Obama battered by criticism as anniversary approaches.

I have had my complaints about Obama, but I still find this shit annoying:

Nearly half of Americans say Obama has failed to deliver on major campaign ­promises, according to a Washington Post poll. During his first three months in office, the president maintained an approval ­rating close to 70%, but it has sunk consistently since then, to just 53%.

Leaving aside the usual right wing noise machine, which, as expected, accused him of everything from socialism to fascism, a lot of the complaints are coming from the left:

Some of the most strident criticism has come from the former Democratic party chairman Howard Dean, who denounced the Senate's healthcare bill as "not worth passing" after Obama urged it to drop plans for a government-run insurance option in order to win votes in Congress.

Dean denounced it as a gift to private insurance firms and warned that the proposed bill "would do more harm than good to the future of America".

"No one will think this is healthcare reform. This is not even insurance reform," Dean said.

The simple truth comes down to numbers. Obama needs sixty votes to avoid a Republican filibuster, and the Blue Dog Democrats are part of that sixty. The Republicans have consistently voted against anything and everything that Obama proposes, leaving the Blue Dogs with the power to dictate policy, or certainly to weaken policies like healthcare to the level which has so enraged Dean and others who think like I do.

But the truth is that, until the Democrats challenge the Blue Dogs, this is simply a given.

Without sixty votes Obama is never going to be able to push through the policies which he wants.

We were consistently told by Bush and others that only history could judge whether he had succeeded or failed, but apparently - a mere one year in - certain people are able to call the presidency of Obama a severe disappointment.

Give the guy a bloody break. He has inherited the worst situation of any president in living memory. The economy Bush bequeathed him was on the edge of collapse, there were two unwinnable wars being waged, America was loathed throughout the planet on an unprecedented scale.

Anyone who thought he could reverse all of that in one year was being delusional.

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Tags: Obama, anniversary, one year on