[jthomas1600]

When President Obama was campaigning and when he took office it appeared he had several priorities that were clearly at the top of his list. These are the ones that come to mind (in no particular order) bring the troops home, the economy/financial reform, health care reform, and the environment/cap and trade. It seems his strategy for getting things done was to hit hard and fast. There seems to have been almost an "all or nothing" approach. I get the feeling the idea was to take advantage of his popularity and the fact that the Dems had control of the political arena to pass as much new legislation as quickly as possible while the window of opportunity was open.

Here's some questions I think it would be interesting to discuss.
1. Does this strategy appear to anyone to be working?
2. Is it just too early to tell? Will things come together early next year?
3. Can it work with a few minor adjustments? Or is it time to abandon the strategy and star over?

Personally, I think it's time to abandon the strategy and start over. Not with healthcare, they're too far into that one. But the presidents popularity has been on a serious and steady slide and the dems are loosing control. I think anything else they want to accomplish is going to have to be done incrementally which I think would have been a better strategy from the start.

I think health care would have been much further along had the president said we are going to reform health care by doing A, B, and C ( having several smaller pieces of legislation) and tackling them one at a time. Chances are he'd have one or two passed into law already.

[metropolis4]

Personally I think it has been a poor strategy. I think they've pushed too hard too fast with some of these issues and it's seriously hurting their chances/ability to get other things done that I would like to see.

I know these things they've been working on are bigimportant issues, but here in Colorado we've got public libraries, non-profits and government programs all shutting down left and right and schools losing funding fast due to our budget crisis and it feels like nothing is being done because the focus is all on health care...

[JerryLove]

I don't know that he took good advantage of the Dem majority. Certainly I've seen bills gutted in the name of "bipartisanship". Look at the willingness to take a government provider off the table.

I actually agree with the idea of having a lot of balls in the air: that's why there's a support staff of thousands. I do think those balls need to not overlap (focus congress on 1-2 things while focusing your secretary of state on 1-2 things while focusing the pentagon on 1-2 things). Sure, you'll see more failures: but you'll see more successes to.

The problem is that just because your idea is the right one doesn't mean it can be made to happen.

[bravesfan007]

I think for the most part the strategy does not seem to be working. I imagine it won't come together next year either. For whatever reason should it be the sake of trying bi-partisanship, a lack of information, or an inability to make decisions, I believe the time for most of the goals to be implemented has passed. If certain things are not passed before year end, I imagine nothing will get done next year. The entire House is up for re-election and thus no one will want to tackle things that could jeopardize their career. They'll want to only work on legislation that guarantees their re-election. This also applies to the Senate and the fact that so many of their terms are up.

It's a bad position for the Democrats to be in. On one hand if they do too much and pass the wrong bills they will end up potentially losing their seats or at the very least facing a tougher time to get re-elected. If they don't pass anything then they've had two years to get some things done and they haven't accomplished any of the goals of the people who put them in there and thus they'll face a backlash from their supporters. I imagine that we'll see the independent voters play an even more important role in next year's election.

[jthomas1600]

I think the biggest way he squandered opportunity while having a political majority, especially in relation to health care, is these giant pieces of legislation take too long. I honestly believe if he had proposed three steps to getting where he wanted to be with health care the first one could already be passed. I think this giant legislation just has too many points to argue. Here's an AP article about health care legislation and public opinion. Also, I posted a Rasmussen report on presidential approval. While not startling, I think both kind of illustrate that the opportunity for easy victories has passed and it will take a lot of hard work and good politicking form here on out to get anything done.

The Facts

Daily Presidential Tracking Poll - Rasmussen Reports