President Barack Obama (Photo: Andrew Burton/Getty Images)
Last
week concluded the final election of President Obama’s tenure that
didn’t involve replacing him. After seven years in office and as many
elections, the Democratic Party has taken a beating worse than the
Republican Party took under George W. Bush.
On nearly every level
of government, Democrats have lost more seats under Mr. Obama than under
any other two-term modern president dating back to Dwight Eisenhower.
(This includes the dual presidencies of John F. Kennedy/Lyndon B.
Johnson and Richard Nixon/Gerald Ford.)
Under Mr. Obama, Democrats
have lost 13 net Senate seats, 69 House seats, 11 governorships, a
whopping 913 state legislature seats and 30 state legislature chambers, according to analysis from the Washington Post.
That
makes Mr. Obama the overseer of the biggest loss in Senate seats, House
seats and state legislature seats of any of the past seven two-term
presidencies, the second biggest loser of state legislature chambers
(Mr. Nixon/Mr. Ford lost 31 to Mr. Obama’s 30) and fourth biggest loser
of governorships (tied with Bill Clinton).
On the day before Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday, the New Yorker unveiled an extended interview with Obama in which the flailing leader blamed his poor approval ratings on racism.
“There’s
no doubt that there’s some folks who just really dislike me because
they don’t like the idea of a black President,” Obama told the editor of
the liberal magazine known for its cloyingly obscure cartoons and
overwhelmingly white readership.
Obama
began his first term with an approval rating of 68 percent; a figure
unmatched since JFK. No Republican had enjoyed a starting approval
rating above 60 percent in 60 years, indicating how much more willing
Republicans were to give the other guy a fair shot than their Democratic
counterparts. At 12 percent, his disapproval ratings were also much
lower than those of Bill Clinton or George W. Bush.
If his current
approval rating of 40 percent pro and 51 percent con can be put down to
anything, it isn’t race. When Obama began his first term in office, he
had the approval of 41 percent of Republicans. By the time the year was
out, that number had fallen to 16 percent.
At the start of his
first term, he had the approval of 62 percent of independent voters.
Today he has the approval of less than half that number. Only his
support from his own party has remained unchanged.
Any honest
politician would put those numbers down to his actions, but Obama always
takes refuge in race, telling Remnick, “There is a historic connection
between some of the arguments that we have politically and the history
of race in our country, and sometimes it’s hard to disentangle those
issues.”
Few men knew that history better than the black
Republican minister who stood on the steps of a memorial to the
Republican president who ended the Democratic Party’s institution of
slavery and, with a resonance that echoes across time, said, “I have a
dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where
they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of
their character.”
The post-equality civil rights movement of the
left has long since buried that dream, exchanging it for a nightmare of
calculated racial inequalities where your race is what you will be
judged by when you apply for college, apply for a job or face low
approval ratings after your national health care scheme explodes into a
broken $600 million website and millions of angry people who have lost
their health insurance and are being forced to pay more money for fewer
benefits.
Obama Says Racial Animus Blunts Approval, New Yorker Reports
By Brian WingfieldJan 19, 2014 1:01 PM CT
Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
U.S. President Barack Obama’s second term has been marked by controversies including a... Read More
President Barack Obama
said that racial tensions may have softened his popularity among white
voters within the last two years, according to a story posted on the New Yorker magazine’s website today.
“There’s
no doubt that there’s some folks who just really dislike me because
they don’t like the idea of a black president,” Obama said in the
article by David Remnick, appearing in the magazine’s Jan. 27 edition.
“Now,
the flip side of it is there are some black folks and maybe some white
folks who really like me and give me the benefit of the doubt precisely
because I’m a black president,” Obama said in his most direct comments
on how race has affected his political standing since he’s been in
office.
Obama’s second term has been marked by controversies
including a partial government shutdown in October, revelations that the
National Security Agency has gathered personal mobile phone data and
the troubled rollout of health-insurance expansion.
