A couple of things really caught my eye yesterday. It seems like so many are quick to jump on President Obama about things he has no control over.
First off we have a video that Andrew Breitbart put together of numerous times that President Obama said that the negotiations healthcare should be opened.
This has of course sparked outrage on the right, but with a failure to understand one very simple part of our government. The President does not control the Congress. Our Constitution specifically sets up 3 independent branches of government. So I don’t know in what universe these people think that President Obama can control the independent Congress. The decision to televise any negotiations would be between Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, not Barack Obama. The only option he has is to take the final bill and veto it, and I really doubt that will happen.
Next John Cole points to this post by Marcy Wheeler:
Barack Obama and Harry Reid owe an explanation to both Dawn Johnsen, and the voters who worked so hard to elect them, as to why they intentionally left Johnsen’s critical nomination out in the cold so long, and then killed it outright. The main media in the United States owe their readers the duty to ask the questions and demand answers. That much, at a minimum, is owed to the citizens.
And as John points out – “Apparently he had so much fun stabbing the left wing in the back he is going to do it again:”
I got to say that this level of outrage coming from Marcy and some other progressives is mind boggling. I don’t remember any other time in history where we went after a President for someone not getting confirmed, which is again, something the President doesn’t have much control over.
It just seems that some progressives are out there trying to find anything they can hate President Obama for. Some of these people I fear drank the Republican Kool-Aid last year and bought into the whole “Barack Obama is the most liberal member of the Senate” crap they were pushing. If you examine the voting records of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton you will actually see that Obama is more to the right of Clinton. Yes I would love some ultra-liberal President, but we live in a country that isn’t going to vote for them.
If we want to be outraged at President Obama then be outraged at actual broken promises. One of those is the public option. Sure President Obama really had no say in the matter when it was stripped, but the fact that he lied to us by saying he never campaigned on it, well that is something valid, but these reasons above – they are just nitpicking reasons to dislike the man.