Obamify

Watch!:

Deep breaths. (for favorite items on the Republican nominees, see here)

THE GOOD

• The Washington Monthly - The Magazine - The Incomplete Greatness of Barack Obama (3/2012) 
• He’s gotten more done in three years than any president in decades. Too bad the American public still thinks he hasn’t accomplished anything.
• With new housing plan, Obama again makes unabashed case for government - The Plum Line - The Washington Post (2/1/2012) 
• Why The Obama Recovery Has Been Much More Impressive Than Reagan's- Business Insider (1/2012) 
• Obama Created More Jobs In One Year Than Bush Created In Eight | ThinkProgress (1/7/2011) 
• Greg Sargent: In [State of the Union] speech, Obama sets reelection narrative - The Plum Line - The Washington Post (1/24/2012) 
• In speech, Obama sets reelection narrative - The Plum Line - The Washington Post (1/24/2012) 
• Sargent/The Morning Plum  - Diagramming reelection strategy thru prism of SOTU responses - The Washington Post (1/25/2012) 
• President Obama in Osawatomie - NYT editorial (12/7/2011) -- on Obama's speech on the economy, at the site of Teddy Roosevelt's Square Deal speech.
• He made it clear that he was finally prepared to contest the election on the issues of income inequality and the obligation of both government and the private sector to enlarge the nation’s shrinking middle class
• The speech felt an awfully long time in coming, but it was the most potent blow the president has struck against the economic theory at the core of every Republican presidential candidacy and dear to the party’s leaders in Congress. The notion that the market will take care of all problems if taxes are kept low and regulations are minimized may look great on a bumper sticker, but, he said: “It doesn’t work. It has never worked.” Not before the Great Depression, not in the ’80s, and not in the last decade.
• A Spoonful of Sugar: On the Affordable Care Act | The Nation (1/25/2012) 
•  Nobody with a sense of history...could doubt how sensible and brave was the president’s effort to drive the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 through Congress. Nobody with a feel for the present moment should doubt how imminent is the threat to the act, how urgent it is for progressive Democrats to rally around Obama—and without all the condescending qualifications that “independents,” who flock away from allegedly weak or incompetent leaders, interpret as contempt. 
• Breast cancer, health insurance and an apology to President Obama - latimes.com (12/7/2011) - h/t my friend Iris 
• Obama's Done a Great Job as President. Here's Proof! - The PCTC Blog 
• What the fuck has Obama done so far? 
• This is focused on Scott Brown, but it applies to the large Republican narratives (falsehoods) too, which will be thrown at Obama in 2012: Study Up On Your Dinner Table Talking Points (2011 Holidays), Massachusetts Democratic Party
• This combat veteran applauds the President | Truman National Security Project (1/15/2012) 
• 'African Americans For Obama' Launched By President's Campaign To Rally Black Voters (VIDEO) (2/2012) 

My favorite presidential photo, ever. Ever.

The vignette behind the story is awesome, too. read it here.

The imaginary president (1/2012)


Disrespect. Seriously, wtf, GOP?
 

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ANALYSIS / STRATEGERY

• Looks like Wall Street hates obama too: Wall Street turns wrath — and cash — on Obama - Ben White - POLITICO.com  (2/2012) 
• Ryan Lizza, The Obama Memos: How Washington Remade the President : The New Yorker (1/30/2012) 
• The battle to define Mitt Romney as emblematic of everything that’s wrong with our economy and tax code is largely about winning back a core Democratic constituency that Obama badly needs in 2012: Blue collar whites. -- What the battle over Romney’s wealth is really about, in one poll finding - The Plum Line - The Washington Post (1/24/2012) 
• Andrew Sullivan: How Obama's Long Game Will Outsmart His Critics - The Daily Beast (1/16/2012) -- refutes the claims and criticisms; good read.  Stimulus, and so on and on
• "The attacks from both the right and the left on the man and his policies aren’t out of bounds. They’re simply—empirically—wrong."

THE BAD

• Trying to get into the spirit of 2012, and not emphasize the negatives here. I do so elsewhere in a variety of posts.  All things considered, a Romney presidency would indeed be much, much worse than an Obama 2nd term, which is what will happen if disgruntled progressives (myself included) don't mobilize -hw (1/4/2012)
• Civil Liberties, Obama and Bush 

BLAME BUSH

• See Blame Bush post/links
• Blame - The Daily Show with Jon Stewart - 06/29/10 - Video Clip | Comedy Central 

OBAMA NEEDS A LEFT FLANK TO PRESSURE HIM, NOT REFLEXIVELY CHEER HIM
(but w do well to remember that we must also work for the best candidate possible, which includes viability)
What we can learn by flashing back (aka, my Cassandra nerve is tingling again)

• Obama Needs a Protest Movement | The Nation (2008) [consider #Occupy]:   
• Sometimes, encouraged by electoral shifts and campaign promises, the ordinary people who are typically given short shrift in political calculation become volatile and unruly, impatient with the same old promises and ruses, and they refuse to cooperate in the institutional routines that depend on their cooperation. When that happens, their issues acquire a white-hot urgency, and politicians have to respond, because they are politicians. In other words, the disorder, stoppages and institutional breakdowns generated by this sort of collective action threaten politicians. These periods of mass defiance are unnerving, and many authoritative voices are even now pointing to the dangers of pushing the Obama administration too hard and too far. Yet these are also the moments when ordinary people enter into the political life of the country and authentic bottom-up reform becomes possible.