Obama’s approval rating
among all voters is 39 percent and his disapproval rating is 53
percent, according to a Gallup Poll conducted Jan. 14-16. In the 2012
presidential election, Republican candidate Mitt Romney
won 59 percent of the white vote, compared with Obama’s 39 percent,
according to exit polling by a consortium of major news outlets. Obama
won 43 percent of the white vote in 2008 against 55 percent for opponent
John McCain, a Republican senator from Arizona.
On Sunday, The New Yorker released an interview with President Barack Obama in which the president stated that his approval ratings had been suppressed due to racism. "There's no doubt that there's some folks who just really dislike me because they don't like the idea of a black president," Obama stated. "Now, the flip side of it is there are some black folks and maybe some white folks who really like me and give me the benefit of the doubt precisely because I'm a black president."
Obama's current approval rating is down to 39 percent according to Gallup; his approval rating in the black community remains extraordinarily high, although it is significantly lower now than it was when he was re-elected.
Obama's overall approval ratings have tumbled coincident with the failed rollout of Obamacare, as well as his mishandling of the Syria and Iran crises. Obama's supporters have often suggested that political difficulties he experiences are attributable to generalized racial anxiety.
.....
Race to blame for President Obama's low approval rating
Published on Jan 23, 2014
Tonight DLAKE 4 PREZ covers Obama's recent statements: There's no doubt that there's some folks who just really dislike me because they don't like the idea .
MSNBC: Obama Poll Numbers At All Time Lows, Dragging Down 2014 Democrats - Obama Poll Numbers At All Time Lows, Drag.
Filibuster change clears path for Obama climate regs crackdown
By Laura Barron-Lopez
Getty Images
Green
groups might be the biggest winners from Senate Democrats’ decision to
gut the minority party’s filibuster rights on nominations. Their top
priority — President Obama’s second-term regulations on climate change —
is likely to have a better shot at surviving legal challenges once
Obama’s nominees are confirmed for the crucial U.S. Court of Appeals for
the District of Columbia. Melinda Pierce, a policy expert for the
Sierra Club, said the addition of Obama’s three nominees would be an
“improvement” to the D.C. Circuit, which is second only to the Supreme
Court in influence and power. "But filling up all 11 seats, a full panel
is an improvement to the current situation in the court," Pierce said.
"And we hope these additions will ensure that the climate regulations
are upheld." Pierce also defended the three nominees — Patricia Millett,
Robert Wilkins and Nina Pillard — saying they "are by no means
activists." The decision by Senate Democrats to end the filibuster on
judicial and administration nominees was decried by Republicans, who
described it as a “power grab” aimed at loosening the checks on
presidential power. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on
Thursday said it was “clear” that Democrats were triggering the “nuclear
option” to advance Obama’s agenda.
The endurance of John F Kennedy's memory, when that of other US
presidents has faded, is only partially explained by the manner of his
death, of a charismatic leader cut down in his prime and the thought of
what might have been. Kennedy carried with him the hopes of a
generation, but the mood of America then has few parallels
today. It was optimistic, internationalist and, by today's standards,
illiberal. Had he lived, what JFK might have done on civil rights, the
defining struggle of his decade, is a matter of debate. He lacked Lyndon
Johnson's understanding as a southerner or his sense of urgency. Public
opinion at the time thought JFK was pushing too hard, too fast.
Like
Kennedy, Barack Obama also started out as a genuinely inspirational
president. His list of achievements, however, must all be qualified: on
the one hand, the withdrawal from Iraq and what will become a partial
pullout from Afghanistan; on the other, a commander in chief who has
ordered more drone strikes than any other, and presided over the most
intrusive internet and telephone surveillance operation ever. Mr Obama's
liberalism is directional. Step out of the allotted vectors of
progressive action and this president turns out to be flawed in his own
ways. The Affordable Care Act is a huge achievement – if they can
actually get it to work. But Mr Obama's White House can not be
understood without factoring in the conservative forces determined at
all costs to stop this administration from working.
The right's horror towards Senate Democrats'
move this week to end the filibuster for most nominations by presidents
must, for instance, be weighed against the frequency with which that
wrecking ball has recently been swung by Republicans.
