Matt Yglesias

21 Responses to “Endgame”

1. Steve Sailer Says:
   November 2nd, 2009 at 6:30 pm

   “Obama is accomplish more than people generally realize.”

   I couldn’t have said it better myself.

2. godoggo Says:
   November 2nd, 2009 at 6:38 pm

   Ooh, sharp eye!

3. will Says:
   November 2nd, 2009 at 7:20 pm

   But Matt is write even worse than people imagine.

4. sp6r=underrated Says:
   November 2nd, 2009 at 7:48 pm

   “Obama is accomplish more”

   Epic.

5. NM Says:
   November 2nd, 2009 at 7:57 pm

   You’re at risk of losing your hipster credentials. King Khan is so last year! I kid, kind of. But they’re great.

6. Peter Says:
   November 2nd, 2009 at 10:03 pm

   although many, many more U.S. diplomats dealing with France speak French than do the folks dealing with Afghanistan speak Pashto (or Dari, or…)

   And no doubt the percentage of politically connected and otherwise influential people in France who speak English is significantly higher than in Afghanistan.

7. Just Karl Says:
   November 2nd, 2009 at 10:51 pm

   That Obama accomplishment piece is weak sauce. If things like killing the F-22 are all we’ve got to spin, next year will be very ugly. Obama has promised we’ll have closed Guantanamo and pulled out of Iraq by then.

8. Colatina Says:
   November 3rd, 2009 at 12:25 am

   Why is Scozzafava campaigning for Owens? She could have done the other guy a lot more damage by staying in the race, no? She was running against a sore-loser third party candidate, and now she’s outdone him in party disloyalty, making her former backers look even more stupid.

   I’m with #7–killing the F-22 may have been a liberal win, but an extremely modest one. “Liberal” used to mean that you want to cut the defense budget. Apparently now it means you get those cuts that the Defense department itself already wanted.

9. matt Says:
   November 3rd, 2009 at 2:37 am

   Somebody’s got Matt’s old domain
   http://www.matthewyglesias.com/

   “Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist”!

10. anonymousss Says:
    November 3rd, 2009 at 2:44 am

    The best Obama’s apologists can point to is extending the statute of limitations for wage discrimination claims under the Equal Pay Act, cutting a few billion in unnecessary weapons purchases, and letting the FDA regulate tobacco? Better than nothing, but the fact that those are the administration’s high-water-marks speaks volumes. I’d hoped I was voting for progressive change, but it seems I was wrong.

11. El Cid Says:
    November 3rd, 2009 at 2:58 am

    Obama is the traditional and cultual of China.

12. Why oh why Says:
    November 3rd, 2009 at 5:02 am

    That list of Obama’s accomplishments is very thin. I agree that the best one is a return to normalcy in small things, for example hiring experienced or promising people in government instead of partisan hacks who graduated from Liberty University.

    But any Democrat would have done the same thing. So Obama’s biggest accomplishment is not being Bush?

13. Micheline Says:
    November 3rd, 2009 at 6:56 am

    Obama has been president for nine months. Get a grip.

14. stras Says:
    November 3rd, 2009 at 7:28 am

    At the midterms, people will be saying “He’s only been president for two years!” In 2012, people will be saying “It’s only his first term! He’ll really get going in his second!” When 2014 rolls around, they’ll say “We need more Democrats for Obama to achieve all the things he promised!” And after that, it’ll be “We have to elect [Dem 2016 nominee] to secure Obama’s legacy!”

15. stras Says:
    November 3rd, 2009 at 7:50 am

    For comparison, take a look at what Bush accomplished in his first nine months. Even leaving out everything that happened after 9/11, Bush still pushed through his top domestic priority within his first few months in office – and he did that with only 51 Republican senators, as opposed to Obama’s 60 Democrats.

    The difference between Obama and Bush, I would suggest, is not that Bush is “tough” and Obama isn’t – it’s that Bush’s stated priorities were aligned with his actual priorities (pleasing the rich), while Obama has to reconcile promises he’s made to his base (a health care bill that actually matters, generally not fucking the poor) with the priorities of the people who put him in power (the rich). And so it’s no surprise to see that Obama never pushed for the Senate to use reconciliation to push health care through on a simple majority, because the threat of the filibuster is actually useful if it means that the only bill that can come out the other side is a bill that’s much friendlier to industry. And it’s no surprise that Obama insists on gutting the bill even further to get the support of a single Republican in the name of “bipartisanship,” because this is yet another artificial hurdle that allows for a weaker, more industry-friendly bill to be passed.

    This would be frustrating enough on its own, were this not the administration’s apparent approach to climate change as well. And while fucking up health care might just screw the poor and the middle class for another decade or so until someone else gets the opportunity to fix it, no amount of back-room haggling or incrementalist rhetoric is going to talk the world out of heating up.

16. Prester Dave Says:
    November 3rd, 2009 at 8:09 am

    I was hoping for some comments about King Khan, and his amazing, greasy soul music. Disappointing.

    (Yes, it’s true. I don’t care for all this talk of politics, city planning, and basketball. I’m here for the music….)

17. Micheline Says:
    November 3rd, 2009 at 8:57 am

    stras,
    How many presidents have passed comprehensive healthcare reform as opposed to tax cuts?

18. stras Says:
    November 3rd, 2009 at 9:21 am

    I don’t know, Micheline, but it appears to be fewer than the number of Democratic presidents who’ve had supermajorities in both houses of Congress.

19. stras Says:
    November 3rd, 2009 at 9:25 am

    Or to put it another way: when a politician says he’s for X, but is being bankrolled by a number of powerful interests who are against X, and is putting up a number of artificial obstacles in the path to accomplishing X, it suggests that he does not, actually, want to do X.

20. DTM Says:
    November 3rd, 2009 at 10:14 am

    The stimulus bill accomplished many things, but I guess it was left out of that analysis because it didn’t fit the “quiet”/”under-the-radar” theme. Also, SCHIP expansion and the tobacco-regulation law are both big deals that will potentially material improve millions of lives.

    By the way, I like how stras attributes no agency to the Democratic members of Congress–it is all just Obama dictating his desired results to his loyal minions. Right.

21. NGO worker Says:
    November 3rd, 2009 at 10:29 am

    If the macro is stable, you can put less effort into it (but not “ignore”!) and more into the micro and meso levels. If the macro is unstable, it will have an impact on your micro and meso that those levels do not correspondingly have on the macro. In other words, bad national governance will fuck up your provincial gains.

    Take three issues where the provinces of Afghanistan cannot go it alone without national level input: trade, water, and power.