Imagine that! Obama decides he'll fight for people, approvals soar

kos

Daily Kos Staff

Tuesday January 20, 2015 · 9:31 AM PST

2015/01/20 · 09:31

no image description available — Obama meets with co-chairs of police reform task force.

President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr. meet with Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey and Laurie Robinson, professor of criminology, law and society at George Mason University, and a former assistant attorney general, who will be co-chairing a Presidential task force on how communities and law enforcement can work together to build trust to strengthen neighborhoods across the country, in the Oval Office, Dec. 1, 2014

Obama meets with co-chairs of police reform task force.

As we saw yesterday ...

You can also see the undeniable upward trend in gallup's daily tracking poll here. Now what, pray tell, has changed in the last month, when his approvals were 39-57 among registered voters in that ABC/WaPo poll? Well, people better approve of the way he's handling the economy, up to 47-49, from 42-55 a month ago. but that's a net 11-point shift, smaller than the 24-point net improvement in his favorabilities. So what could it be? I have a theory:

* Obama issued executive order shifting immigration enforcement efforts away from deporting the undocumented parents of United States citizen children. Turns out, splitting up families was kinda unpopular.

* Obama has called for free community college tuition. Turns out, making an education more affordable is popular!

* Obama has stood strong against Keystone XL. Turns out, people don't like the despoiling of the environment. And even those who support the pipeline don't really give a shit about it. They just support it because liberals oppose it.

* Obama announced actions to reform police departments nationwide: helping them purchase body cams while overhauling the program that sends surplus military hardware to local departments. Who knew that wouldn't be the death knell of Obama's presidency?

* Obama normalized relations with Cuba, which turns out, delighted more people than the few crusty and cranky old-generation Cuban-Americans left in South Florida.

* Obama announces plan to expand paid sick leave. Turns out, allowing sick people to stay home, rather than 1) working sick, and 2) infecting everyone else around them, is popular.

But hey, for the sake of argument, let's pretend that Obama's massive approval gains are entirely based on economic gains. That still shows that doing popular, liberal things won't kill a Democrat. Republicans have lost their heads over every single one of the bullet items above, and it doesn't matter. Conservatives may have decided Obama is the devil, but they're on the fringy outside.

Head below the fold as we imagine what things might've been like had Obama governed this way from the beginning.

Just imagine if Obama had governed like this from Day One, instead of wasting years of his life trying to make nice with an intractable and hostile Republican Party. The biggest failure of Obama's presidency was believing his campaign bullshit about "bringing the country together." You can only make peace with a foe when they are ready to make peace, and Republicans are on a holy war to destroy everything that is good and noble about government. They have no interest in peace or compromise for the public good, they believe only in scorched-earth war. And worse of all, it's not as if they pretended otherwise. They were very clear from the start: their job was to make Obama a one-term president, and they did everything in their power to destroy him and his legislative efforts.

So instead of giving away concession after concession to Republicans hoping for support that would never arrive, Democrats should've pulled back all those concessions and governed as real Democrats. And instead of buying into Republican concern trolling and hiding from their accomplishments, they should've been proud of them and trumpeted them to high heaven.

Because Democrats didn't lose in 2010 and 2014 because America turned against them. They lost because disgusted and disillusioned Democrats stayed home. Remember, there are more of us than there are of them, objectively. It just happens that our core base doesn't vote at the rate that old white Republican fucks do. Until we can turn that around, we're destined for more non-presidential year shellackings.

So instead of hiding from the popular thing (from comprehensive immigration reform, to larger stimulus, to the public option, and on and on and on), they should've stuck that finger up in the air and gone with public opinion, all the while railing and raging against the Wall Street assholes who nearly destroyed the world. It would've been popular. It would've rallied and motivated the base. And had they turned out, the trajectory of Obama's presidency and the makeup of the current Congress would look a hell of a lot different.

And to be clear, this isn't just an Obama thing, since we had the Ben Nelsons and Joe Liebermans of the party kneecapping us the entire way. But Obama was all too happy to, say, let Max Baucus drag out passage of the Affordable Care Act in a sad, pathetic, and doomed attempt to bring aboard Republican support that was never necessary to begin with, and would obviously never arrive.

And let's not even get started with the successful 2014 ballot initiatives, from marijuana legalization to increasing the minimum wage. ...

Being liberal is popular. We're seeing that validated in real time. It may be too late for this Congress and presidency, but it would be nice to get confirmation that Hillary Clinton is watching. Because while Obama may have learned his lesson too late, it's not too late for our next president.

Imagine that! Obama decides he'll fight for people, approvals soar

Comments are closed on this story.