Obama: One Year On
Happy first birthday to the Obama administration. Of course, it isn't all good news: the loss of Teddy Kennedy's seat to the Republicans is a blow, and one that may scuttle Obama's already faltering health plan. It is tempting to paint Scott Brown's victory as a crippling indictment of Obama's first year in office; while Obama's presence in the Oval Office may have been a contributing factor to some people's votes, it is equally possible that the voters of Massachusetts simply wanted to vote Republican after decades of mindlessly voting for Teddy Kennedy. God knows, I would. So be warned; losing the Senate super-majority does not mean that Obama is set to lose the White House in three years time.
See for Obama, it's one year down, and most probably seven years to go. Because while Obama has done little that is memorable in his first year other than creating a shit storm on the issue of health care, he has managed not to fuck up too badly. In the pantheon of Democratic presidents, he's no FDR - but he isn't a Jimmy Carter either. In fact, Obama is doing a hell of a lot better than Clinton was at this point in his presidency, and Clinton won a second term easily.
So I reckon Obama will win re-election in 2012, even if the mid-term elections later this year don't go tremendously well for the Democrats. Not least because the Republicans have, over the course of this year, done nothing to sort themselves out and find someone decent to fight Obama in 2012. Despite the Brown setback, the best birthday present the Obama administration could get from the Republicans is the one they are offering - the ridiculous Sarah Palin is still that party's leading light.
Labels: Carter, Democrats, Election 2012 (US), FDR, Obama, Republican
posted by The Nameless Libertarian @ 10:45 am
4 Comments
4 Comments:
Bear in mind though that Clinton did not come up against a serious opponent when campaigning for a second term. Mark Steyn's description of "Bobe Dole's bizarre, post-modernist campaign for the presidency" sums up the standard of GOP challenge in 1996 rather well.
As for the ridiculous Sarah Palin remaining the GOP's chief figurehead/celebrity i think this will serve the party well in the long run. I expect her to stand for 2012 nomination but as you say she is ridiculous and while she will pull in a fair amount of support i can't see her winning the Republican nomination. However in the meantime she can continue to draw flak from the Democratic Party/left leaning media leaving a more serious Republican personality to emerge closer to election time.
That is the only hope for the Republican party - finding a decent candidate to go up against Obama. The problem is there is no-one on the horizon who has any sort of scope to successfully take on Obama within the Republican party at the moment, and the longer it takes, the less likely it is for that person to be able to defeat Palin or someone like Huckabee in the bid for the nomination. At the moment, the Republicans have the fundamentalists and the non-entities chomping at the bit for the Presidency. And would a candidate as tedious as Mitt Romney do any better against an incumbent President than the idiosyncratic Bob Dole?
An unlikely victory in one Senate race doesn't show that the Republican party is coming back from the dead. And don't forget that the Republican party won an outstanding victory in the 1994 mid-terms, only to be trounced in 1996 because they didn't have that credible candidate.
TNL
I agree, & hope you're right on an Obama victory. Clinton, though, was saddled with a Republican Congress until his dying day- will this happen to Obama?
I think Republicans have figured out how to win locally, by having strong, credible local candidates. That's why Hoffman lost so heavily, but otherwise they've gained the victories that would be expected in the circumstances, that always happen during an incumbency (including in council elections in Britain) unless it be for events like 9/11 throwing things into confusion.
Palin, in my view, doesn't want to be president as she is happy making money & being a celeb. I just think she is a figurehead & gesture towards identity politics, but she doesn't have the intelligence or attention to detail of, say, Thatcher or Clinton H (to name prominent woman politicians). So she isn't as threatening as the Thatch was to her foes.
I almost always prefer Democrats to Republicans. I just wish they had more like Al Franken who can bludgeon their enemies into submission in debate by their mastery of their briefs.
As for Obama, I voted for him knowing he was a politician & would get us pretty much here- I knew, also, that he was going to be unpopular. But I never thought he'd be the messiah, & if I lived in America I'd view it as my responsibility & that of people like me to bring about any given policy by lobbying for it.
WV: muslim (fuck knows what Blogger is trying to suggest there).
Obviously I didn't literally mean I voted Obama, I mean I endorsed him. & will do against a GOP or Teabag Party candidate.
I visit a right-wing Catholic blog in America every now & then. It started off with me just reading the thing most remote from my own views to wind myself up. But I became mates with the hostess over time. I still disagree with them as much as I did when I started though.
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/theanchoress/
Funny, they've been hammering away trying to win me over & the only thing they've ever actually convinced me of is that I should buy a certain cookbook they recommended.
But I like them, they are some nice people.
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