Obama: measurements that best define his success (or failure)?

[kenny blankenship]

19. Remember context: financial collapse was best opportunity for Dems in 70 years

Last edited Thu Dec 22, 2011, 02:28 PM - Edit history (2)

By 2008, thanks to a tide of corruption scandals, a pair of unnecessary and disastrous wars dragging out and going sour for America, and also thanks epic tax cutting profligacy and banking fraud bringing on the total collapse of the financial system, it was at last in the power of the Democratic Party to rescind the Reagan Revolution and to convert the deep & wide discontent in this country into a new legislative & ideological landscape. Under the historical leadership of Barack Obama, they blew it completely, and sold out a chance the likes of which occurs only once in maybe 3 generations, like some crackhead pawning their family's heirloom jewelry for just enough dollars to stay high for a week. 70-75 years is a long time to wait for change, but that's about the interval between major changes in direction in this country's political history. That's about the interval from ratification of the Constitution to the beginning of the Civil War, and then from the Civil War to the New Deal, and from the New Deal to the crisis of 2008.

For 30+ years following the election of Ronald Reagan, Democrats have been promising they would govern for the ordinary people, in the tradition of their party, instead of catering to the rich as the Republicans do. In the atmosphere of general collapse prevailing in 2008, they'd been given the best chance they could ever ask for. It was up to them to deliver their voting constituencies from the predatory grasp of the Reagan (counter)Revolution. Obama and his party failed utterly. Delivering on Democratic Party rhetoric conflicted with their present source of income, and they punted. You must judge his failures against this background - against those stakes. Historians will.

So you ask for some numbers to judge the Obama years by, and I'll say the only ones of real interest are 75 and 30. Did Obama herald change and declare the end of the discredited Reagan Revolution, or did he thwart generational change and restore the Reagan Revolution's robber baron ascendancy?