President Obama on 'The Daily Show': 'Yes We Can ...But It's Not Going to Happen Overnight'

[cal04]

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-obama-visits-jon-stewart-daily-show-adds/story?id=11984126

In his first appearance on "The Daily Show" as commander in chief, President Obama defended his administration's agenda when questioned pointedly about the platform of change and hope he ran on so successfully in 2008.

"When I say that when we promised during the campaign, change you can believe in, it wasn't change you can believe in in 18 months," the president said. "It was change you can believe in, but you have to work for it.

"My attitude is (that) if we're making progress step by step, inch by inch, day by day, that we are being true to the spirit of that campaign," Obama added. "What I would say is, 'Yes, we can,' but it is not going to happen overnight."

The audience and host Jon Stewart erupted into laughter as the president added "but" after the "Yes, we can" campaign slogan that became a defining aspect of his presidential campaign.



Serious Obama Defends His Policies on Comedy Show
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/10/27/arts/entertainment-us-usa-elections-obama-comedy.html?_r=1&hp

[ixion]

1. and at this rate it won't happen in 1000 years

:(

[2008 was great]

2. I agree with your assessment.

We have the most liberal president in history.
We have had majority control of the House and Senate and it appears we are going to get our butts whipped next Tuesday.
How can this happen? :argh:

[ixion]

4. Welcome to DU... in my opinion, it's happening because

they didn't keep their promise to change.

[spanone]

13. and republicans who did shit. nothing. opposed everything. obstructed.

'most liberal president in history' hmmmm

[Pirate Smile]

3. Are you serious? Please, people, a little fucking perspective about what's gotten done.

The Case for Obama
The charges are familiar: He's a compromiser who hasn't stood up to the GOP or Wall Street. But a look at his record reveals something even more startling — a truly historic presidency

-snip-
But if the passions of Obama's base have been deflated by the compromises he made to secure historic gains like the Recovery Act, health care reform and Wall Street regulation, that gloom cannot obscure the essential point: This president has delivered more sweeping, progressive change in 20 months than the previous two Democratic administrations did in 12 years. "When you look at what will last in history," historian Doris Kearns Goodwin tells Rolling Stone, "Obama has more notches on the presidential belt."

In fact, when the history of this administration is written, Obama's opening act is likely to be judged as more impressive than any president's — Democrat or Republican — since the mid-1960s. "If you're looking at the first-two-year legislative record," says Ornstein, "you really don't have any rivals since Lyndon Johnson — and that includes Ronald Reagan."

Less than halfway through his first term, Obama has compiled a remarkable track record. As president, he has rewritten America's social contract to make health care accessible for all citizens. He has brought 100,000 troops home from war and forged a once-unthinkable consensus around the endgame for the Bush administration's $3 trillion blunder in Iraq. He has secured sweeping financial reforms that elevate the rights of consumers over Wall Street bankers and give regulators powerful new tools to prevent another collapse. And most important of all, he has achieved all of this while moving boldly to ward off another Great Depression and put the country back on a halting path to recovery.

Along the way, Obama delivered record tax cuts to the middle class and slashed nearly $200 billion in corporate welfare — reinvesting that money to make college more accessible and Medicare more solvent. He single-handedly prevented the collapse of the Big Three automakers — saving more than 1 million jobs — and brought Big Tobacco, at last, under the yoke of federal regulation. Even in the face of congressional intransigence on climate change, he has fought to constrain carbon pollution by executive fiat and to invest $200 billion in clean energy — an initiative bigger than John F. Kennedy's moonshot and one that's on track to double America's capacity to generate renewable energy by the end of Obama's first term.

On the social front, he has improved pay parity for women and hate-crime protections for gays and lesbians. He has brought a measure of sanity to the drug war, reducing the sentencing disparity for crack cocaine while granting states wide latitude to experiment with marijuana laws. And he has installed two young, female justices on the Supreme Court, creating what Brinkley calls "an Obama imprint on the court for generations."

What's even more impressive about Obama's accomplishments, historians say, is the fractious political coalition he had to marshal to victory. "He didn't have the majority that LBJ had," says Goodwin. Indeed, Johnson could count on 68 Democratic senators to pass Medicare, Medicaid and the Voting Rights Act. For his part, Franklin Roosevelt had the backing of 69 Senate Democrats when he passed Social Security in 1935. At its zenith, Obama's governing coalition in the Senate comprised 57 Democrats, a socialist, a Republican turncoat — and Joe Lieberman.

