This was written for Yes We Can! Long Island, a progressive, advocacy organization that was founded during the presidential campaign of 2008. Must of the excitement has diminished in the past year, so this was an attempt to bring back some perspective to President Obama's time in office.
This was first posted on yeswecanli.org on Sunday.
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Much has been recently discussed of President Obama’s – also sometimes referred to as Superman – failures and the Democratic Party’s poor approval throughout the nation. We have heard this repeated over and over again on the news and printed in our papers, repeated so many times it has become the reality that we all have accepted – the Democrats are poised to lose many seats in congress in the midterm elections. The funny thing though is this isn’t actually true. The people do not view Obama’s Presidency as a failure; they do not view the Democrats as poorly as past congresses; and it is far from a certainty that the Democrats will do poorly in the midterms.
In our recent political history, with the success, popularity and organization of the right-wing media, false realities are pushed into the public consciousness that are very far from being accurate representations of what is going on.
The exceptionally high hopes many had for President Obama during the dark, cold winter of 2008 were so grandiose that anything short of creating world peace and bringing global prosperity in a matter of months is too often viewed as disappointing. We all know that the reality is that Obama was inaugurated at one of the lowest points in modern American history – the economy was in free fall, our nation’s approval rating was at a low, two failed wars were still underway, and eight years of incompetence needed to be reversed. No easy task, even for Barack Obama.
In the time since he has been inaugurated, he has had greater success than any modern president. In his short time in office, he has passed the largest reform of healthcare in generations, passed the largest financial reform since the Great Depression, appears to be having some success in one war, and trying to find some footing in another. His bailouts of corporations, financial and industry, has kept another depression from occurring, no matter how unpopular those actions may be considered. He has appointed one supreme court judge, the first Hispanic to serve in the highest court, and is about to have his second nomination confirmed in a matter of weeks. His term to date has been anything but a failure, but more closely described as a resounding success.
The results of his actions are not all instant – we have not seen the benefits of health care reform, as it will take years for those to be seen – but President Obama is clearly leading us to a better place. The scare tactics are only being used to divide us an distract us from the reality that our president is having a tremendously successful presidency, despite the curveballs he has been thrown.
And if you think I am misreading the national sentiment, look at this report produced by the DNC a week ago, the tone of the nation is being greatly misread by so many.
Voter Support for Democrats Exceeds Support for Party in Power in 1994 and 2006While history would suggest that the 2010 elections stand to be challenging for Democrats, a variety of recent polls suggest that the barriers to success for Democratic candidates this year may not be as high as some have suggested. While pundits are now commonly comparing this year’s elections to those of 1994 and 2006, years in which the minority party took control of Congress, voters today express greater support for Democratic leaders and more trust in Democratic leadership than for the political party in power in either of those election cycles. In fact, an analysis of the relative strength of the party in power, the temperature readings of the incumbent president and the approval ratings and generic ballot tests for the party out of power for 1994, 2006 and 2010 proves that comparisons between those previous election cycles and today are at best poor.
Read the full DNC Memo here.