Anger is not a governing strategy, and Republicans have proposed no plan to turn the economy around. They offer only anger, delusions, and paranoia. Andrew Sullivan digs beneath the surface of the current foul public mood:
But it seems pretty clear to me that he [Scott Brown] will win, which means that the FNC/RNC machine has succeeded in perpetuating the meme that somehow Obama is a communist elitist out of touch with real Americans who want their government slashed, while they want no cuts at all in any entitlements, who want the budget balanced without any tax hikes or spending cuts, who demand access to unrestricted healthcare for ever, but refuse to support ways to reduce soaring costs. They want an end to crippling occupations overseas, but they also don’t want to retreat or surrender to terrorists. They want to restore America’s moral standing but retain the torture camp at Gitmo. And when told they cannot have all this, they vote for someone else who can promise it, however utopian their plans are.
A politician cannot change this mood. But Obama now has a clear warning that he must adjust his program for change in a more populist direction. How to do this will not be easy. But the attempt to offer a centrist path against a populist wave on both right and left has clearly been overwhelmed by the passion and anger of the moment and the barrage of lies and propaganda promulgated by a shameless GOP and a pusillanimous media.
But we know where we are now. Obama’s George H W Bush-style focus on the merits of government has served the interests of the country well, in my judgment. But it has met the fury and shamelessness of the hard and ever more extreme right and the staggering amnesia of the electorate. With one major propaganda channel perpetuating an alternative reality and an opposition party motivated by anger, rage and populism, Obama’s careful centrism is the right path but a tough sell. That tension – between substance and politics – will define the rest of his first term.
Spurred by a warming climate, daily record high temperatures occurred twice as often as record lows over the last decade across the continental United States, new research shows. The ratio of record highs to lows is likely to increase dramatically in coming decades if emissions of greenhouse gases continue to climb….This graphic shows the ratio of record daily highs to record daily lows observed at about 1,800 weather stations in the 48 contiguous United States from January 1950 through September 2009. Each bar shows the proportion of record highs (red) to record lows (blue) for each decade. The 1960s and 1970s saw slightly more record daily lows than highs, but in the last 30 years record highs have increasingly predominated, with the ratio now about two-to-one for the 48 states as a whole.
USA Today has a very useful Presidential Approval Tracker, which provides data on Barack Obama and every other president since Harry Truman. The interactive features allow you to compare two presidents and to get poll results for specific dates. If you are worrying about Obama’s declining approval ratings, keep in mind that Bill Clinton’s approval rating in June of 1993 was 37%, and that Ronald Reagan’s approval rating in January of 1983 was 35%.
These are data points from public opinion polls about the economy. Fewer people are feeling pessimistic, and more people are feeling optimistic, about the economy since George W. Bush left office and Barack Obama became president.
Since Barack Obama took offfice in late January 2009, the net change in GDP is +9.9%. In 2008, with George W. Bush as president, the net change in GDP was -4.7%; and if you count from best quarter to last quarter in 2008, it was-6.9%. Chart is from White House Council of Economic Advisors.
The chart makes clear that it is too early to judge Obama on the percentage increase in national debt relative to GDP. But it is easy to see the record of his predecessors.
Matthew Yglesias articulates one of the cold hard facts about American conservatives:
The presence of a major ideological movement in the United States of America dedicated to the dual propositions that taxes must never go up, and that government expenditures don’t need to relate to government revenue in any real way as long as the Republican Party is in charge simply makes it almost impossible for the country to be governed in a responsible manner.
What happens when women and people of color start to move into real high-level positions of power in America? White men who believe that they should hold onto ALL of the power start behaving badly as a way to deal with their anxiety. Below are two examples: Lou Dobbs’ anti-Latino crusade and the National Republican Campaign Committee suggesting that Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, be “put in her place.”
Expect to see more White Men Behaving Badly in the coming years as increasing numbers of people of color and more women ascend to higher levels of political and economic power.
Andrew Sullivan comments on Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize today:
I don’t think Americans fully absorbed the depths to which this country’s reputation had sunk under the Cheney era. That’s understandable. And so they also haven’t fully absorbed the turn-around in the world’s view of America that Obama and the American people have accomplished. Of course, this has yet to bear real fruit. But you can begin to see how it could; and I hope more see both the peaceful intentions and the steely resolve of this man to persevere.
This president has done a huge amount to bring race relations in this country to a different place, which is why the far right has become so vicious in attacking him and lying about him. They know he threatens their politics of division and rule. He has also directly addressed the Muslim world, telling some hard truths, and played a small role in evoking a similar movement of hope and change in Iran, and finally told the Israelis to stop cutting their nose off to spite their face….
We do know that we were facing a spiral of conflict that, unchecked, could have taken the world to the abyss. I see this prize as an endorsement of his extraordinary reorientation of world politics, and as an encouragement to see it through.