In his quest for progress, Obama has also had to maneuver against an unrelenting head wind from the "Party of No" and its billionaire backers. "Obama is harassed as well as opposed," says Princeton historian Sean Wilentz. "The crazy Republican right is now unfettered. You've got a Senate with no adult leadership. And Obama's up against Rupert Murdoch, Dick Armey, the Koch brothers and the rest of the professional right." Compared to the opposition faced by the most transformative Democratic presidents, adds Wilentz, "it's a wholly different scale."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/220013

[ixion]

5. blah, blah blah, spin, spin, spin

Drink all the Kool-Aid® you want. Just don't try and tell me it's change.

Still building bases in Afghanistan? Check.
TSA still running thuggery in the Airports? Check.
unPATRIOTic Act and MCA still in effect? Check.
Black Box sites still in use? Check.
Idiotic 'wars' on (some) drugs and terror still going? Check.

War Criminals running free around like free citizens in the US? Check.


Nothing has changed.

[jaxx]

6. Democrats running down the President from Day 2 is change.

Change we never needed and that has undermined the progress. Check.

[Pirate Smile]

8. "Nothing has changed". Gore = Bush and Obama = Bush and there is no difference. blah, blah blah.

This kind of thinking is how we ended up with a Supreme Court that could find corporations are people in Citizens United. Yeah, Republican Presidents and Democratic Presidents are all the same - blah, blah, blah. You've got great perspective.

[ixion]

9. I'm a member of the reality-based community

and proud of it.

Reagan, Nixon and Bush started these unwinnable 'wars' of abstraction. Tell me then: Why do Dems play along?

[Pirate Smile]

10. LOL

[ixion]

11. Yeah, I hear the Kool-Aid makes you dizzy...

better sit down.

[Pirate Smile]

14. I have no doubt I can't out-nasty you. You seem very good at it and I'm too much of an optimist.

I need more bitterness and cynicism.

[ixion]

16. Not trying to out-nasty you...

although I will admit that I'm a skeptical person, by nature. :toast:

Question Everything.

[Pirate Smile]

21. Back at ya.

:hi: :toast:

[CommonSensePLZ]

27. You'd know, your lips sound to be stained tea party cherry red

Obama wasn't and still isn't my ideal of a leader and I don't agree with some of his position, but he and the democrats are certainly by far the lessor of 2 evils.

Obama has fixed some things and in spite of the tea party and republicans. He's helped foreign relations, he gave the people a stimulus in his first year, stopped the massive job hemorrhaging, created healthcare, DADT's almost gone - That does sound like change to me.

Next week a bunch a far-right nuts plan on getting huge power to try and take us decades back, or at least back a few years ago to where the richest people got richer while everyone else got screwed over by banks because people like YOU want to cut America's nose to spite its face.

So you don't get enough change, so just backtrack like people who absolutely despise progress want?

Hell, we survived 8 years of Bush, Cheney, Rove and the rest, we must be cockroaches! We'll probably survive whatever the tea party does, but why even go there? What have they done to deserve the power people like you want to give them, even after the dems have tried so hard?

[mkultra]

31. +1

[K8-EEE]

22. "There's no difference" is the lie that gave us BUSH!!

If we had Prez Gore there's be NO WAY we'd have ever gotten in those wars, we'd be leading the world in green energy and IMO 9/11 would not have happened in the first place.

[Pirate Smile]

26. I agree with you.

That was my point.:patriot:

[Dr Morbius]

Quite a bit has changed, though I appreciate you may feel it isn't enough.

If President Obama was actually the villain you portray him to be, the corporate powers that be wouldn't be trying so hard to screw him.

[Name removed]

18. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[slipslidingaway]

29. Do you think Obama was elected without the approval of the corporate powers? ...

I remember when right after the mid terms in 2006 the corporate media could not stop talking about Obama, will he run etc. etc .... the corporate media kept his name in front of the public.

[TomCADem]

15. Another Latinos For Reform Liberal Who Insists There Is No Difference ...

...while the Chamber of Commerce and Koch brothers are investing hundreds of millions of dollars, because they understand that there is a vast difference between Democrats and Republicans.

Do you think that the Chamber is spending this money for no reason? I think they understand the difference. Sadly, with leftist sounding type groups like Latinos for Reform, even progressives are being hijacked by corporate interests into believing that they should stay at home.

[K8-EEE]

24. EXACTLY!! N/T

[2008 was great]

7. ...and what he's gotten done is

being rejected by the masses. People don't want what he has done and are rejecting what he wants to do.
Couple this rejection of his policies with a crippled economy and you have a recipe for disaster.