As the Senate majority leader Harry Reid said, half of all the
filibusters in the history of the republic occurred in the last five
years. Further, 20 of the 23 district court nominees filibustered in the
history of America were nominated by Mr Obama. Were they so unfit for
office? Patently no. Were Republicans in the Senate so intent on
obstructing everything that emanates from this presidency? Patently yes.
So the "nuclear" option of banning the filibuster has to be judged
against how irradiated the atmosphere in Washington already is.
President
Barack Obama walks out after making a statement about the U.S. Senate's
efforts to confirm his Administration's nominees while in the Brady
Press Briefing Room at the White House, in Washington on Nov. 21, 2013.
Larry Downing/Reuters
Be bold, Mr. President! That’s the message from liberal advocacy
groups pushing for more progressive judges now that Senate Democrats
have nuked the filibuster for judicial nominations.
“We certainly think there is a need for professional diversity on the
federal bench,” says Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice.
“There are only a handful of lawyers who have been appointed who have
backgrounds in legal services, criminal defense, public interest, or
civil rights.”
When Barack Obama was elected in 2008, liberal legal groups, which
have been struggling to replicate the success of the conservative legal
movement in placing their heroes on the federal bench, saw an
opportunity to even the score. But Republican embrace of the filibuster
meant that some of the most promising liberal legal minds Obama chose –
picks like Goodwin Liu, whose nomination to the federal bench was filibustered into oblivion
– never had a chance. Republicans warned that abolishing the filibuster
would lead to more judges in the vein of Antonin Scalia or Clarence
Thomas on the bench. Now liberals are hoping Obama starts nominating
picks who look like their progressive counterparts.
“You need to have a sample of people who have actually interacted
with real human beings, who have represented them when they’ve been
accused of a crime, when they’ve been victims of discrimination, and
actually understand what the issues are in some of those cases,” says
Caroline Fredrickson, president of the American Constitution Society.
“The administration has certainly nominated a number of people with that
background, but we’d love to see more.”
Indeed, Obama has nominated the most diverse slate of candidates
to the federal bench in history. But the GOP’s frequent use of the
filibuster meant that when making its choices, the White House had to
take into careful consideration candidates who had a fighting chance of
making it to 60 votes in the Senate. A large portion of Obama nominees
come from private practice or from roles as government attorneys or
prosecutors, according to an AFJ analysis.
More than three times as many Obama Circuit Court nominees have been
prosecutors as public defenders; for the District courts it’s more than
twice as many.
Obama: GOP Filibusters Look to ‘Re-Fight’ Last Election, Not His Nominees
November 21, 2013 2:57 PM
President Barack Obama showed his support for a move by Senate
Democrats making it harder to block his nominees, citing repeated
“abuse” of such tactics that are targeting his administration rather
than the nominees themselves. (Photo credit should read MANDEL
NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)
.....Obama said that the “unprecedented pattern of obstruction” in
Congress has “escalated” too far, and that Americans can no longer “keep
falling prey to Washington politics.” He pointed out that the while the
majority of George W. Bush’s judicial nominees were confirmed, the
majority of his own nominees have been obstructed.
He pointed out that when his nominees have been confirmed, there is
very little dissent – indicated that the moves to block them were not
based on substance but rather on pure politics.
“In each of these cases it’s not been that they opposed the person,”
said Obama. “It was simply because they oppose the policies that the
American people voted for in the last election.”
He said it was more about the GOP looking to “re-fight the results of an election.”
While pointing out that “neither party has been blameless for these
tactics,” he said there is a block of Republicans in Congress that is
running on a platform against government, only to become elected
government officials dedicated to making “government not work as often
as possible.”
“The gears of government have to work,” said Obama.
Nearly 40 House Democrats defied President Obama and helped the
Republican majority pass a bill Friday that lets Americans keep, for one
year, health plans that do not comply with Obamacare.
The defections from 39 members of Mr. Obama’s party highlighted the pressure on Congress to help people
who lost coverage because of the president’s signature law, as balky
websites keep a veil over alternative plans and pressure mounts on the
Democrat-led Senate to forge a remedy.
“Let’s face it, millions of people right now have a cancelled policy,” Rep. Ron Barber, Arizona Democrat, said before voting for the Keep Your Health Plan Act.
