Allen Clifton at Forward Progressives has a post complaining about Democratic candidates trying to run away from President Obama. He then goes on to list some of Obama’s accomplishments:
The same president who has presided over:
The creation of over 10 million jobs in less than 6 years.
Obama inherited an economic recession. Recessions end. Of course it got better. It would have gotten better under President McCain too. The U.S. economy has some pretty sound fundamentals. It recovers from slowdowns.
The finding, and killing, of Osama bin Ladin.
A fair, although minor, accomplishment.
A huge drop in the number of uninsured Americans.
Fair enough, I guess, although I’m not sure that reducing the number of uninsured Americans by requiring Americans to buy health insurance or face a penalty is something to brag about. The roll-out of the exchanges did not go so well, and it will take a while for the full effects of the Affordable Care Act to become apparent. It won’t help to have health insurance if doctors and hospitals start going out of business.
Record stock levels.
Again, the stock market recovered from the recession, as it always does. Sarah Palin could have been sitting in the oval office for the last six years and the stock market would have still rebounded.
The saving of the American auto industry.
More like the saving of the inefficient Detroit-based part of the American auto industry at a cost of billions to taxpayers. It’s not that hard to save a failing business with a massive infusion of someone else’s cash. And it’s not clear that it’s necessary: If Detroit automakers had gone under, Americans would have still needed cars, and some other part of the auto industry would have expanded to supply them.
An unemployment rate that’s now below 6%.
Yet again, this was the inevitable, but unusually slow, recovery from the recession. Obama’s Portuguese Water Dog Bo could have been sitting in the oval office and unemployment would have improved.
The ending of discrimination against homosexuals in our military.
Seriously, this was a good thing. Well done, President Obama. Nobody should be running from this. Which brings us to the final item:
Same-sex marriage being on the verge of national legalization in the very near future.
What a strange thing to include on the list. The expansion of legalized same-sex marriage in the United States happened despite the opposition of President Obama. Obama was opposed to same-sex marriage for most of his political career, deciding to support it only recently.
Now let’s look at a few things Clifton left out of his list of accomplishments of the Obama presidency:
- Despite campaign promises of greater transparency, the Obama administration has reduced cooperation with the press and stepped up prosecutions of leakers.
- Used the NSA to spy on the press…and everyone else.
- Refused to investigate torture under the Bush administration.
- Despite campaign promises, has not closed Gitmo.
- Despite campaign promises to rein in executive power, the Obama administration has actually expanded it.
- Ordered the execution by drone strike of American citizens without due process.
- Allowed the DEA to step up its war on effective treatment for chronic pain sufferers.
- Continued federal raids on state-approved marijuana dispensaries.
- Led us back into war in the middle east.
And that’s just off the top of my head.
Frankly, I don’t know how many of those items are enough to keep Democrats away — I don’t hear too many of them complaining about these issues — but President Obama has pretty much run away from just about everything that I liked about Candidate Obama.
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