[Pirate Smile]

12. Bull. If unemployment was as high as it is and he hadn't passed HCR or FinReg then Dems would still

be in trouble and, actually, he isn't in trouble for 2012:

Obama Better Positioned For Re-Elect Than Reagan

By Jeremy P. Jacobs
October 26, 2010 | 7:55 AM

More Americans want Pres. Obama to seek re-election in 2012 than wanted Ronald Reagan to run for a second term when he was facing his first midterm election in 1982, according to new polling.

Still, Obama's position isn't particularly strong in the Pew Research/National Journal Congressional Connection poll that was sponsored by SHRM. The poll found that 47 percent want Obama to seek a second term. In August of 1982, only 36 percent wanted Reagan to run again.

And, unlike Reagan, less say Obama should not run for re-election. Forty-two percent responded that Obama should sit out 2012, compared to a majority -- 51 percent -- who said the same of Reagan in 1982.

The numbers indicate the well-documented struggles presidents typically have when they face their first midterm election after winning the White House. Both Reagan and Obama faced severe economic problems in their first two years in office. Like Reagan, Obama will undoubtedly seek to rebound after what looks like it will be a devastating midterm election for his party this year.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=433x489049

His policies haven't crippled the economy. They saved it from another Great Depression. He is cleaning up after Bush's economic collapse still. Your post sounds a lot like the crap that gets spread by Fox News and Rush.

[2008 was great]

20. I agree with what you are saying

but I am also looking at the mood of the country and the realities of this current election.
I think it's way to early to talk about 2012.
It's very possible that Obama could be showing much greater support by then.
"Bush's economic collapse"??????
Who was in control of the House? We were!
Yes, it's easy to blame Bush but people aren't stupid.
They know who had to approve the budgets.
All the money wasted in Iraq was approved by democrats. Remember?

[K8-EEE]

23. I've put a few "Obama bashers" on ignore and really

the whole experience of DU is so much better but threads like this read: IGNORE, IGNORE IGNORE IGNORE....

[malaise]

25. GObama

I'm enjoying the interview with Jon Stewart

[Jakes Progress]

17. Yes he has. No he hasn't. Yes he has. Not the point

We can argue all we want about about how bad or good Obama's performance has been (hey we do it all the time).

But as a campaign stategy, This sucks. When things are as bad as they are, saying "Hey guys. I've done a really good job. Things are better than you are smart enough to realize" Isn't going to get it.

Things suck. Yes we know the republicans did it. But the public doesn't want to told how much they should appreciate what you've done. They want to hear what you will do. And saying "I'll keep doing the same good things" or "Just give me a few more years", or "I'm really gonna do some good stuff" won't get it either. Tell me what you are going to do that you haven't done yet. What exactly. Tell me how you are going to combat the republicans. Tell me how you are going to create jobs. You can't campaign on a "but".

[ixion]

19. Exactly.

And all the happy talk in the world isn't going to change that.

[the redcoat]

28. Obama fighting for his healthcare reform!

Feels good to hear the facts that all of us already know coming from the man himself. Good to see him getting on the offense.

[MadHound]

30. Mr. President, until you and your colleagues in Congress actually stand up and fight for something,

Change isn't going to happen at all. This administration, this Congress, has been gifted, gifted with a large amount of power, power that we the people expected them to use. We didn't expect them to get miracles done, when understand that politics is the art of compromise, and we understood that it would take time. But when we give you the gift of power, we expect you to use it, especially on issues that the large majority of the American people are in favor of(*cough*public option*cough*repeal DADT*cough*)

The fact of the matter is that when push comes to shove, and big issues are on the line, this gifted administration, this gifted Congress, has simply refused to fight. Why not force a real, live filibuster? We understand that politics is messy sometimes, we understand the need for a knock down, drag out political fight. In fact many of us welcome it. Frankly I think that if the Obama had pushed the health care debate to end before August of last year, and the Senate Dems would have forced a real, live filibuster of the Public Option, we would have taken the fight out of the 'Pugs for a long while and much more would have been done. We wouldn't be sitting here talking about "needing" sixty votes to get anything done.

I don't think that it is too terribly presumptuous to want to see the Dems stand up for us. We understand the rigors and compromise of politics. What we don't understand is the persistent and constant unwillingness of the Dems to do what we sent them there to do, namely fight, fight for us, fight for what is right.