Our President is Still Cool

March 17, 2010

No matter what you think of President Obama’s legislative priorities or his political tactics, I still hope that we can all recognize that our president is pretty darn cool. Compare your March Madness bracket picks with the president’s here:

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Posted by Travis Serebin

Can you spot the trend?

February 18, 2010

If you haven’t seen it already, I wanted to share this rather telling graph (put out by Organizing for America) about the state of job loss in this country…

Show this to all those Obama naysayers that continue to claim that Obama’s plan has fared no better than Bush’s. I don’t think this trend could be any clearer.

I suppose one could argue that the unemployment rate would’ve bottomed out at some point, but is it all a coincidence that the rebound began after President Obama quickly pushed his economic plan through Congress? And yes, I do understand that slowing down the job loss is not the be all and end all. However, instead of continuing to wallow in the hundreds of thousands of jobs lost, the country is at least moving in the right direction faster than anyone could have expected, even if the pain of this severe economic downturn will continue to linger for months or years.

This graph was also released on the heels of a New York Times/CBS News poll that found that only 7% of Americans attribute the state of the economy to the Obama Administration, while 31% blamed the Bush people (significantly more than the 23% who blamed Wall Street and the financial institutions!). The poll also reveals the trust that the American people still have in Obama, with 60% of respondents expressing that Obama understands the problems and needs of people like themselves (compared with 42% for Congressional Dems and the lowest total, 35%, reserved for Congressional Republicans).

Since Day 1 of this administration, the Republican Party strategy has been: “Screw Obama at any cost!” Yet as Americans continue to support the President over Republicans by those kind of margins, I wonder if they will ever realize the need to actually put some effort into governing…

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Posted by Travis Serebin

A Look Back

November 5, 2009

So I know it is a bit late, but many of us still have President Obama’s visit to Madison and the one year anniversary of his election on our minds. If this includes you, check out this great compilation of election night coverage from Daily Kos. I certainly enjoyed the flashback!

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Posted by Travis Serebin

America sides with the President

October 20, 2009

An ABC – Washington Post poll released today is absolutely chalked full of good news in the roller coaster ride that is this current health care debate…

Americans divide about evenly on the reform plan and Obama’s handling of health care alike neither better nor worse for him since summer. But 57 percent support one of the plan’s most contentious elements, a government-sponsored insurance option, and that soars to 76 percent if it’s limited to those who can’t get affordable private insurance.

The proposal of limiting the public option to those who can’t afford private plans and having it run by the states even garnered a majority of Republican support – 56%! However, before we get too excited about appeasing our friends on the other side of the aisle, the poll continues…

Indeed, Americans by 51-37 percent in this latest ABC News/Washington Post poll say they’d rather see a plan pass Congress without Republican support, if it includes a public option based on affordability, than with Republican backing but no such element.

This bleak picture for the opposition party continued with the news that Republican self-identification fell to a 26-year low of 20%. Only 19% of those polled indicated that they trusted the Republicans in Congress to make the right decisions for this country. While I don’t mean for the focus of this post to be Republican bashing, these numbers are almost certainly the result of Americans recognizing the need for change in the health care system and a conscious rejection of the Republicans’ “beat Obama at any cost” approach to taking care of our citizens.

This news also comes on the heels of (or was the cause of?) Senator Baucus’ (D-MT) comments today that the public option “issue is alive.” As chair of the Senate Finance Committee, he was the chief architect of the bill that was just passed last week by that body. His bill contained no form of public option, but must now be merged with a more liberal bill passed by the Senate Health Committee before reaching the full Senate.

There couldn’t be a better time for the College Democrats of Madison to take on the health care debate. Let’s keep the pressure on our elected officials and make sure every last American knows what is at stake.

ABC/WP poll: http://abcnews.go.com/PollingUnit/Politics/obama-health-care-abc-news-washington-post-poll/story?id=8863442

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Posted by Travis Serebin