"Meep Meep Watch" - The Dish by Andrew Sullivan

[applegrove]

Meep Meep Watch

The Dish by Andrew Sullivan

http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/07/10/meep-meep-watch-8/

"SNIP..........................

Now look at the economy where Obama has been stymied by the GOP for a very long time – both federally and in the states where local government austerity put an unprecedented drag on the recovery. Well: again, we have an unemployment rate back to where it was before the Great Recession hit. If the momentum continues, we could have an unemployment rate below 6 percent before too long. It’s taken for ever – but the hit was deep and the debt overhang large. And speaking of debt, we also have this data to chew on:

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No, there hasn’t been any progress in reducing our long-term debt or our unfunded liabilities in entitlements. But when the GOP refuses to countenance any new revenues, I can’t blame the president. And to have reduced a budget deficit from 10 percent of GDP to just over 2 percent in the wake of a massive recession is something a Republican president would be bragging incessantly about.

There’s still a lot in play. The critical negotiations with Iran remain as tricky as ever – but that we have a chance of controlling Iran’s nuclear program without war is already a remarkable fact. Again: a function of skilled, relentless diplomacy backed by serious sanctions. The menace of Putin has not gone away – even though a very good case can be made that in that head-to-head, Putin is now licking his wounds a little, after Ukraine has signed that trade deal with the EU, and Ukraine’s military is regrouping. Immigration reform is in limbo. But I’d argue that on the wider political plain, Obama has been winning the strategic war with the GOP. The last twelve months have been an unmitigated disaster for Republican outreach to Hispanics; the Republicans have hurt themselves with many more women on the question of contraception, than they have helped themselves with orthodox Christians; the Palin impeachment chorus is poison to the middle of the country; and the Democrats have a clear and female front-runner against a divided and small-bore GOP bench in 2016. If Clinton were to win, it would be as decisive a strategic advance as when George H W Bush cemented Reagan’s legacy.

I’m applying the criteria that Obama has applied to himself. Is his long game bearing fruit? So far, it seems to me, the question answers itself.




..........................SNIP"