Not the beginning of the end

 Important ideas came out during our last class meeting; including the one that says months are years in politics.  For this reason it is hard to imagine anything that happens today as being absolutely defining of Obama’s presidency.  The only thing that could do it would be if the president lost all support from his party and is not able to get anything done from here on.  But this is an extreme theory because chances are that if Obama goes down, the whole Democratic Party would go down.  I think people wouldn’t trust a party who seems disorganized and disunified.

The media has been portraying Obama as weak and as lacking leadership because his own party is mad at him.  Even Rachel Maddow, in this segment, acknowledged his party is mad at him “because they want a president who can win.  However I don’t think this compromise with Republicans will determine how they will continue to portray him in the next year.  The deal was a risky move for him because of the probability of enraging his party and liberals in general.  However, with a split Congress, it is likely that the time to take such risk would come anyway.  By doing it now, Obama was able to indebt Republicans to him, while allowing him enough time to get out of this hole.   Now Obama will be able to put the blame on Republicans if they keep gridlocking policies in Congress because he will be able to say “you see, I’m willing to compromise and enrage my own party for the sake of the people, Republicans are not.” 

Although Obama has being portrayed as weak in these last few weeks, I think he has enough time to recover.  This clip analyzes Obama’s promises, those kept, broken, or postponed.  The fact that he was able to pass the Healthcare reform is a big deal.  Recently the Dream Act was able to pass in Congress for the first time as well.  If the Dream Act manages to pass in the Senate Obama will score huge points with his Latino followers.  I think overall he has been able to maintain that base and that he has enough time to make the right moves to persuade the independents or undecided.  When 2012 comes and Obama is campaigning again, his political ads will refresh people’s memory and illustrate the president more fairly.