.


April 2009: should have announced a massive works project to rebuild infrastructure, with an emphasis on new elevated light rail over all major freeways and linking all major cities at their downtown hubs. not only would there have been jobs by now, with the optics of hardhats, concrete, and machine factories to play for the ads, but the whole 'no jobs' line would have been eliminated.

what he did: two years later, a month before the 2010 midterm election, he holds a picnic on the front lawn and announces a future project which hasn't even been completely written and which instead, is heavy on chronically graft-ridden roadwork [150,000 miles], and which ironically will most likely just slow down traffic even more for the next few years of his presidency as projects begin and complete. and only 4000 miles of new rail? are you fucking kidding me?

June 2009: should have pushed his health care bill to the back burner for 2011, and instead written a bill socializing higher education. better optics; multi cultural aryan youth at colleges, the handicapped and single moms going to night school, etcetera. opponents would be ridiculed for being uneducated hillbillies; the joke would write itself, and would innoculate him against future attacks from the same people. also would have set the stage for similarly funded single payer health care.

what he did: announced a health care bill withits optics of sick people and all the horror that entails. and which he then allowed be negotiated into a winfall for the very insurance companies whose corruption his initial bill sought to eliminate.

and i was just thinking about this as i was writing:

September 2010: he should already have cleared all appointees, via the normal process or via recess appointment if necessary. why is he still trying to negotiate with people who hate everything he is?

what he did: negotiated and allowed the opposition party to further hamstring the very operations of his administration, so instead, there are still a few dozen positions that haven't been filled.




all of this though, just bad strategy all around.

and because of all this, he will most likely lose the house and the senate this november and face a complete stalemate for the rest of his presidency, just like jim demint promised a year and a half ago when he called on republicans to make healthcare obama's 'waterloo'.

death by bowel obstruction..

at least he didn't start an endless war under false pretenses that killed over a million people.

The health care bill was a bad idea, but many of its component parts were good ideas. He and other leading Democrats made the major mistake of trying to force through one whopping omnibus health care bill, which a.) is an easy target and b.) becomes a political albatross if it's not universally accepted.

If he passed many of those health care provisions through as component parts, he could have had seven different agendas on the table, and there would be too many proposals for the GOP to point to one and go "oh shit we have to make a wedge issue out of THAT." Could House or Senate Republicans really rebuke a bill that expands Medicare benefits to retirees and the disabled, and then shoot down a bill that plugs up gaps in coverage, then nix a bill that creates a nationwide health insurance marketplace, etc., etc.? At first, maybe, but then they set themselves up as not only the part that did nothing, but actively prevented ANYTHING from getting done.

Obama's biggest failure, indeed, was the paucity of the stimulus. I'm a big rail fan, and it is a painfully obvious (and such a smart) infrastructure process that has far-reaching impact on many major issues facing the United States. However, regardless of the money's target, the fact that it wasn't enough was the major failing. Yes, there was opposition--but there was opposition anyways, and would have been, and will continue to be.

I want to admire the fact that he wanted to be a reconciler or whatever, but it was at the expense of reconstruction and progress. He shot himself in the foot on this one, with a bicameral legislature of accomplices watching the whole time.

I really don't agree with what they are doing/going to do the health care system. I believe it is unfair to most people in the current state. I tried to read up on it as much as I could but it still doesn't make any sense to me. I didn't vote for obama but I also do not think he is doing that bad of a job so far. In my heart I feel we are fucked no matter who is in office trying to call the shots. Way too many idiots running around congress and washington and for awhile there I had hope that we as a country could somehow bounce back but that has not happend as of yet.

and i actually still like him. but what a waste of what should have been the best presidency in decades.

.

You could quite possibly be right

if he tried to make any real change he probably would've been assassinated by now...

He could have come into office.. gotten rid of DADT, legalized pot and gay marriage.. said if you don't like it.. fuck you, I am the president... then worked on health care and education. Instead the Democrats spent the entire time worrying about their own elections, failed to kick the snot out of each and every democrat who did not get in line on major legislation, causing them to need the Republicans... who refuse to support anything on partisan political grounds, and Obama spent most of the time worrying about being re-elected as well.. rather than doing anything that would work out just fine over time and would get him re-elected.

despite my criticisms of his presidency, i always keep in mind that obama is the president, not me, and i bet he's got a lot of shit to deal with all day every day.
even if he's not making the decisions that people on an internet message board can fully back, i'm gonna go out on a limb and say he's trying his best and his intentions are good.

and

Originally posted by: emogeddon

at least he didn't start an endless war under false pretenses that killed over a million people.

Originally posted by: Dickscraper

despite my criticisms of his presidency, i always keep in mind that obama is the president, not me, and i bet he's got a lot of shit to deal with all day every day.
even if he's not making the decisions that people on an internet message board can fully back, i'm gonna go out on a limb and say he's trying his best and his intentions are good.

and

Originally posted by: emogeddon

at least he didn't start an endless war under false pretenses that killed over a million people.

Agreed. He ain't doing what he probably should in some ways... but he doesn't deserve a third of the shit he gets.

That recent enacting of "state secrets" in that Mohammed v. Dataplan case was one of the most disgusting things I've seen.

at least we're talking about obama not bush now.

Originally posted by: crunkmoose

He could have come into office.. gotten rid of DADT, legalized pot and gay marriage.. said if you don't like it.. fuck you, I am the president... then worked on health care and education. Instead the Democrats spent the entire time worrying about their own elections, failed to kick the snot out of each and every democrat who did not get in line on major legislation, causing them to need the Republicans... who refuse to support anything on partisan political grounds, and Obama spent most of the time worrying about being re-elected as well.. rather than doing anything that would work out just fine over time and would get him re-elected.

crap. i'm glad your not president.

Originally posted by: resurrected.fromdead

Originally posted by: crunkmoose

He could have come into office.. gotten rid of DADT, legalized pot and gay marriage.. said if you don't like it.. fuck you, I am the president... then worked on health care and education. Instead the Democrats spent the entire time worrying about their own elections, failed to kick the snot out of each and every democrat who did not get in line on major legislation, causing them to need the Republicans... who refuse to support anything on partisan political grounds, and Obama spent most of the time worrying about being re-elected as well.. rather than doing anything that would work out just fine over time and would get him re-elected.

crap. i'm glad your not president.

i'm glad that you're not president either. i'd hate to see what would happen if someone tried to turn this into a christian nation.

Forget everything in this thread. His biggest mistake was not completely focusing on the economy. When it was clear the flawed stimulus bill wasn't doing enough (or anything at all), more should have been done instead of wasting a year on health care.