Effective community organizing involves collecting input from as many stakeholders as possible, then reaching consensus around how to achieve change. The political establishment, however, doesn’t work that way. This was President Barack Obama’s mistake in leading his party, and it resulted in the Democrats losing control of the House of Representatives.
As a young person, Obama was a community organizer in Chicago, which is probably where he learned the progressive rhetoric that got him elected. His presidential campaign promised a lot, and after eight years of George W. Bush, boy did Obama sound smart and well-intentioned.
“Yes we can” sounded genuine, even if it was a slogan stolen from the immigrants’ rights movement. The election of Barack Obama was going to change everything.
Along with the White House, in 2008 Democrats took control of both houses of Congress. Obama’s first 100 days were set to change the tides of American domestic and foreign policy. The world celebrated.
Those were happy times for liberals.
Then, KABLOOEY! They ended as quickly as you can say bipartisanship.
The disintegration of Barack Obama has been pretty incredible. From the outset of his run for president, his unwillingness to confront blatant racism hurt his effectiveness. Even before the rise of the Tea Party, his middle name – Hussein – compelled several racists to conflate his name with terrorism.
Of course, this and much more nonsense spewed from Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and their Tea Party fools. One noteworthy contribution from Tea Partiers was that Obama was the socialist, fascist Antichrist.
Being a socialist, of course, Obama took over mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to redistribute wealth and not bail out the banks that made bad loans. And being a fascist, he pushed through his agenda without support of Republicans. And being the Antichrist, he has saved capitalism and brought upon us eternal ruin.
Nonsense. But effective nonsense.
Obama’s response: He tided to the political center, or even to the right, on several issues. He’s still a fascist to the Tea Partiers, but he’s a fascist that works with his opponents.
Unlike every other smart ruler – and stupid ones, too – Pres. Obama failed to leverage his party’s majority in Congress to get things done. Instead, feeling the Tea Party push, he worked with the Republicans, who rejected every one of Obama’s campaign promises.
His supposed bipartisanship was simply bad leadership, given the realities of the U.S. political system. It allowed his proposal for universal healthcare to be rewritten, stripped and changed again and again.
The time Obama wasted negotiating with his opponents who weren’t interested in negotiating could have been spent making more progress to fix a destroyed economy. While he has adopted a long-term approach to reforming the economy, voters often look for immediate action.
Instant fixes are hard to come by for a such a large-scale disaster. But doing more and showing the American people everyday what he was doing to help us might have saved the seats Democrats lost this election.
The president’s party, after all the negotiations and compromises, is extremely weak. The Democrats got caught up in party bickering. They lost their seats in Congress because they were getting next to nowhere.
Pres. Obama has overseen deadlock on Capitol Hill for the past two years despite a Democratic majority. Now that Democrats have lost the House, the rest of his term will likely be more of the same.
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