{"id":30,"date":"2011-04-26T14:16:57","date_gmt":"2011-04-26T14:16:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gbvdems.org\/blog\/?p=30"},"modified":"2011-04-27T05:14:08","modified_gmt":"2011-04-27T05:14:08","slug":"milford-dispatches-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gbvdems.org\/blog\/?p=30","title":{"rendered":"Milford Dispatches #7"},"content":{"rendered":"

Obama is Out Maneuvering Both Opponents and Allies<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ref: Newsweek Apr. 25 2011 issue<\/p>\n

The Republicans have been all over the President, particularly at the beginning of 2011.<\/p>\n

The progressives have been crying, \u201cWhere is Obama?\u201d\u00a0 So disappointed.<\/p>\n

Well, this article by Andrew Romano wonders if the President has been working to surprise us all.\u00a0 I highlighted 8 points from the article I found worth passing on.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. An unlikely group has recently joined the chorus of complaint about Obama \u2013 the top liberal pundits.\u00a0 Paul Krugman: \u201c\u2026[he] doesn\u2019t seem to stand for anything in particular.\u201d<\/li>\n
  2. Then something different happened. After his speech at George Washington University, Romano says it makes more sense to view Obama as a hard-nosed pragmatist determined to maximize results.<\/li>\n
  3. in the first term, Obama followed two rules: 1.\u00a0 Allow the legislative process to run its course before stepping in.\u00a0 2.\u00a0 When he did step in it was to support the best possible proposal \u2013 not the best imaginable.<\/li>\n
  4. Political scientist Frances Lee studied how previous Senates voted on questions that did not have neat party responses.\u00a0 Overall, 39% of these ended in party line votes.\u00a0 But when a president had weighed in early, 56% of them ended in party line votes.\u00a0 When seeking bipartisan passage, it\u2019s better that presidents not weigh in early.<\/li>\n
  5. Obama\u2019s strategy was tied to a time when Republicans could not torpedo his agenda.\u00a0 It paid off:\u00a0 more accomplishments on the board in two years than anyone since LBJ, although not all that liberals would have wanted. That was the liberal beef.\u00a0 Could more have been accomplished for liberals in the deals? Maybe, but not in the 2010 Congress.\u00a0<\/li>\n
  6. Now, Obama switches to potent defense just when Republicans seem poised to overreach. This strategy could result in a second term.\u00a0 He has all this time to campaign against them.\u00a0 If they compromise with him they have little to run on.\u00a0 If they don\u2019t, he has a bully pulpit to point out the flaws in their agenda \u2013 right up to the finish line.\u00a0 Watch \u2013 you are beginning already to see the old Obama back on TV. He has seized the center. Even if they get something passed him, he still will look like the grown up in the room.<\/li>\n
  7. Main new point:\u00a0 In the $38B budget deal, much maligned by the progressive pundits, it now appears, as the details come out, that less than $25B are actual cuts.\u00a0 They are moneys left over that could not be spent in any case !!\u00a0\u00a0 More, they did not come from cherished Democratic programs to an astounding degree.<\/li>\n
  8. On that same day Public Policy Polling released a survey showing that independents have moved from a 56% vs 37% position in favor of Republicans in 2010 now(in 2011) prefer Democrats 42% to 33 % – a whopping 28 % reversal since the last election !\u00a0 Maybe this president is what we were hoping for all along and we did not see it.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \u00a0<\/p>\n

    Jay Gilchrist\u00a0 4 25 11<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Obama is Out Maneuvering Both Opponents and Allies Ref: Newsweek Apr. 25 2011 issue The Republicans have been all over the President, particularly at the beginning of 2011. The progressives have been crying, \u201cWhere is Obama?\u201d\u00a0 So disappointed. Well, this … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political-news-blackstone-valley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gbvdems.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gbvdems.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gbvdems.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gbvdems.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gbvdems.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.gbvdems.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gbvdems.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gbvdems.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gbvdems.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}