State of Union: windy, with chance of rhetoric.
I think Bob Herbert in the New York Times nails the tenor of tonight's big speech by Obama. And, remarkably, it certainly seems there's a lot of unanimity on far left and far right about the opinion Herbert's expounding.
Seems like it's time for Obama to evidence some cojones instead of Clinton centrist sail-raising. If that isn't there, he'll lose the starved progressives in five or six minutes. And, of course, he never had the right wing, and he shouldn't care. (But how come Democrats even buy the fairly moronic notion that they can or should please conservatives? When was the last sleepless night Mitch McConnell spent worrying about whether Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann would like him? Man looks well-rested to me.)
I think we're well past the point, especially in light of the recent Supreme Court decision making the corporations even more official overlords, where a president of either party can really do anything meaningful.
Anyway. Bob Herbert:
Who is Barack Obama?
Americans are still looking for the answer, and if they don’t get it soon—or if they don’t like the answer—the president’s current political problems will look like a walk in the park.
…he has positioned himself all over the political map: the anti-Iraq war candidate who escalated the war in Afghanistan; the opponent of health insurance mandates who made a mandate to buy insurance the centerpiece of his plan; the president who stocked his administration with Wall Street insiders and went to the mat for the banks and big corporations, but who is now trying to present himself as a born-again populist.
…He is creating a credibility gap for himself, and if it widens much more he won’t be able to close it.
AND:
The weirdest story of the day: conservative faux pimp ACORN agitator gets arrested trying to bug a senator's office. Did nobody tell him this was illegal, or is he that foolhardy? And the biggest question–what will Fox News do now?
Here's the story from the best-named newspaper in the country, back in my high school stomping grounds of NOLA, the Times-Picayune.
ADDITIONAL:
More to pursue here at a later date, for sure. This new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll certainly doesn't bolster the consensus narrative that everybody hates the Democrats/Obama and is embracing Republican policy. (The stuff in parentheses is the direction to the poll taker in reading the question.) Seems a bit more complex than that:
*note: sorry the results aren't lining up properly below–the blog software isn't cooperating real well with the table
Q11 When it comes to dealing with the problems facing America, how much blame do you give (READ ITEM) in
not finding solutions to those problems–a great deal of blame, quite a bit of blame, just some blame, or very
little blame?
Summary Table of Blame
Total Blame Total Not Blame D/S
President Obama 27 71 44
The Democrats in Congress 41 56 15
The Republicans in Congress 48 50 2