The
House passed the bill, 261 to 157, despite a veto threat from Mr.
Obama and objections from Democrats who said the legislation was an
insidious attempt to rot the Affordable Care Act from the inside out.
Four
Republicans voted against the bill, perhaps because it could be
viewed as an attempt to smooth over Mr. Obama’s controversial reforms. Rep. Fred Upton,
Michigan Republican, offered the bill at the height of furor over Mr.
Obama’s oft-repeated promise that people who liked their health plans
could keep them. Millions of Americans received cancellation notices
because their plans did not meet the health care law’s coverage
requirements, forcing the president to apologize as vulnerable
Democrats scrambled to find a legislative solution.
Rampant
glitches on the HealthCare.gov website — a federal portal that connects
36 states with plans under Obamcare — have intensified the problem,
because people losing their policies cannot explore their options. Mr. Barber said some Arizonans are “beside themselves.”
“Because
by December 31 they don’t have health coverage, and they can’t get on
the exchange to find out what’s available,” he told reporters. Mr. Obama announced an administrative remedy on Thursday that permits insurers to offer a one-year renewal to people who hold noncompliant plans, and Senate Democrats are pushing legislation that would let existing enrollees hold onto their plans indefinitely.
The Republican-led bill goes further, allowing new enrollees to gain current health plans that do not comply with Obamacare.
House passes Republican health bill with 39 Democratic votes
By Mark Felsenthal and Susan Cornwell
WASHINGTONSat Nov 16, 2013 2:15am EST
1 of 5. U.S. President Barack Obama meets with health insurance chief executives at the White House in Washington November 15, 2013.
Credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque
(Reuters) - In the most significant legislative rebuke to President Barack Obama's
healthcare overhaul, 39 members of his Democratic Party voted for a
Republican bill in the House of Representatives on Friday aimed at
undermining his signature domestic policy. The measure, which
would allow insurance companies to renew and sell inexpensive,
limited-coverage policies that have been canceled because they don't
meet the standards of the new healthcare law that took effect on October
1, passed 261-157.
The 39
Democrats who supported the bill - nearly one-fifth of the party's
caucus - reflected the alarm that spread within Obama's party this week
over the political damage from the botched rollout of the Affordable
Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
Republicans
have vowed to make Democratic support for the troubled law the top
issue in the 2014 elections. Twenty-nine of the 39 Democrats who voted
for the Republican bill are running for re-election in competitive
races, according to rankings by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.
Obama's
approval ratings have plunged during the past six weeks, as the rollout
of the healthcare program that is his top domestic achievement has been
beset by technical glitches with the federal online insurance website
designed to allow consumers to shop for policies.
In
recent days, HealthCare.gov's problems have been overshadowed by
reports that insurance companies were canceling the policies of millions
of Americans whose policies did not meet the new law's requirements
that policies cover emergency treatment, hospital stays and prescription
drugs, among other things.
For years, Obama had promised that Americans would be able to keep their policies if they liked them.
But
the wave of cancellations has fueled the biggest political crisis of
Obama's presidency and led to an extraordinary scene at the White House
on Thursday, as a contrite Obama took the blame for the healthcare
program's dismal start.
He
said he believed that he had to win back the confidence of the American
people, and offered an administrative "fix" that would allow some
people to retain their non-conforming insurance policies for at least a
year.
Obama's plan
dismayed some of his supporters who say that the cheap, limited-coverage
plans that the new law aims to phase out often give consumers a false
sense of having meaningful health coverage.
It also created concern in the insurance industry - which for years had planned the health insurance exchanges created by Obamacare - and among state insurance commissioners.
Industry
advocates warned that Obama effectively was tinkering with the delicate
and complex funding behind the healthcare law, and that premiums could
begin soaring in 2015 if millions of consumers who were projected to be
in Obamacare's health exchanges continued to hold limited-coverage
policies instead.
