Tornado Alley (PROG)

[StephanieVanbryce]

Obama SAVED the US Economy - Running Away From that Record Would be Suicidal in 2016

Troubadour
Wed Jun 19, 2013 at 07:18 AM PDT

Sometimes I honestly don't know what goes through people's minds when they say things like this. [ http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/06/19/1217229/-The-unspoken-truth-you-know-deep-down-about-Hillary-Obama ] Democrats win when we effectively communicate the truth to the public, and we can't do that if we're so befuddled we don't even know it ourselves. Well, here's a refresher course:

1. When the President had a remotely cooperative Congress, we passed a massive stimulus and jobs package that rescued this country from Soviet-style collapse.

2. This administration rescued the US automotive industry, saving hundreds of thousands if not millions of jobs, and restructured it to be competitive in the 21st century.

3. This administration invested so massively in this country's clean energy sector that it made us the world leader in these technologies, and made that sector one of the few consistent bright spots in job growth.

4. The lack of progress since then has been 100% the result of Republican obstruction in Congress since they took the House. There is no ambiguity on this point, it's just a fact.

Any Democratic presidential candidate in 2016 who mindlessly and spinelessly swallows media-driven amnesia about these facts and rewards GOP obstruction tactics by acting as though the Obama administration were to blame for them is not going to win, period. We've seen it before, when Al Gore in 2000 ran away from Bill Clinton because he believed some campaign strategist con artist's advice that he needed to distance himself from sex scandals that nobody cared about, and thus somehow managed to lose (i.e., win so weakly as to be stolen from) despite a country drowning in peace and prosperity.

If Hillary Clinton or whoever is on the ticket in 2016 is addle-brained enough to believe the propaganda of their own enemies and sever themselves from a strong and successful administration, they'll deserve to lose and we'll deserve to lose for nominating such a weak leader with so poor a grasp of reality. To the extent that there is any public misconception on the facts of these issues, it will be the candidate's job - and our job - to correct those misconceptions and fight the propaganda that promotes them, not treat them as immutable laws of the cosmos that must be pandered to by shooting ourselves in the foot.

What exactly is the alternative? Concede GOP lies and reward their treasonous tactics, and yet somehow still try to argue that we're better within their warped framing? Where have we seen that playbook before? Oh, that's right: We saw it in the two candidates before Obama that failed miserably despite both having the most massive arsenals of natural political ammunition imaginable - a superb economy and a world at peace built by a two-term Democratic administration, and then an economy in the toilet and a world in turmoil created or exacerbated by an unelected and personally vile Republican.

The story of America today is that it was saved by the Obama administration and betrayed by the Republican Party, and unfortunately they're in stalemate because we have three branches of government and only two of them change economic policies. But frankly, I reject the premise that stalemate is inevitable going into 2016. There's an election in 2014 where we have every opportunity to end the gridlock and close out the final years of the Obama administration with accomplishments every bit as superb as its original ones. Simply dismissing that opportunity in favor of careless fatalism is contemptible and less than pointless.

So we know what to do.

1. Restore a working Congress in 2014.

2. Run on its accomplishments and those of the Obama administration in 2016, and against the GOP's deliberate attacks on the US economy. Make Republicans own the results of their open warfare on this country, and contrast them with the things Democrats do when we're in charge.

If the first doesn't work out, then just skip directly to the second. This is reality-based politics, and this is how Democrats win from now on.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/06/19/1217249/-Obama-SAVED-the-US-Economy-Running-Away-From-that-Record-Would-be-Suicidal-in-2016