good lesson (4.00 / 5)

Obama came off as a DLC type early in the primaries, but by the time he accepted the nomination he was speaking in bold progressive language. As an incredible speaker, and with the help of his speechwriter who obviously understood framing, he led people to set aside the policy issues that weren't all that progressive.  It's a great lesson in politics. People don't remember policy details, they rely on whether they trust and believe the politician.  

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by: dna26 @ Thu Apr 01, 2010 at 15:58:42 PM CDT

It's funny to see all the posts (4.00 / 4)

saying "Obama said during the election that he would do X, and now here he is doing X, why is everyone so surprised?"

You know, during the election, Obama also said he that would, once elected, do Y, and indeed Z, but somehow Y and Z are things that didn't happen, for some reason, and so we also see posts saying that it was silly to have expected Obama to have done Y and Z merely because he said he would do them.

So, which is it?  Is he going to do the things he said he would so, during the campaign, so we shouldn't be surprised, or is he, for some reason*, not going to do the things he said he would do, during the campaign, and so we shouldn't be surprised? Or is it that he's going to do whatever he wants, whether he supported it in the campaign or not, so we should just stop being surprised, and stop making excuses for him that are so easily batted down?

* i.e.

• The mean ol' Senate won't let him
• The mean ol' GOP won't let him
• He's too popular, now, to do those things he said he would do which made him so popular in the first place

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by: willf @ Thu Apr 01, 2010 at 16:07:34 PM CDT

... (0.00 / 0)

Right, he's doing things he'd said he'd do, that's not the problem. He's doing things he said he'd do that we don't necessarily like.  It's all those things he said he'd do that we like that he hasn't been doing.  

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by: mikebinos @ Fri Apr 02, 2010 at 07:53:30 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Barack Obama on June 8, 2008 talking about offshore drilling (4.00 / 5)

Obama on Offshore Drilling in 2008: "Gimmick...that would only worsen our addiction to oil"

http://seminal.firedoglake.com...

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by: The Big Hurt @ Thu Apr 01, 2010 at 16:12:18 PM CDT

Gimmick, you betcha. (0.00 / 0)

I still have no clue why offshore oil drilling polls as well as it does.  Don't people knew the specifics about why offshore oil drilling will only be a drop in the bucket?

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by: LeftyKing @ Thu Apr 01, 2010 at 16:23:41 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Why? (4.00 / 7)

It polls well because one of our parties actually tries to move public opinion, rather than meekly assuming it is powerless to tack against the prevailing winds.

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by: Notorious P.A.T. @ Thu Apr 01, 2010 at 16:34:47 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Well, I've also seen a lot of pro-drilling ads on TV. (0.00 / 0)

Happy sappy ones that are good at persuasion.

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by: LeftyKing @ Thu Apr 01, 2010 at 16:47:41 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Cuing up another archived piece from Matt (4.00 / 3)

One perspective at least.

I spent Netroots Nation obsessed with gas prices, chatting with various operatives and politicians about polling on the subject.  The best framing came from Van Jones, who said that we can't 'drill and burn' our way out of this problem.  The public is there with us; they don't believe that gas prices are coming down, even if we open everything to oil company leases.  Yet the public - even liberals - supports drilling anyway for three reasons.

  1. Calling for drilling looks like leadership. Someone is doing something, finally.

  2. Calling for drilling is understandable.  Put drill in ground, oil comes out.  

  3. Calling for drilling has an enemy, the environmentalists.

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by: Adam Bink @ Thu Apr 01, 2010 at 16:50:15 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

polls (4.00 / 6)

Don't people knew the specifics about why offshore oil drilling will only be a drop in the bucket?

People don't know who their representative is; don't know that foreign aid is a tiny portion of the federal budget; want to cut the deficit but also want lower taxes and more spending; don't believe global warming is real; don't believe evolution is real; and think the health care bill will lead to a government takeover of Medicare. And you're surpised people don't realize that potential oil lease sales on the outer continental shelf will contribute relatively little to national oil production?

Here's what happens: a pollster calls up Joe A. Merican and asks, "Do you support more offshore oil drilling to help cut reliance on foreign oil?" Now Joe has probably spent 0 to 3 seconds of his life considering this question prior to this phone call. But he has a general sense that our reliance on foreign oil is a bad thing, and drilling for more oil right here at home sure sounds like it might help with that problem. Besides, the pollster practically said as much in the phrasing of the question. So he answers yes, hangs up the phone, and proceeds to not think about where the oil for his SUV comes from ever again. Meanwhile, Gallup runs a headline saying "68% of Americans support more off-shore drilling," and pundits across the political spectrum respond to this as if it is the considered view of the American people.