Bill Clinton, other Democrats distance themselves from Obamacare
In a startling rebuke to President Obama, former President Bill Clinton
and other Democrats picked apart Obamacare on Tuesday as privacy
concerns about the program’s website multiplied and a video
investigation suggested fraudulence among volunteers helping people
enroll for government subsidies. Mr. Clinton
called on the president to make good on his repeated and emphatic
promise that Americans who like their health insurance plans can keep
them. The former president said Mr. Obama should take that step on
behalf of consumers whose policies were canceled, “even if it takes a
change in the law.”
The White House said Mr. Obama is considering a “range of options” but didn’t commit to Mr. Clinton’s proposal. In a reminder of Mr. Obama’s on-again, off-again relationship with Mr. Clinton, the president’s spokesman pointed out that Mr. Clinton tried and failed to enact universal health care.
The highly public rebuff prompted open speculation that Team Clinton has begun to distance itself from Mr. Obama in preparation for a presidential bid by Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2016. “And so starts the Clinton team slowly walking away from the train wreck that is the Obama presidency,” said John Feehery, a Republican strategist in Washington. Lanny Davis, who was an adviser in the Clinton White House, called such talk “speculation” but said Mr. Obama should heed the increasing call of Democrats to change the health care law.
** FILE ** Former President Bill Clinton. (AP Photo/Zach Gibson) more >
“A lot of Democrats that I’ve talked to all day are saying just do it — make the fix,” Mr. Davis said. In a column to be published in The Hill newspaper Thursday, Mr. Davis
argues that Mr. Obama “might be well advised to admit to trying to do
too much too soon in a 1,000+ page ObamaCare bill, passed by an almost
entirely partisan vote in 2010 — and revert back to a step-by-step
approach to increase required coverage over a longer period of time, in
effect reinstating the guarantee that if you have insurance, you can
keep your policies.”
“Such a mid-course correction could be a
compromise worth trying — saving not only public support for ObamaCare
but perhaps the Democratic control of the U.S. Senate in the 2014 elections as well,” he writes.
But a Democratic operative aligned with the Obama White House characterized Mr. Clinton’s
comments as unhelpful, especially in light of a House vote scheduled
for Friday to allow consumers to keep their health care plans.
“These
comments leave rank-and-file Democrats on the Hill awfully exposed
right now, especially in the House,” the Obama ally said. “Clinton has now made it a much tougher vote than it should be.”
In what could be the start of a Democratic stampede away from the president’s signature program, Sen. Kay R. Hagan of North Carolina said she plans to formally request a government investigation of Obamacare’s botched rollout. Mrs. Hagan,
a Democrat whose re-election effort next year has been imperiled by her
support of the law, said she wants to “make sure it never happens
again.”
With the White House
starting to lose Obamacare allies in the president’s own party, a video
investigation bolstered Republicans’ concerns that the entitlement
program is ripe for fraud. The video produced by James O'Keefe’s
Project Veritas appears to show Obamacare “navigators” in Dallas
advising a man to falsify his application to obtain higher government
subsidies and a lower premium.
The encounter between a Project Veritas “investigator” and an Obamacare navigator was taped secretly at the National Urban League’s
offices in Dallas. When the undercover investigator says he never
reports outside income on his tax returns, the Obamacare volunteer
advises him not to get in “trouble” by declaring the income now.
Other
Obamacare navigators can be heard informing the man not to disclose
that he smokes tobacco, so he can receive a lower insurance premium.
“You lie because your premiums will be higher,” an Obamacare navigator advises the Project Veritas investigator. Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican, called it “yet another broken piece of a deeply flawed system.”
The Obama Administration's campaign to sign everyone up for government healthcare inspired Project Veritas to go straight to the source and investigate what's really going on.
What we found is shocking: navigators, in positions of public trust, told our undercover journalists to lie and defraud the government. Over and over again.
Yes, as if the roll-out of Obamacare hasn't been disastrous enough, Project Veritas has caught Obamacare navigators counseling citizens to lie about their income and deceive the IRS, commit fraud on applications by not reporting full health history, and worse.
Despite reassurances that "fraud could not be committed," clearly, that is not the case.
Obamacare Navigators counseled applicants by saying:
"You lie because your premiums will be higher."
"Never report it ... I always lie on my applications."
"It didn't happen."
National Urban League: Nationwide
2000-2012: $172,000,000
CBS DC
