The right’s agenda is reviled: The lesson from Obama’s confident State of the Union

[DonViejo]

Intentional or not, the president's speech was a reminder to Democrats that their goals are the ones Americans back

BRIAN BEUTLER



Over the past four months, the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, and its impact on President Obama’s approval rating have overtaken most of the common arguments about 2014 politics. And as shallow as that analysis seems to people who take a longer view of the law’s prospects, I get it. The last three months of 2013 were genuinely rough going, and there’s just no denying that if Obama’s public standing doesn’t improve, Democrats will be in for a very rough cycle.

I don’t know if that means Obama should’ve dwelled on the health care law more than he did in his State of the Union address or not. You could argue it either way. He mocked the GOP’s now-faltering repeal obsession and encouraged people to help their friends and family members enroll. But it was just one small piece of a speech about a lot of different issues.

Some of these were small bore issues and others were fanciful, given how logjammed American politics is today. But when it was over, what actually struck me was how many of them were enduring, feasible liberal goals.

Intentionally or otherwise, Obama’s speech was a reminder to Democrats that the storm clouds of Obamacare implementation have obscured their view of the popular platform the party ran on so confidently in 2012. That there are a series of issues that animate Democratic constituencies on the docket, both ahead of 2014 and beyond, and all of them are political and substantive winners for the party.

Here are some of the big ones, from Obama’s prepared remarks:

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http://www.salon.com/2014/01/29/the_rights_agenda_is_reviled_the_lesson_from_obamas_confident_state_of_the_union/