Nancy Pelosi -- Should she maintain a leadership position for the dems?

You are merely throwing dust in the air to obscure the defects in your argument.

I didn't assert that the stimulus bill "didn't create any jobs outside of government".

I'll take the time to do that when you explain how the billions wasted in "stimulus" programs failed to create any jobs at all (except in government).

However, I did suggest that the unusually slow recovery of our economy from this recession, compared to all others in the last few decades, indicates that it, together with other actions the Administration took, was ineffective. You are arguing against a straw man of your own making.

Finally, I never argued that Pelosi was ineffective in pushing the agenda of the left wing of the Democrat Party in Congress. Instead I suggested that in today's circumstances, she probably brings adverse baggage that the Administration - in the pursuit of its own interests - doesn't need. Moreover, I clearly expressed this as my opinion, based on my expectations for what probably lies ahead. I find it hard to understand why such an opinion would be so threatening to you and why you would devote so much energy to create the illusory impression that it can somehow be "refuted".

Did the recent election and the failure of your much repeated assertion that passage of the health care legislation would create an irresistable Democrat majority somehow unhinge you?

I am curious how you conclude, given the results of the election and the substantial public concern about deficit spending and the sloppy way the very large stimulus package they did authorize was actually organized and spent (it was mostly a jobs protection program for government bureaucrats at all levels) that an even larger and more ambitious package might have been enacted and administered by this crowd.

I see that mess largely as a consequence of Obama's failed attempt to please everyone and win bipartisan support for his stimulus bill. A clear-cut, New-Deal-2.0 agenda would have produced much less of a mess. The same is true of Medicare-for-all, as contrasted to the namby-pamby compromise enacted now. I know we disagree about the overall desirability of Medicare-for-all, but I think even you may agree that it would have been less messy.

Was he really trying to please everyone? Was he really leading these efforts at all ?

Obama tried too hard to work with Republicans

7:36 am October 15, 2010, by ctucker

WASHINGTON — Amplified by the right-wing message machine, Republicans paint President Obama as an unyielding left-winger, an unreconstructed liberal who refuses to compromise. The president’s critics have turned the truth inside out: One of Obama’s greatest political weaknesses has been his stubborn — and unrequited — love for bipartisanship.

The president has made some of his biggest mistakes trying to woo a GOP opposition that has committed itself to frustrating him at every turn. If he had ignored recalcitrant Republicans, for example, his health care legislation might have become law without months of damaging political drama.

In an interview last week in his West Wing office, David Axelrod, one of Obama’s closest advisers, acknowledged that the administration had been surprised by the unified Republican resistance to the president’s agenda.

“Well, I think we miscalculated,” Axelrod said. “We had the idea that, particularly in a time of national crisis, there would be more of an inclination to work together.

“One of the bracing moments was when the president was on his way over . . to Capitol Hill to talk to the Republican House caucus about the Recovery Act. They issued a press release while he was on his way over to say that they were going to vote en masse against it. And that was a signal . . of things to come.”

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed in February 2009 without a single vote from a Republican in the House and the backing of just three in the Senate, even though nearly a third of it came in the form of tax cuts — usually a GOP tool for fixing anything. Most economists have credited the stimulus package with creating jobs and helping to end the recession, but Republicans continue to denounce it as boondoggle that blew a hole in the federal budget.

“I think the Republicans have been diabolically clever about how they’ve portrayed this,” Axelrod conceded. “They stood on the sidelines and made a decision that ‘we’re going to let him wrestle with this mess that we created. And then in two years we can try and hang him with it.’ “

After the stimulus, Obama and his Democratic allies tried to negotiate with GOP leaders on health insurance reform — a decision that gave critics time to mischaracterize the proposal and gin up opposition. Remember death panels? Government-funded abortions? Rationing?

Still, Obama kept going back with proposals meant to lure a few Republican votes for his agenda. That led to his disastrous announcement, just weeks before the Deepwater Horizon explosion, to expand off-shore drilling.