Sunday, August 1, 2010

Obama's Accomplishments

Ezra Klein talks about Obama's accomplishments on his blog, talking about the cash for clunkers program, which was wildly successful in every possible way:
But the policy wasn't popular. Few liked it. Some thought it socialism. Some thought it cronyism. Which presents, of course, a difficulty for the White House: Saving millions of jobs and the American auto industry at an ultimately very small cost to the taxpayer is the sort of major policy accomplishment you should be able to run for reelection on. But what if people don't really understand that you did it, or that it worked, or that it didn't cost them much?
This isn't the only time this has happened. Obama changed health care in America, the biggest accomplishment of it's kind since Medicare was passed in 1964, he should be riding high off of that, but he didn't get the credit he should have.

Republicans bashed him and what they called "ObamaCare" they called socialism. It seems like those so upset over socialism haven't a clue what it means because there is nothing socialist about the new health care bill, and that upsets those on the left. We all wanted a single payer system but Obama took that off the table right away, then we wanted the public option but he sold that option to the health care companies so they wouldn't oppose him.

And people are still complaining about the government getting in between you and your doctor even though there is no way for that to happen. It will STILL be what it's always been, your insurance company getting in the way of you and your doctor. That's because the government has little to do with any of this except to subsidize some people who are too poor to meet the insurance companies outrageous fees.

Why do so many still think absurdities about ObamaCare? Because the Republicans are excellent at getting their message out and Obama is very feeble at it. The right wingers lie all the time and because there is a huge amount of right wing media out there the lies get told over and over until many people believe it. But Obama's message doesn't get told very often at all.

Obama and every member of his administration should be out there talking themselves up 24/7 but they don't do it. The single sound bite they get out gets lost in the conglomeration of of media out there these days. Obama has accomplished a lot, most nobody knows about and the rest are unpopular because the right wing has lied about it.

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