Huh? Both parties just let the Federal Reserve chairman do what he wants, and defer to their Treasury Department composed of former Wall Street executives.
Huh? every poll out in the last month has had him underwater. The trend line for his approval rating is worsening. He’s dropped about 15 pts since the spring, no doubt in part b/c of the increasing likelihood of a double dip.
The thing about DADT is that most of the problems that it is supposed to solve don’t actually exist. There’s no reason for it to exist in the first place. The usual objection brought up for allowing gays to serve is ‘unit cohesion’ and how deployed servicemen might be put in danger as a result. Which would be at least worth discussing if it wasn’t for the fact that gay servicemen aren’t discharged until after their deployment.
If you come out just before getting sent off to fight, you still get deployed but with a dishonorable discharge hanging over your head on your return. Bigots are still going to be bigots regardless of what the UCMJ says so why continue to discharge people who want to serve if it’s apparently ok to deploy them anyway?
The effective result of scrapping DADT would be entirely limited to preventing those dishonorable discharges. It won’t make any difference at all to the policy on deploying gay people.
I think to an extent that Obama’s political weaknesses were masked early on, but are now becoming more important:
Early masking:
- Novelty and euphoria over first black president and the implication that his election sorta puts the U.S.'s racist past behind it.
- Unpopularity of W. Any change to the opposite party looked good.
- Obama is a reasonably good orator. Hope and change and all that work well as the out party. Then Dems and Obama take over and rhetoric matters less.
So, Obama’s political weaknesses?
- First president in a long time to feel very unlike an “everyman”. Every president of the last 3 decades or so has done a reasonably good job of at least coming across as an everyman (underlying realities aside). Obama doesn’t really seem to try. Starting with his comments about clinging to guns and religion and moving in smaller ways through a variety of situations since. It may or may not be a rational desire to have a president who you’d like having a beer with, but Obama doesn’t carry that off.
- Err, I was gonna have a longer list, but point #1 is the primary thing, I think. Obviously, the bad economy and deficits hurt, too, but those aren’t political traits of Obama so much as the situation he and the country is in. I will say that one of Obama’s key strengths (oration) is really neutralized and borders on being a weakness in the current economic situation.
I’ve seen plenty of complaints in this vein that don’t even make that distinction. Where’s that photo of the protester carrying the “Keep the government out of my Medicare” sign? One sometimes has to wonder if people this clueless should be allowed to vote.
I’m guessing it wouldn’t be too hard to gin-up the conservative base into protesting that they shouldn’t be.
It’s what the founding fathers would have wanted.
-5 since spring, actually. You’re correct that he’s been net negative for a few months though, things have degraded further than I thought.
The really strange thing about this cycle is that the Republican numbers have gotten worse too, by about as much. For example, this msnbc recent poll has Obama positive/negative views at 46/41, the Democrats at 33/44…and the Republicans at 24/46 (down 5 since January).
Yes, it’s a total race to the bottom in politics of all sorts!
The only potential upside for Obama here is that he has two more years in which to hope that the economy gets better. If there is a real turnaround next year and things are heading up in 2012, he’s a shoo-in to get re-elected given how utterly fucked the Republicans are.
Thanks all for pointing out the obvious idiocies – fuck, I opened my OP by saying the dude was probably a shill, so it’s not like that was all lost on me – and for getting into more depth about the areas where Obama really does have issues. That’s what I wanted, and you’re delivering.
Obama doesn’t come off as any kind of elitist to me. He was raised in modest means. He’s just smart guy who works hard and parlayed that into an Ivy League education. The guy plays basketball, has trouble giving up smoking, likes pizza, isn’t afraid to be seen having a beer, etc.
But none of that is driving down his approval ratings. It’s the economy. If it was booming, his approval ratings would be much higher.
A connecticut Yalie member of the Skull & Bones son of the President who managed to lose money on both an oil company and baseball, who had enough spare cash to buy a fake ranch in texas was an everyman? That’s some good advertising.
It was (in part) some good advertising.
Obama doesn’t seem so willing and/or able to do such advertising. He seems to find it distasteful, and slips out of character from time to time.
Obama probably correctly intuits that such advertising is pointless and wouldn’t make one bit of difference. There are reams upon reams of poli sci data indicating that the economy is almost all that matters with regards to presidential approval ratings.
Obama is very much the sort of guy I’d like to have a beer with. YMMV.
The other problem being that the actual facts of his life experiences have little to nothing to do with the perception of him that’s derived instead from advertising and the prevailing media narrative.
Well, he’s a blithering retard, so yeah, he’s an “everyman”.
Obama is an intelligent, thoughtful, considerate human being, so he’s an “elitist”.
This has been going on for years, I’m not sure why people are still confused about this.
Obama came in as a popular president. It’s extremely unreasonable to claim he’s ‘doomed’ years before his re-election. Wasn’t McCain ahead of Obama in polls just a month or two before the election? The ‘so and so is doomed’ just seems like a preemptive tactic to try to scare away independents from supporting that candidate, after all, who wants to be on the side of doom and despair?
Why are so many conservatives already speculating about Obama’s fate? The political cycle is getting too close to warp speed. The focus should be on the 2010 elections. Discussing Obama’s fate and long term prospects may as well be predicting the weather six months from now.
People have been angry about the economy and the oil spill. I hope that the economy is better in two years, and the oil spill will be far behind us. If I had to place my money on the elections, it’d be that Republicans gain more seats in 2010 than Democrats, but Obama is re-elected in 2012. The premature declarations of Obama’s alleged meltdown and decline seem nothing more than a political tactic. It works both ways - Pelosi was unhappy Gibbs would admit it’s possible conservatives could win back congress. It seems most every politician and commentator is posturing to try to make their side seem healthier and on the rise.
Being President is not a popularity contest. Being ELECTED President is a popularity contest.
Harry Truman is holding on line 1, he’d like a word with you.
This makes no sense at all.
How would it make things more miserable to know that coming out will not result in your immediate expulsion from the armed forces? How would it make things worse to know that you’re allowed to go to your commanding officer to complain that you’re being harassed for your sexual orientation?
Certainly, ending DADT wouldn’t immediately fix all problems for gays serving in the armed forces. There will, of course, still be prejudice, and injustice, and harassment, and bigotry.
It will, however, remove the fundamental institutional bigotry.
“We’ll end DADT when all other bigotry against gays vanishes” is just another way of saying “never”.
No, how about “we’ll end DADT when we know we’ve got the systems in place to deal with any fallout from that decision.” If I’m Obama, I’m asking the brass in the Pentagon: “if we end DADT right now, total stop, can you guarantee me we won’t have a Matthew Shepherd incident in our armed forces?” I’m imagining the Pentagon saying “Give us time to write some new regulations and give us some tim for education of our NCO’s and we can probably give you a reasonable assurance.”