dagblog - Comments for "RYAN LIZZA'S NEW YORKER ESSAY ON OBAMA & POLEMICS"

If Obama had a Democrat

Michael Maiello — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:25:06 +0000

In reply to Yeah, good interview. Take

If Obama had a Democrat introduce the Republican party's platform in Congress, as a bill called the Good For American Children Act, the Republicans would still not pass it and would likely denounce it as socialism.

Depressing for sure. The kid

Richard Day — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:08:08 +0000

In reply to I didn't love Lizza's piece.

Depressing for sure.

The kid found himself in possession of these memos to help us climb into the Executive Brain.

Well if the memos were cherry-picked...

If he received so little from the opposition being 'reasonable'; how in the hell could he have received more being a prick?

But this does put some drama into tonight's speech I suppose.

Yeah, good interview. Take

Richard Day — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:03:28 +0000

In reply to Saw Lawrence O'Donnell

Yeah, good interview.

Take this Senator Brown from Mass who has no business being in that seat or the two Ladies from Maine.

They still caucus with the repubs 99.09% of the time so that these three senators are part and parcel of the record number of filibusters over these last three years.

Judges are not confirmed; ambassadors are not confirmed; Department Heads are not confirmed; plane jane legislation is stopped in its tracks...

Would a different attitude on the part of Obama have made a difference?

No--it was all preordained.

Saw Lawrence O'Donnell

Elusive Trope — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 16:21:56 +0000

In reply to RYAN LIZZA'S NEW YORKER ESSAY ON OBAMA & POLEMICS

Saw Lawrence O'Donnell interview with Lizza

this bit summed some things up pretty well

O'Donnell: I want to read another passage here, where you say, "A year into the
Obama presidency, a Gallup poll showed how starkly he had failed at
reducing partisanship. Obama was the most polarizing first-year president
in history. That is the difference between Democratic approval of him and
Republican disapproval was the highest ever recorded. The previous record
holder was Bill Clinton."

And, Ryan, one of the reasons for that, which I think the president
possibly miscalculated, was just how partisan the Congress had become. You
point out that there used to be an overlap. It used to be, even as
recently as the `90s, that there were six Democrats in the Senate who were
more conservative than another six Republicans in the Senate, and that`s
where you found the overlap for compromise, similar kind of numbers in the
House of Representatives, and now the most conservative Democrat in the
Senate is more liberal than the most liberal Republican.

LIZZA: And, you know, and according to the data you used, if you use
the poll and Rosenthal data, which a lot of political scientists use, same
in the House. No overlap anymore in the House. And that`s the Congress
Obama was coming to town with to work with.

And I do think it`s fair to criticize Obama for his analysis of
politics on the edge of his presidency. You know, I went back and reread
"The Audacity of Hope," and you read those sections about red America and
blue America, and they still read very -- as very inspiring on the page,
but they don`t describe the country we live in, frankly, in terms of
political polarization.

Massachusetts

Flavius — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:07:38 +0000

In reply to Particularly in the period

Massachusetts

I didn't love Lizza's piece.

Michael Maiello — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 14:54:36 +0000

In reply to RYAN LIZZA'S NEW YORKER ESSAY ON OBAMA & POLEMICS

I didn't love Lizza's piece. It might just be that I found it depressing, since the only conclusion is that Obama could never have done any better given that right wingers in general have become more extremist than lefties. Also, that Obama wouldn't do much better even if he could since he doesn't see eye to eye with lefty extremists in the first place.

Lizza seems to think, by the way, that the U.S. only had dubious authority to nationalize failing banks and that doing so would have destroyed the assets therein. He didn't really back up the assertion in any way, so it's hard to tell why he thinks that. But it seems to me that Summers and to a lesser extent Orzsag, got to Lizza as their agenda is quite well represented.

That is why McCullum has only

trkingmomoe — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:02:34 +0000

In reply to Just listened to Matthews

That is why McCullum has only won a few races in FLorida. He is a party hack that is given appointments in Florida state government in his long political career. He always loses state wide races.

War decisions especially are

PeraclesPlease — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 06:32:53 +0000

In reply to dd, This is an extremely

War decisions especially are ignored in the article, but that would have probably taken another 50 pages.

Great quote. The more

Richard Day — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 05:13:16 +0000

In reply to Oh and there was this really

Great quote.

The more rhetoric stays the same the more rhetoric stays the same.

These speech writers and memo writers from think tanks purposefully find quotes like this and rewrite them with little editing! ha

Oh and there was this really

artappraiser — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 04:42:59 +0000

In reply to Remember Hoover sent in

Oh and there was this really interesting tidbit on MacArthur in this recent short "Talk of the Town" piece in The New Yorker (which I already referenced elsewhere here regarding Nixon.):

During the 1952 Convention, held during a steamy July week in Chicago, General Douglas MacArthur, having traded his celebrated military career for the temptations of politics, gave a keynote address in which he said that the Democratic Party “has become captive to the schemers and planners who have infiltrated its ranks of leadership to set the national course unerringly toward the socialistic regimentation of a totalitarian state.”