Obama’s campaign was lauded for its visionary use of modern tools for old-fashioned politics. Through the Internet, it recruited supporters, collected dollars, rallied supporters and organized get-out-the vote operations.And then there are laws preventing coordination with the independent groups airing ads targeting swing legislators to urge them to support the bill. So the groups ended up airing an ad in New Hampshire targeting Judd Gregg just as he was nominated to be Secretary of Commerce. And they ran ads asking people if they were for Obama or Rush as if a radio talk show host were the equivalent of the President of the United States.
But when these modern heroes arrived at the White House, it was like the lights all went out.
Their contact with their millions-fold supporters was cut off, literally, as e-mail systems broke down and ‘The List’ of political supporters was blocked at the iron gate.
To meet government ethics rules, the campaign operation and its grassroots army were forced to de-camp to the Democratic National Committee, robbing the president of one of his most potent political weapons just as the stimulus bill was under consideration in the House.
....Obama had roughly 90 people working at his headquarters on Internet outreach and new technology projects, observes Joe Trippi, a Democratic operative who broke new ground on modern campaigning during Howard Dean’s 2004 Democratic primary bid.
Even with closet-sized spaces, the White House can only accommodate about only about 200 or so people for jobs ranging from national security to health care reform to Internet guru.
The Obama team “built this incredible campaign and now they have these ridiculously primitive tools. The communication tools they mastered don’t exist in the White House. It’s like they are in a cave,” said Trippi.
Cummings mentions the real problem with Obama's message on the stimulus package. It's a dang awful bill! He is not just selling his own awesome self but a bill packed full with goodies for Democratic interest groups and government entities and not enough of what his own economic adviser said was essential - targeted, timely, and temporary." Instead he was passive in allowing the Hill Democrats to craft a bill that is none of those things.
President Obama might not like to admit it, but his problem is not a tactical problem in getting his message out. The real problem is with what his message is. The Democrats might despise Karl Rove, but he makes a lot of sense in his column today about what is wrong with their bill.
As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama attacked "trickle down economics" as "bankrupt" and an "old, discredited" philosophy that "didn't work." He was wrong. Even worse, though, is that he and congressional Democrats are embracing a Democratic version of trickle-down economics that won't work.It's not due to out-of-date White House technology or laws governing independent groups that is hurting the White House message. It's the message, stupid. And the Democratic bill is stuck on stupid.
It's embodied in the House-passed "stimulus" bill, H.R. 1, whose deeply flawed assumption is that spending $1 trillion to grow government will trickle down to help people who lost jobs. The Democrats' spending is horribly mismatched with industries that have suffered job loss.
The Opinion Journal Widget
Download Opinion Journal's widget and link to the most important editorials and op-eds of the day from your blog or Web page.
Since December 2007, Americans lost 791,000 jobs in manufacturing, 681,000 jobs in professional and business services, 632,000 jobs in construction, 522,000 jobs in retail, 167,000 jobs in hospitality, and 576,000 jobs in the rest of the service industry. It would be logical for policy makers to focus on job creation in these sectors.
Instead, Democrats want to spend $88 billion to increase the federal share of Medicaid. What American will be hired by a small business, factory, retail shop, hotel, restaurant or service company because of this spending? The answer is very few.
In H.R. 1, there's $41 billion set aside for school districts, $1.5 billion for university research grants, $2 billion for Energy Department labs, and $3 billion for the National Science Foundation. Yet education is one of the few sectors that added jobs last year.
There's also $4 billion for health programs like obesity control and smoking cessation, $2 billion for the National Institutes of Health, $462 million for the Centers for Disease Control, and $900 million for pandemic flu preparations. Health care also added jobs last year.
It is not surprising that the stimulus package is laden with new spending programs. Congressional appropriators, not job creators, wrote H.R. 1. Much of it is spending Democrats couldn't get approved in the normal course of affairs.
5 comments:
Are they still complaining about having to use Windows XP or did that excuse have a very short shelf life. I think part of the whining is essentially the realization that convincing people to vote for Obama is much easier than convincing a group of congressmen to vote when constituent mail is running 100 to 1 against the bill. For the staffers, the true believers, it must be like discovering that they have been dismissed with a pat on the head by the guys in bespoke wing tips and the right school ties.
Poor Caroline, without that Senate seat she won't have much to do except attend PTA meetins as there are not too many examples for new editions of Profiles in Courage amongst the current venue of politicians.
No matter what John Q. Public thinks, this "porkapalooza" will pass, because the political class, including enough RINOs, doesn't give a rat's patootie about JQP this far from elections. JQP has a notoriously short memory, and even the CBO figures say most of the pork will start to kick in just in time for Obama and Progressives/Liberals/Democrats to claim, "Look! It's working!"
Those who lost jobs and remained chronically unemployed could always use Medicaid to pay for their depression treatments. They could always go back to school and receive welfare/education stipends(?) for the rest of their miserable lives.
The bill does not create job, but creates a class of permanent losers who depend on the ruling class for their wellbeings. And, of course, a permanent ruling class who feed on the public trough.
There is no message to support this liberal spending extravaganza. When the specifics are examined, it is impossible to come to any other conclusion. This is everything the dems have wanted for the last 8 - 9 years and now that they have their man in the White House, they're trying to ram it through before the details are well known.
The other reason BHO is losing the so-called message war is due to the fact that all he knows how to do is campaign. Now is the time for leadership and BHO is ill-equiped to lead. Voting "present" doesn't cut it anymore. Blaming Bush doesn't work; the election is over.
We don't need op-eds from BHO.
We need leadership. But having seen the BHO team bungling most of their cabinet appointments, I have little faith they can handle the economic mess that his party is primarily responsible for.
Nevertheless, look for the MSM to attempt to blame the repubs for this.
anyone taking bets on how much more is added to get it to pass in the Senate.
Post a Comment