About half of Americans & a significant majority of Democrats are happy with the President's performance, while the other half of Americans, including nearly 1 in 6 Democrats (mostly liberals), are dissatisfied with his performance.
The President's supporters, like deaniac83 feel his accomplishments are huge & historic and that the ungrateful liberals need to be thankful for all his hard work, historic achievements, excellent leadership, etc. and be glad that he's not McCain or Bush. In particular, they want liberals to stop criticizing his performance & decisions.
The President's liberal detractors like the "professional left" are dissatisfied with the compromised & meager nature of the progress and are not convinced that it is historic. Instead, they view it as mostly beneficial to large corporations while average citizens have gained back only a tiny fraction - if any - of their standard of living & the liberties lost during the Republican years.
The President's supporters are correct that the President has achieved a great deal given the circumstances. Their glass, and perhaps their reality, is half full.
Unfortunately for him & for Congressional Dems, the President's detractors are also correct, that not enough has been accomplished given the circumstances. Their glass, and perhaps their reality, is half empty.
(And yes, I'm talking about his liberal detractors in the general public & media, not his opponents like Republicans, nor enemies like al Qaeda).
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Economic Performance. Supporters say: President's bailout & stimulus saved economy from a collapse. Plus, it's all Bush's fault for driving the car into the ditch. Detractors say: Stimulus was good but economy is still collapsed. Pres saved Wall Street & Detroit, but not rest of Main Street. It's Obama's job to pull the car out of the ditch, but there it's still stuck there after 18 months. Instead of pulling harder or smarter, he continues to wrongly claim that we're moving in right direction. Both narratives are largely correct.
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War Performance. Supporters say: Pres is ending Iraq war & saving thousands of lives & gazillions of dollars. Detractors say: Iraq pullout is good but Pres is escalating Afghan war & still wasting thousands of lives & gazillions of dollars. Both narratives are largely correct.
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Healthcare Performance. Supporters say: Pres is bringing care to 50M uninsured Americans. Detractors say: Yes, that's good but covering the uninsured through a unjust/regressive individual mandate which delivers a trillion dollars to corrupt insurers is unwise & maaybe even unconscionable. Instead, the uninsured (& possibly others) should have been covered more economically by expanding Medicare. Both narratives are largely correct.
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Justice Performance. Supporters say: Pres stopped torture. Tried to close Gitmo. Tried to reduce corruption in health insurers & Wall Street banks. Detractors say: Pres condoned torture by not prosecuting torturers & enablers. Didn't close Gitmo. Didn't punish the liars who ginned up case for a misguided war. Didn't punish corrupt insurers & banks which crashed economy. Pardoned/supported wiretappers & their enablers. Both narratives are largely correct.
The fact is that the President has been in-charge and has been making the key decisions for the past year and a half, as he is entitled to do as a result of his election. After a Hope/Change-filled election campaign accompanied by a huge economic collapse, he could have chosen either a liberal or a moderately conservative path forward. He chose a moderately conservative path to govern. He made the judgment that the bank-friendly bailouts with a reduced stimulus would be enough to turn around the economy. And he also took a major gamble that he would be able to woo Republicans with conservative policies instead of fighting them with liberal policies.
Liberal Dems gave him the benefit of the doubt & reluctantly supported his strategy even as he ignored most of their pleas/advice on key issues as naive or unrealistic (e.g., bailout main street instead of wall street, pass a larger stimulus, breakup the too-big-to-fail banks, expand Medicare, prosecute torturers, etc.). ConservaDems basked in the importance given to them by the President & milked it for every penny. And Republicans took all the goodies offered to them by the President (immunity for torture, adoption of HCR modeled on the 1993 Republican healthcare plan, bailout for banks not individuals, etc.) & still continued to demonize him viciously & vote against his policies.
Unlike the Republicans, however, most liberal Democrats are still interested in a supporting the President, but they are no longer interested in compromising away their own beliefs just so Republicans can kick more sand in their faces. They've been treated like a submissive housewife by the President's men and have not been impressed with the results. She will no longer support her husband blindly when he makes bad decisions or when he continues to dismiss her needs as unrealistic & unworthy of serious consideration. Scolding her for being impatient, or for wanting ponies, or for not fawning over him for overcoming huge odds will not help her appreciate him more. Telling her that she's lucky to be married to him instead of John McCain or George Bush is not really a winning argument either. Blaming everything on a tough environment or unreasonable opponents might help mitigate some of her anger, but it won't convince her that he is making good decisions. With this backdrop, she has actively & viciously started highlighting every mistake he ever made & saying "I told you so" to anyone who will listen & she is even seriously considering divorce. Maybe it's just better to be single. And yet, despite all this, he can still rebuild her trust by seriously acknowledging her concerns and changing his behavior to address her issues forcefully. Because ultimately, she really wants a true partnership, and she supports him & wants him to succeed. She's just sick of being treated like a doormat & told how to feel & told to shut up even as he continues to get suckered by dishonest opponents (e.g., Alan Simpson, 'Ground Zero' Mosque, etc., etc., etc.). (Yes, this is an crude analogy, but it's a pretty good way to sum up the rift within the Democratic party & find a way forward).
