Tuesday, December 29, 2009

White House Belatedly Tries to Soothe Liberals’ Anger

John Aravosis has a post at America Blog that looks at the pathetic efforts recently being made by the White House to soothe voters who have been kicked in the teeth so far by Obama's failure to deliver on campaign promises. As John notes, some lame boiler plate e-mails have been sent out to the DNC Organizing America data base - I received one myself and asked that I be removed from the address list - but in terms of real, meaningful action, Obama and the Congressional Democrats remain missing in action. The only positive may be that Obama is belatedly waking up to the fact that he might just not be reelected in 2012 if he doesn't start to deliver. And, I'm sorry, but until ENDA is passed and signed into law or DADT and/or DOMA are repealed, I will not feel that Obama has kept his campaign promises. As the saying goes, fool me once, shame on you - fool me twice, shame on me. I personally do not plan on being played for a sucker a second time. In the perhaps unlikely event the GOP doesn't nominate a lunatic opponent to Obama, Mr. Obama could end up a one term president. Here are highlights from John's post:
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There's an article in Roll Call (sub. req.) titled, White House Hopes to Soothe Liberals’ Angst, which begins:
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President Barack Obama is confronting a threat to his re-election as members of his base increasingly voice concern about his policies.
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Obama has faced a mini-rebellion from liberals after he went along with a decision to drop a public insurance option — and then its substitute, a “buy-in” expansion of Medicare — from the Senate health care bill. Liberals are also concerned about the climate change deal that he agreed to in Copenhagen and his decision to inject 30,000 additional troops into Afghanistan.
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But the White House has been taking steps to bandage the wounds.
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It is, however, unclear from this article what exactly those steps are, besides a couple of emails sent to the DNC's Organizing for America list: . . .
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To be clear, the President and his team are worried about the base for his reelection in 2012, not the congressional races in 2010. I think it's safe to say that it's going to take more than email messages from the President and David Plouffe to fire up the base. Words won't be enough. Actions are required. And, the best action the President could take would be to follow through on his campaign promises
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No one is expecting Obama to do more than he promised, but we are expecting him to do what he promised. . . . The base is watching and waiting -- and grumpy.
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John, very well said.

1 comment:

Stephen said...

They should be worried that those whom Obama mobilized will be staying home in November 2010 and November 2012. While courting people like Senator"Death panels" Grassley, he has left Latino supporters as empty-handed as his gay ones.

Congress has cobbled together climate and healthcare financing bills that I think are worse than the status quo.