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by: Chachy @ Thu Apr 01, 2010 at 18:11:35 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

It doesn't matter (4.00 / 5)

Plenty of things poll very well that the Village refuses to give the time of day to.  This is not being pursued because of responses to polls.  Polling only matters to the extent that elites use it to justify what hey already want to do.

This is not to say that what the public thinks never has an impact, but core values and areas of concern are not the same as polling responses.

Support a Pennsylvania Progressive for Governor - Joe Hoeffel

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by: David Kaib @ Thu Apr 01, 2010 at 19:13:11 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Well, gas prices were sky high back then and (0.00 / 0)

the issue of off-shore oil drilling became almost central to the 2008 campaign season.  Just trying to clarify the context.

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by: LeftyKing @ Thu Apr 01, 2010 at 16:22:20 PM CDT

comprehensive (4.00 / 2)

"Obama said he might support more drilling if it were paired with comprehensive energy conservation measures and alternative energy development."

And those comprehensive measures are where, again?  

Sure he said he would do this during the campaign, but it would be nice if he agreed to this in return for something like cap and trade.  Instead he is pre-compromising again, which shows he hasn't learned a thing in his first year.  

Sure, he said he would increase troop levels during the campaign, but that was 2 years ago when we thought Afghanistan was still a hotbed of al-Qaeda activity.  By the time he got around to announcing his escalation, our own intelligence services said there were 100-200 al-Qaeda fighters there at most.  

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by: Notorious P.A.T. @ Thu Apr 01, 2010 at 16:22:26 PM CDT

It's a feature, not a bug (4.00 / 9)

Obama doesn't "pre-compromise" because he's some poor naif, lost in the wilds of DC.  He starts from an initially weak position, vis a vis the left, because he wants and expects the end result to be even further to the right.

Obama could not have gotten where he is by not understanding negotiations, or let's assume arguendo that Obama is a horrible negotiator.  Do you honestly believe that everyone advising Obama is also a lousy negotiator?  

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by: progthis2 @ Thu Apr 01, 2010 at 16:44:56 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Early in his campaigning (June) he was against offshore (4.00 / 7)

drilling, modified it somewhat (July) and then firmed up his support (August).  

IMO the main issue is not whether or not Obama campaigned on the issue. It is as a voter do agree this is good policy and want to support it.

Personally I have always been against expanding offshore drilling and plan to oppose it. If this is the "new" Democratic position then this will definitely completely dry up any contributions and will effect future votes.

I'm 65 years and I have no intention of abandoning my positions on issues that are important to me. If I supported offshore drilling, I would have supported Republicans for the last couple of decades.  
 

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by: MO Blue @ Thu Apr 01, 2010 at 16:54:18 PM CDT

Let's see... (4.00 / 1)

The available interpretations seem to be:

(a) Obama is horrible at politics and doesn't know the first thing about how to negotiate effectively;

(b) Obama is a giant liar and fraud and wants legislation to end up ever-rightward, and only professes to support things like a public option and a cap-and-trade scheme with 100% of permits auctioned in order to dupe his base;

(c) He's actually, right now, in the process of negotiating -- but with the Conservadems (and maybe Lindsey Graham), not Republicans, and it's not happening out in the open, which is why the announcement is all we see;

(d) He's doing it based on some kind of longer-term plan (to deny Republicans the "Drill, Baby, Drill" issue, to paint the Republicans as obstructionist hacks, or some third thing I forget), and/or he's actually better at negotiating than we are; (the "Obama's Secret Plan" option), or

(e) He actually believes it -- the specific steps which he's taken -- are good policy in and of themselves, and seeing as they were within his power to take, he took them.

Personally, I'd rank these C, D, A, E, B in order of likelihood, but then I'm a giant Obama apologist so I dunno.

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by: illissius @ Thu Apr 01, 2010 at 18:04:41 PM CDT

How could you possibly put A before B. (4.00 / 1)

If C is true at all, then B absolutely comes before A given his campaign.  His ability to mesmerize people into buying inept over corrupt is amazing.  