To be sure, the liberals could also tone down the over-the-top criticisms (sellout, corrupt, obamabot, etc.) and return to supporting him unconditionally, but they're reluctant to repeat & exacerbate the problems that eroded their confidence in him in the first place. Plus, they don't believe in his strategy of compromising at all costs; they have yet to see the strategy work against the Republicans to deliver any real changes. And finally, they have no single leader who can align the majority of liberals. The President, on the other hand, has the ability to rally his supporters to a new direction very quickly, so he's pretty much the only one who could reunite & energize the Democratic party almost overnight.
Furthermore, the reality is that most Presidents are judged foremost on the economy, and unfortunately the actual state of the economy is still terrible. Had it been better, the President would probably enjoy stronger support and might not need to make many changes. But while the proverbial car may have avoided a tree, it is still stuck in a ditch. Instead of redoubling his efforts to get the car out the ditch, the President now finds himself without support to pursue any serious new initiatives to get the car out of the ditch. And he himself has failed to take the lead on building support for a major new initiative to jumpstart the economy, choosing instead to make excuses (e.g., blame Bush) and suggesting patience instead of an urgent need to act:
But overall, the main message that I want to deliver before I start taking questions -- and I said this to Joe and Rhonda -- is slowly, but surely, we are moving in the right direction. We’re on the right track. The economy is getting stronger, but it really suffered a big trauma. And we’re not going to get all 8 million jobs that were lost back overnight. It’s going to take some time. And businesses are still trying to get more confident out there before they start hiring. And people -- consumers -- are not going to start spending until they feel a little more confident that the economy is getting stronger.
IMO, this is a wrong & misguided assessment based on Wall Street measurements rather than Main Street measurements. Quite possibly, it's a combination of wishful thinking and a desire to appease the mostly Republican deficit-hawks who think we can't afford to do more to grow the economy, except to extend tax cuts for the wealthy. These chicken deficit-hawks are the same chicken war-hawks who are happy to force others to make sacrifices but will never agree to make sacrifices themselves. The President's strategy of appeasing these Republicans and taking liberal Dems for granted has failed miserably IMO. The Republicans have demonstrated that they are a permanent & ruthless opposition with no interest in partnership.
Hopefully the President & his moderate supporters - the ones who seem to be in charge - will soon choose a path of real partnership with liberal Democrats to make America stronger and become stronger themselves too, instead of a path of continuously appeasing Republicans & making the nation weaker in the process. Some people would argue that the choice really belongs to Ben Nelson & Blanche Lincoln, not to the President, but I think that's a not true...dare I say that Conventional Wisdom is just the "soft bigotry of lowered expectations." The President is the leader of the country & the party, so he's capable of leading at least his own party (if not Republicans) with both carrots & sticks and cannot simply abdicate his responsibilities by letting a few ConservaDem Senators from a few (relatively) small states hold the whole country hostage. If he can't lead even them, then we're in worse shape than even I thought.
Perhaps soon, maybe out of necessity or convenience or an epiphany, the President will start with an urgent outreach to liberals on a major new effort to revive the economy instead of continuing to ask for patience, or continuing to repeat carefully hedged claims about how we're headed in the right direction, or continuing to be satisfied with half-measures. I think the need for an all-hands-on-deck approach to reviving the economy is a winning election strategy for Dems and could reunite & expand the party quickly. A change of urgency in his rhetoric & the proposed solutions could make an impact even before the midterm elections and become a first step towards building a Democratic super-majority again. Liberals and even conservatives could sign on and be energized by his leadership again.
A similarly aggressive approach on Justice & War could follow as an effective offense against the shameless Republicans/Tea Partiers & their Fox propagandists who are working hard to shift the blame for all our troubles onto "socialist Democrats" from the real culprits - themselves. The approach might also give the Dems a renewed mandate & hopefully some spine to govern after the midterms...and to build a more perfect union!