President Obama "Folks, that's what you elected me to do."

[Clio the Leo]

One of the healthy things about the Democratic Party is that it is diverse and opinionated. We have big arguments within the party because we got a big tent, and that tent grew during my election and in the midterm election previously. So making everybody happy within the Democratic Party is always going to be tough.

Some of it, also, has to do with — and I joke about it — that there's a turn of mind among Democrats and progressives where a lot of times we see the glass as half-empty. It's like, "Well, gosh, we've got this historic health care legislation that we've been trying to get for 100 years, but it didn't have every bell and whistle that we wanted right now, so let's focus on what we didn't get instead of what we got." That self-critical element of the progressive mind is probably a healthy thing, but it can also be debilitating.

When I talk to Democrats around the country, I tell them, "Guys, wake up here. We have accomplished an incredible amount in the most adverse circumstances imaginable." I came in and had to prevent a Great Depression, restore the financial system so that it functions, and manage two wars. In the midst of all that, I ended one of those wars, at least in terms of combat operations. We passed historic health care legislation, historic financial regulatory reform and a huge number of legislative victories that people don't even notice. We wrestled away billions of dollars of profit that were going to the banks and middlemen through the student-loan program, and now we have tens of billions of dollars that are going directly to students to help them pay for college. We expanded national service more than we ever have before.

The Recovery Act alone represented the largest investment in research and development in our history, the largest investment in infrastructure since Dwight Eisenhower, the largest investment in education — and that was combined, by the way, with the kind of education reform that we hadn't seen in this country in 30 years — and the largest investment in clean energy in our history.

You look at all this, and you say, "Folks, that's what you elected me to do." I keep in my pocket a checklist of the promises I made during the campaign, and here I am, halfway through my first term, and we've probably accomplished 70 percent of the things that we said we were going to do — and by the way, I've got two years left to finish the rest of the list, at minimum. So I think that it is very important for Democrats to take pride in what we've accomplished.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/209395?RS_show_page=1

Reminder: President Obama speaks at a rally tonight at 7pm EDT
http://www.barackobama.com

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[ensho]

2. true!

nt

[dennis4868]

3. I am one progressive...

who is very proud of our president....to do what he has done in light of the awful political environment that surrounds us today, is INCREDIBLE!

[Enrique]

4. I voted for Obama DESPITE his centrist promises

and I would do it again, no question.

But I did NOT vote for him for those things he lists. I notice he doesn't list his promise to expand offshore drilling, which he also promised before the election. Did we elect him for that?

[mkultra]

8. we elected him because the balance of his totality was greater than McCains.

[krispos42]

5. Yeah, well, there is also what has to be done

Even if it's not popular. Even if the electorate isn't aware of it. Or if they've been duped by hate-mongers.


USP has to get done because anything less will fail in a catastrophic manner in a decade or two. It's not a bell or a whistle, it's a fundamental piller of long-term growth, stability, and prosperity.

[thereismore]

6. I'd kinda like to see his list! nt

[Hekate]

30. PolitiFact.com has it -- all 500+ promises from his campaign, plus ratings

They note if things are "in the works" and moving along or stalled in Congress, as well.

The truth is out there.

Hekate

[LonePirate]

7. As an LGBT progressive, I am still waiting for him to do what he was elected to do.

I have a feeling I will be waiting for quite a while longer.

[mkultra]

9. Maybe the republicans will advance your cause

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

10. Of course they will. They are not the party of "the gays" and "the blacks"!!!

:sarcasm::sarcasm:

[VMI Dem]

11. "your cause"

:shrug:

[mkultra]

14. yes, im not gay.

i support the cause but i do not own it.

[VMI Dem]

16. "i support the cause"

:spray:

[mkultra]

18. Yes, i know its shocking but its not number one on my list

[VMI Dem]

19. "i know its shocking"

:toast:

[mkultra]

21. yes, i toast the shocker as well.

[LonePirate]

13. So I need to shut up and be grateful for a lack of backward movement for my causes?

I don't even know where to begin in responding to that.

