Who is Obama listening to? Certainly not DU...

Or other more important people.

Where did this decision on the "freeze" come from? It sounds so political in nature that it must have come from Rahm Emanuel, the great economist? Or it is coming from a scared Democratic Congress that misread the last election in Massachusetts? It makes little sense to most thinking people.

Robert Reich, in a huffingtonpost article, compares the decision to Bill Clinton's in 1994, to balance the budget: http://robertreich.org/post/353436115/obamas-tiny-jobs-ideas-for-main-street-a-big-spending

"But in 1994, Clinton’s inconsistencies didn’t much matter. The U.S. economy was coming out of a recession. It was of no consequence that Clinton’s jobs proposals were small or that he moved to the right and whacked the budget, because within a year the great American jobs machine was blasting away and the middle class felt a lot better. Dick Morris was not responsible for Clinton’s reelection. Nor was Clinton’s move to the right. What reelected Bill Clinton in 1996 was a vigorous jobs recovery that was on the way to happening anyway.

Today, though, there’s no sign on the horizon of a vigorous recovery. Jobs may be coming back a bit in the next months but the country has lost so many (not to mention all those who have entered the workforce over the last two years and still can’t land a job) that it will be many years before the middle class can relax. Furthermore, this recession isn’t like other recessions in recent memory. It has more to do with problems deep in the structure of the American economy than with the ups and downs of the business cycle.

Like Clinton’s, Obama’s package of middle class benefits is small potatoes. They’re worthwhile but they pale relative to the size and scale of the challenge America’s middle class is now facing. Obama can no longer afford to come up with lists of nice things to do. At the least, he’s got to do two very big and important things: (1) Enact a second stimulus. It should mainly focus on bailing out state and local governments that are now cutting services and raising taxes, and squeezing the middle class. This would be the best way to reinvigorate the economy quickly. (2) Help distressed homeowners by allowing them to include their mortgage debt in personal bankruptcy — which will give them far more bargaining leverage with morgage lenders. (Wall Street hates this.)

Yet instead of moving in this direction, Obama is moving in the opposite one. His three-year freeze on a large portion of discretionary spending will make it impossible for him to do much of anything for the middle class that’s important. Chalk up another win for Wall Street, another loss for Main."

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Who should the President be listening to?

If he goes through with this spending freeze, he will doom his presidency and our hopes of retaining congress in the fall.

I suspect quite a few of his advisors have suggested he do this.

to do, it's Clinton 2.0 all over again. He passed the Stimulus plan then turned it over to Congress to F--- up and sure enough they did. I thought it was a mistake to try and pass a HCR bill in the middle of a recession and it turned out it was. Same there instead of leading on the HCR bill and pushing for what he campaigned for he left it up to Congress an they F----- that up too. Obama wasn't elected because the country suddenly turned left he was elected because he wasn't GWB. I think they misinterpreted the election results from the start and went way to far left than the American people want. Same thing happened in 1992 and after Clinton went Repug Lite he ended up having a very successful Administration. The far left of the Democratic party is just as out of touch with the vast majority of Americans as the far right is.

The post Mass election polls show that voters who voted for Obama in '08 voted for Brown in '10 because Wall Street and corporations who caused our economic downturn have been coddled by the Obama Admin instead of punished. And Main Street has gotten the trickle down theory from Obama.

Obama started out in the Center and has been moving Right ever since.

really poor analysis.

The only ones complaining about the debt are those who cheered debt making on while W was Prez.

unsustainable debt and no results on jobs.

... and what he & his pals did with the one taht gave all those insiring 'Yes We Can' speeches in 2008.


:shrug:

not going to get them on his side. By most estimates, most of the Independents have lost their faith, too.

Some uninformed Democrats will keep drinking the Kool-aid, but I'm not sure how much longer that's gonna last in this rough economy. Government give-aways while cutting discretionary spending is as hypocritical as an "Open Government" while holding secret meetings to sell out to Big Insurance.

Who's left to screw over? :shrug:

Barack's about to find out how lonely a distrusted and abandoned president with no Base to support him can be.

So it would surprise me if he didn't, from time to time, look at DU. Which shouldn't surprise anyone frankly, since this is more or less one of the foremost Democratic-leaning sites on the web. Obviously, as president, his leisure time is at a minimum, so if he came here once every six months, that would be about right, IMO. He apparently enjoyed Andrew Sullivan's blogging about the Iran election stuff - I'm not sure what that was all about, as I can't stand Sullivan and never read his blog.

On the other hand, the tone of DU (myself included) has become far less pro-Obama than it was immediately after his election, so it's possible we are on his **** list. Who cares. The truth can be difficult to face, but like that Verizon commercial, "the truth is important." He has plenty of time to turn things around and win back support of most of us here. Can't happen soon enough for me, but I'm giving him every benefit of the doubt.

that there are fewer Obama bumper stickers on road."

That's just more stupidity on display by the Pukes.

Anecdotally, however, I have noticed far fewer Obama '08 bumper stickers on the road in the last couple of months in the Chicago area.

That's on old and new cars alike.

That sillyspeak and asskissing that goes on between politicians and pundits...message control, spin and soundbites that dominate the cables and internets. It's the elite who decide what we're thinking or want and then ram it down our throats. It's a game only played by those with money and/or influence that creates a "reality" we're all supposed to buy into and drives all politics inside the beltway.

When CW says you're going too far left, you have to throw them a bone that shows you're moving in the opposite direction. If the CW says it's the economy, you bring in the "economists" who practice in fuzzy math to schmooze the "opinion makers" who surely will say the sky is falling if it's not to their liking. And it's about appearing to be doing something...make it sound like there's leadership even if it means steering into the rock "conventional wisdom" directs you to go.

and counting. Whats a few more TRILLION between friends.:sarcasm: (In case you didn't know)

The last thing you do in a bad recession that has all the markings of a depression is stop spending. You'll end up with a depression that will rival that 1930s. He understood that last year with the stimulus bill and it was nearly the only thing he did right. Now he's reversing. It's crass political game playing when we need a leader like fDR, we got Clinton 2.0 or worse.

No matter how good someone intentions are when they get into politics, it is a rare person that doesn't cave to the greed and power.

and to keep up with legitimate criticisms, as well as giving him credit for good moves, such as switching to Volcker.

Krugman, Reich, Baker, Stiglitz etc really can't make it any simpler. But they aren't acolytes of Milton Friedman so they will not be heard.

If Obama would only run things according to DU everything would be fine, well, unless you were a Republican then you would need to be re-educated and that might be unpleasant.

Almost everyone is "more" important than DU.

Obama has admitted he's a New Democrat.