reilo said:
That's entirely false. Every piece of his agenda that has come through both houses has had a majority approval (50%+). I can't be the only one that remembers the much much stronger legislation that passed the house and then was destroyed in the senate because 49 > 5x, can I? Do we not remember the healthcare bill that the house passed?
Actually, my point is that he's a bad leader, period. That includes an inability to get his own side to join him on a host of issues (including getting rid of the filibuster), his inability to get the American people to join him, and his inability to get the Republicans to join him. The President's job is to convince everyone he's right, whether they like him or not. He hasn't been great at keeping his own party in line, and he's been terrible at doing what needs to be done to get Republicans to back down, and he's been pretty poor at getting the American people on his side.
You apparently don't remember when there were 60 votes in the Democratic caucus, and he was unable to convince them to do what he wanted. Talk about revisionist history.
It can ring as hollow as it wants, but you've still never addressed the core issue, which is his ineffective leadership. You won't, because you know true. So instead, you focus on everyone but him, and rattle on about how hard he's had it, as if this was some surprise to anyone.
You keep talking about the filibuster, but you had no answer to my question regarding why he didn't slap the fuck out of Reid for letting it go on. You have no answer for why he's been unable to get the American people behing him in significant numbers to change the playing field. It's because you know what I'm saying is true, but it's more convenient to pretend I'm excusing Republicans than to acknowledge that leadership isn't one of Obama's strong suits.
I agree with you on virtually everything regarding the shittyness of both sides of Congress. I've said as much repeatedly. But those are the tools that exist. Even when your tools are two snarling weasels that would just as soon see you dead as deal with you, it's a poor craftsman that blames his tools. If he is unable to deal with the political system as it exists, then he's not the right guy for the job. It's that simple. I know you've apparently missed the many points in this discussion where I've said that he has many admirable qualities, likely because you were too busy inventing fictions about my feelings towards Clinton, but I wasn't joking about them.
He's probably my second favorite Democratic President of my lifetime, right behind Jimmy Carter, another ineffectual leader. I think Clinton was a shitstain. My favorite Republican? George Bush, Sr. another bad leader who got routed after one term. My personal feelings about all of these men have very little to do with how effective they were. The reality is that good people get ground up in politics and shitheads prosper.
It's a terrible system, and I'd never suggest it wasn't. I've spent decades working to make it a better system, with very little effect. But you can't rebuild a car while you're driving it. You have to do one or the other, and the Presidency is a postion that requires you to drive, not tinker.
Edit: The frustrating thing is that you and I agree on nearly everything. There's nothing you've said about the horror we call modern government that I haven't said in the past, and that I won't say in the future. I've never voted Republican, and it seems increasingly unlikely I ever will. The one time the Democratic party put someone up I couldn't stomach, I voted socialist. I'm just not willing to give the President a pass to the extent you seem to be. I'm not sure why people feel the need to reflexively defend him by regurgitating what we already know about the brokeness of the system and the ugliness of the opposition. But all it does is insure that you're going to keep getting guys more interested in doing it right than getting it done. When this is all done, you're going to write up histories that portray him as a uniquely embattled President, and the rest of the country is going to remember him as Jimmy Carter 2.0. Since I've actually lived that frustration, I'll leave you to have your own experience with it and catch up with you in a couple of decades, when you've figured out that the President's weakness is responsible for some of the very problems that are crippling him.