[mkultra]

17. maybe start from a realistic point

like how republican administrations ACTUALLY walked the cause backwards. just saying.

[treestar]

25. Your post simply reveals that you expect to get everything you want

as quickly as possible and that you expect your issue to be the number one cause of everyone else. And that all other issues should not matter to anyone else. You're even shocked that other things MIGHT matter.

[LonePirate]

27. Forgive me for not wanting to sit at the back of the bus after 2 years of no results on civil rights

[Donald Ian Rankin]

28. That would carry more weight if more progress had been made on other issues.

If Obama were in a position to say "Yes, we haven't made much progress on gay rights, but that was because we were spending all our time and political capital on cutting unemployment/fixing Iraq and Afghanistan/setting up a decent healthcare system/shutting down Guantanamo bay/making peace in the middle East/increasing spending on education etc" then I would be willing to take him at his word.

But, since he's still making hopeful-sounding noises on all those issues but still hasn't accomplished very much on any of them, I'm less willing to take that excuse.

Not having made progress on any given issue in the first two years in office isn't in isolation a big deal, but I am not at all impressed by Obama's achivements taken as a whole, especially given that the Dems controlled both houses.

If I were American I would still vote a straight Democratic ticket, but I might well not bother to donate or campaign.

[yodermon]

12. THAT'S GREAT Barack.

But here's the thing: All the people you're trying to get to vote for Dems again??

THEIR LIVES STILL LARGELY *SUCK*.
AND:
YOU HAVE TO MOTIVATE THEM TO VOTE WITHOUT PATRONIZING THEM OR INSULTING THEM OR CALLING THEM "WHINY" (even obliquely).

sorry for yelling, but damn.

Unless of course you're setting up these sorry jobless unwashed leftist masses as the scapegoat for the pending losses this fall, but I'm sure you're not doing that.

[mkultra]

20. but they are and hes telling the truth.

sorry for being terse, but damn.

[yodermon]

23. insult your base == FAIL.

enjoy your cuppa smug while speaker boner fucks america

[treestar]

24. If your life sucks, you have to be motivated by someone else?

You'll just sit there apathetically until someone else motivates you? You have politics exactly backwards.

If you were a worker being abused by management, you would do nothing to join or form the union until someone motivated you? If the victim of discrimination, you'd do nothing until someone motivated you? Who motivated Rosa Parks? MLK?

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

15. *these aren't the droids you're looking for...*

n/t

[emulatorloo]

22. Handy resource: PolitiFact | The Obameter: Tracking Barack Obama's Campaign Promises

http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/

[pnorman]

36. Thanks, I was looking for that very website!

n/t

[impik]

26. God, this makes me happy. Finally, he had enough of the crap from all sides.

[Hekate]

32. Yep.

[SlipperySlope]

29. I'd like to see that checklist

I'd really like to see that checklist he keeps in his pockets.

A lot of things were said during the election. A lot of hopes may have been raised on things that weren't actually said.

[Hekate]

31. See posts #22 and #30 in this thread

[SlipperySlope]

33. Not quite what I meant

I'd like to see what Obama considers his check-list to be, not what other people consider Obama's check-list to be.

Obama says he has kept 70% of his promises. Politifacts.com only has him keeping about 24% of his promises. That's a significant difference, but they must be using different lists.

[Hekate]

34. Politifact is going by what he said during the campaign. Is that clear enough? Also

If you actually look at the site you will see that they clearly distinguish between "broken" and "stalled" and "compromised." If something is "stalled" in the Senate (where bills go to die- tm) it has not been broken by President Obama, has it? If it is "in the works" it has not been broken by President Obama, has it?

If you're going to use a Truth-o-Meter, report on it truthfully. Out of 500 campaign promises, 22 are rated "broken" by this Pulitzer Prize winning site. What percent is that, by your math? I come up with .044 -- under 4 1/2 %.