They're asking for another four years -- in a just world, they'd get 10 to 20. ~~ Dennis Kucinich  

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by: dkmich @ Fri Apr 02, 2010 at 07:24:40 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

I don't see how that follows. (0.00 / 0)

Looking at it just logically:

If you assume C, the fact that he's negotiating with the Conservadems doesn't really let you conclude anything as to his intentions, because either way, he needs Conservadem votes to pass shit, so he's going to have to negotiate with them. What you can say is that he thinks legislation which Conservadems are willing to vote for is better than no legislation; but whether he thinks that's better or worse than more progressive legislation, which the Conservadems aren't willing to vote for, you can't tell, because, thanks to the presence of the Conservadems, that's never an option. Of course, he claims he'd prefer something more progressive, but he's going to say that whether or not B is true, so C neither implies nor precludes B.

As for my own opinion,

Why A: I think Obama's been fairly consistent in one respect, ever since the beginning of the campaign, and nothing really has changed: he is pretty bad at short-term tactics, but pretty good at long-term strategy. Remember how everyone was always screaming at him about how his ads weren't effective enough and he wasn't going after people hard enough? They weren't necessarily wrong, but he had a workable strategy, and at the key points where he really needed to execute (often when his back was against the wall), he did so, so he won. So it doesn't seem out of the question that this really is a stupid blunder which he made because he's genuinely bad at tactics and can't seem to get any better.

Why not B: This is sort of like the direct opposite of D -- either one presupposes that Obama is basically the best politician who ever lived. In one case, he's so good that if ever we question whether something he does is right, we are wrong, because he is that much smarter than us; in the other case, he's so good that he can dupe legions of people into believing he's a great, honest guy, when in fact he's the biggest fraud ever. Really, lots of politicians are frauds, but if Obama is one then he's something like a magnitude bigger and better at it than whoever is second best. You could make some kind of Occam's Razor argument here about how him being just the best politician ever is a simpler explanation of reality and less unlikely than him being both the best politician and the biggest fraud ever, but this seems like a middle-strength argument at best. In the end it probably comes down to the "I'm a giant Obama apologist" thing: I mostly trust the guy, other people plainly do not, and I'm not sure whether you can really debate it objectively.

(Also, for the record: while I put D ahead of A in my list above, it wasn't by very much.)

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by: illissius @ Fri Apr 02, 2010 at 09:24:34 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Thanx for the refresher, Adam… (4.00 / 1)

What it signifies to me, however, is how badly the president and Congress squandered their first year. In the political climate of 2008 and 2009, a middling position on energy, financial and foreign policy might have seemed feasible, just politics as usual. But after the year we've had--with oil folk, banks and health insurers generally exposed as cheats, and foreign wars few believe in--the fact that the president and Congress are running scared with the same tired-ass centrist tactics is beyond maddening. The GOP had absolutely no leverage last year, and yet it's hard to point to one thing the Dems got unequivocally right last year. Sure, the President's remaining true to his word on offshore drilling, but does it look like we're any closer to those counteracting "comprehensive energy conservation measures and alternative energy development"? Yeah, good one...

"This ain't for the underground. This here is for the sun." -Saul Williams

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by: tru blu @ Thu Apr 01, 2010 at 18:09:16 PM CDT

How is Matt? (4.00 / 2)

He called them as he saw them, and he didn't mince words.  Miss his contributions to the site.  

They're asking for another four years -- in a just world, they'd get 10 to 20. ~~ Dennis Kucinich  

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by: dkmich @ Fri Apr 02, 2010 at 07:16:40 AM CDT

He has abandoned his 100 percent auction position (0.00 / 0)

It was exciting during the primaries to get all three top Democratic presidential candidates on board with a pledge that they would auction off all permits under a cap-and-trade system, meaning polluters would have to pay to pollute -- that they wouldn't get to keep dumping the costs of their pollution on the rest of us -- but all of the climate bills that have gained steam in Congress have abandoned this important principle, and Obama hasn't once pushed back.

I agree with the basic premise of your post -- in many ways, Obama is doing what he said he would -- but there are other ways in which he's flipped.

On new nukes, for example, he always said he was open to them, but during the campaign he laid out a set of criteria that he said needed to be met before moving forward. One of these was that there would be a solution for what to do with the waste. Well, that solution does not exist, but Obama is moving forward anyway. Another reversal from a campaign pledge.

Regardless, when the President makes decisions that are bad for the environment (whether they fit campaign pledges or depart for them) progressives ought to push back.

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by: Nick Berning @ Fri Apr 02, 2010 at 10:28:09 AM CDT

Don't totally agree (0.00 / 0)

He didn't abandon the 100% auctioning, Waxman and Markey bargained it away in the house. But I do agree that compromise comes too easy to Obama.  

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by: ai002h @ Fri Apr 02, 2010 at 11:40:23 AM CDT

[ Parent ]