OBAMA’S YEAR OF ACTION: Becomes a ‘Year of Fear’ And That Scares the Macarena Out of Democrats
Even the Democrats are abandoning the rapidly sinking Obama ship that has Americans dreading more Democrat leadership. Check it out…
BY Jame Oliphant, The National Journal
Americans are afraid. The White House is afraid. Democrats are afraid.
President Obama’s “Year of Action” has turned into a Year of Fear. The country seems mired in dread. And that could have mortal consequences for midterm Democrats.
New polls out this week betray a rattled public, one that is jittery about war, security, and the economy—and one that is increasingly looking to the GOP, not the party in power. Even as the White House has sought to reassure Americans that the campaign in Iraq will be limited, that the president isn’t going to act alone on immigration in the near future, and that the economy is doing better, the damage appears to be done.
Obama and his aides have been caught between messages: that the country wasn’t going to war, until it was (sort of). That the president couldn’t act on immigration, until he could, until he wouldn’t (yet). That the economy had turned the corner, but not quite. (Wait.)
All of it has brought Obama’s credibility into question and disrupted the narrative that the administration wanted 2014 to advance—the one where employment rose, the war in Afghanistan ended, and the president walked tall in the face of gridlock.
You remember the #YearOfAction, right? That was the president proclaiming loudly and boldly, beginning in January’s State of the Union address, that he would act in the face of congressional paralysis. The White House built an entire campaign around it.
And Obama did indeed act. On minimum wages for federal workers. On workplace safety. On climate change. But the centerpiece was going to be his provocative, punch-the-Republicans-in-the-nose executive action on repairing the nation’s broken immigration system.
Until it wasn’t. Senate Democrats in red states began to squawk, worried that Obama’s unilateral move would alienate moderates at just the wrong time. The president reached the edge of the cliff and backed off, fearful that he would lose his Senate majority and, with it, his best hope for congressional leverage for the rest of his term. The about-face left immigration advocates and liberals angry and confused; days before the delay became public, they were praising the president for his decisiveness. The praise quickly turned to bitterness, as they fret now that Obama will never act.
Read more: National Journal
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