{"id":2142,"date":"2010-01-13T01:18:33","date_gmt":"2010-01-13T06:18:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/?p=2142"},"modified":"2010-01-13T01:18:33","modified_gmt":"2010-01-13T06:18:33","slug":"cq-study-shows-obama%e2%80%99s-legislative-strategy-is-working","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/2010\/01\/13\/cq-study-shows-obama%e2%80%99s-legislative-strategy-is-working\/","title":{"rendered":"CQ Study Shows Obama\u2019s Legislative Strategy is Working"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Via <a href=\"http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/matthewyglesias\/~3\/_XQfGJtsz_s\/cq-study-shows-obamas-legislative-strategy-is-working.php\">Matt Yglesias <\/a>, <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/yglesias.thinkprogress.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/On-roll-call-votes-where-the-president-had-a-clear-position-the-percent-that-Congress-supported-him-1.gif\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The new CQ study gives Obama a higher mark than any other president since it began scoring presidential success rates in Congress more than five decades ago.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Yglesias thinks that legislative success won&#8217;t lead to electoral success in the 2010 mid-terms because to get these legislative victories, he&#8217;s had to alienate his base on the left thereby eroding support among the die-hard activists needed to work for democratic candidates to keep them in power.<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;s probably right.  At least that&#8217;s what history would say.  But I can&#8217;t shake a nagging feeling that our assumptions of a Republican landslide won&#8217;t come to fruition.  I still hold to the view that this president is playing a different game than his opponents.  The fact of his legislative successes is testament to this.  While he has received non-stop criticism for his handling of health care, he&#8217;s about to get near universal coverage (imperfect bill, I know).  He seems to be able to &#8220;grind out&#8221; policy debates until the opponents run out of steam.  <\/p>\n<p>This grinding has undoubtedly taken its toll on his popularity.  <a href=\"http:\/\/politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com\/2010\/01\/12\/cnn-poll-americans-split-on-success-of-obama-presidency\/\">CNN has his approval rating at 46%<\/a>, an all-time low for him.  <\/p>\n<p>It seems to me that what makes Obama a special politician is he has a keen sense of politics as narrative.  He seems to have these periods where he doesn&#8217;t seem in control of the message, where he&#8217;s allowing others to define him (e.g. 3 am phone call).  But when this happens, he has a unique ability to respond to what others might consider a political crisis (Pastor Wright, Nobel Prize, etc.) and actually coming out stronger for it.  I have a hunch he&#8217;s playing some kind of &#8220;rope a dope&#8221; with his political opponents, but I&#8217;m not sure how it&#8217;s going to end<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Via Matt Yglesias , The new CQ study gives Obama a higher mark than any other president since it began scoring presidential success rates in Congress more than five decades ago. Yglesias thinks that legislative success won&#8217;t lead to electoral success in the 2010 mid-terms because to get these legislative victories, he&#8217;s had to alienate [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/129"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2142"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2144,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2142\/revisions\/2144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}