The Obameter Scorecard
Promise Kept 122
Compromise 39
Promise Broken 22
Stalled 82
In the Works 238
Not yet rated 3
http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/

Hekate

[SlipperySlope]

39. I don't care about Politifact's list, and I never said "broken"

I don't see what distinction you are trying to make, and you seem to be attacking me over some point I never made.

Here are Obama's exact words: "and here I am, halfway through my first term, and we've probably accomplished 70 percent of the things that we said we were going to do"

Obama is saying that 70% of his promises have been completed. So he only has 30% of his promises left to do. He said nothing about "stalled" or "compromised" or "broken".

That website claims to be tracking 506 total promises (122+39+22+82+238+3). What category on that website represents promises that have been accomplished? It looks to me like "kept", so that website is showing 122/506 = 24% of promises kept. I guess you could consider both "kept" and "compromise" to be accomplished, in which case that website shows (122+39)/506 = 32% of promises "accomplished".

Either way, 24% or 32% is a lot less then the 70% of promises that Obama says he has accomplished.

I don't for a minute think that Obama goes to some website to keep track of his promises. He has his own list of his promises. He said so himself. He is 70% done with that list. He said so himself. I wrote that I wished I could see Obama's list. Wanting to see Obama's list has nothing to do with some list kept by some random website. I wrote about wanting to see the list that Obama personally uses to track his accomplishments and things he promised to do.

The problem here is that the "truth-o-meter" website is a complete tangent. It has nothing to do with Obama's personal list, so comparing the two is meaningless.

[Cowpunk]

35. They've been trying for a hundred years to bail out the health insurance racket?

What took so long?

[ClarkUSA]

37. Democrats need to speak truth to power like President Obama when we GOTV. He's given us a gem.

... there's a turn of mind among Democrats and progressives where a lot of times we see the glass as half-empty. It's like, "Well, gosh, we've got this historic health care legislation that we've been trying to get for 100 years, but it didn't have every bell and whistle that we wanted right now, so let's focus on what we didn't get instead of what we got."

When I talk to Democrats around the country, I tell them, "Guys, wake up here. We have accomplished an incredible amount in the most adverse circumstances imaginable." I came in and had to prevent a Great Depression, restore the financial system so that it functions, and manage two wars. In the midst of all that, I ended one of those wars, at least in terms of combat operations. We passed historic health care legislation, historic financial regulatory reform and a huge number of legislative victories that people don't even notice. We wrestled away billions of dollars of profit that were going to the banks and middlemen through the student-loan program, and now we have tens of billions of dollars that are going directly to students to help them pay for college. We expanded national service more than we ever have before.

The Recovery Act alone represented the largest investment in research and development in our history, the largest investment in infrastructure since Dwight Eisenhower, the largest investment in education — and that was combined, by the way, with the kind of education reform that we hadn't seen in this country in 30 years — and the largest investment in clean energy in our history.

You look at all this, and you say, "Folks, that's what you elected me to do." I keep in my pocket a checklist of the promises I made during the campaign, and here I am, halfway through my first term, and we've probably accomplished 70 percent of the things that we said we were going to do — and by the way, I've got two years left to finish the rest of the list, at minimum. So I think that it is very important for Democrats to take pride in what we've accomplished.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/209395?RS_show_page=1

[Kablooie]

38. I agree with him.

I also agree that his accomplishments aren't as broad and deep as I would have wished but given the shrill, manic opposition he's had to deal with I think he has done remarkably well.

Yes the accomplishments lean way too far to the right but that is still better than not accomplishing anything at all.

He has established a foundation and hopefully a structure can be built on top that will contain more of the features that people here want to see.

It's still tenuous and if the right gains too much power too soon, they could tear it up again, but if it remains, it will be the start of a movement towards a more egalitarian democracy.

[young but wise]

40. ......

I also agree that his accomplishments aren't as broad and deep as I would have wished but given the shrill, manic opposition he's had to deal with I think he has done remarkably well.

Yep, even in his own party, it's very sad.