt-election-roundup-25816/?author=6">New Deal 2.0:
In my view, President Obama had one key mission: to prove the value of government. He and his defenders argue that he has achieved much. In particular, they cite health care reform, financial re-regulation, the Recovery Act of 2009, and some even claim he has a workable strategy in Afghanistan. All these were agenda items that needed addressing. Obama has been able to convince too few Americans that any of them were adequately addressed. In fact, they were not, and he never seemed to come to terms with that central fact. To the contrary, he seemed to bury his head in the sand. His claim was that we got so much done but no one really knew about it. This was not bad public relations. It was not failure of government. It was inadequate policy and the failure to own up to it. Obama said a few times he got seventy percent of his agenda done. He got something done, sure, but in no case did it solve the pressing problems they were addressing. This is a man who willfully has averted his eyes from reality, I fear, and the public knew it. And the stunning electoral losses — made a little more tolerable by the constant lowering of expectations — don’t look like they will shake him up. Equanimity is his constant goal, even in the face of such adversity.
-Jeff Madrick, Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow and author of The Case for Big Government
Barack Obama did not do what it took to pull the economy out of the doldrums. This is true for the fiscal stimulus, which was too small, too preoccupied with returning to a surplus as fast as possible, and contained too much lag. His banking bailout policies continued the Bush/Paulson approach and effectively reinforced the notion of government as an instrument of predatory capitalism, rather than an entity mobilizing resources for a broader public purpose. Obama didn’t give us ‘change we could believe in.’ He instead used trillions of dollars in financial guarantees to sustain Wall Street (much more money than was spent on the stimulus) and consequently presided over one of the most regressive wealth transfers in American history. At a time when most Americans were experiencing stagnant or absolute declines in total wages, and Wall Street Robber Barons paid themselves even higher bonuses than before, the President was totally insensitive. He appeared to take pains to put down or ignore the aspirations of every single part of his base. And he wonders why there was an ‘enthusiasm gap.’
- Marshall Auerback, Roosevelt Institute Senior FellowThe most striking thing about the post-election landscape is the utter route of centrists Democrats. In the aftermath, as Chris Bowers notes, the Progressive Caucus is larger than the Blue Dog and the New Dems combined. Analysts will continue to go through the numbers, but right now there’s nothing to suggest that ‘liberal overreach’ or a lack of centrist views was a factor. The truth is much worse: the ugly process of appeasing and buying off centrist Democrats on financial reform and health care turned what should have been landmark generational reform into a bitter, ugly view of corporate power and sleazy influence over our political system, the Senate and the political party that is supposed to defend the interests of working people.
- Mike Konczal, Roosevelt Institute Fellow
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