Our “bored, exhausted, and disengaged” president has been hella busy. The looming GOP takeover of the House and Senate hasn’t stopped him from getting things done.
From Mother Jones:
November 10: Surprised everyone by announcing his support for strong net neutrality.
November 11: Concluded a climate deal with China that was not only important in its own right, but has since been widely credited with jumpstarting progress at the Lima talks last week.
November 20: Issued an executive order protecting millions of undocumented workers from the threat of deportation.
November 26: Signed off on an important new EPA rule significantly limiting ozone emissions.
December 15: Took a quiet victory lap as Western financial sanctions considerably sharpened the pain of Vladimir Putin’s imploding economy.
December 16: Got nearly everything he wanted during the lame duck congressional session, and more. Democrats confirmed all important pending nominees, and then got Republican consent to several dozen lesser ones as well.
December 17: Announced a historic renormalization of relations with Cuba.
From Ryan Denson at Addicting Info, who also reported on this Mother Jones piece.
Not to mention gas is becoming $2 a gallon, unemployment is falling, and the stock market is steady. President Obama has done a miraculous job of holding the country together, even when he faces a Republican Congress in less than a month.
These accomplishments have paid off handsomely for the President, whose approval rating has reached 45%, the highest it’s been since June 2013. Good news for Congress, too. Their approval rating has risen to sixteen percent. The number of people predicting the economy will improve in the next year has jumped to 31 percent. These are all stats courtesy of a CNBC poll.
Furthermore, Obamacare enrollment continues to exceed all expectations. It’s been quite the whirlwind month for our bored, exhausted, disengaged president, hasn’t it?
Also from Mother Jones:
All of these things are worthwhile in their own right, of course, but there’s a political angle to all of them as well: they seriously mess with Republican heads. GOP leaders had plans for January, but now they may or may not be able to do much about them. Instead, they’re going to have to deal with enraged tea partiers insisting that they spend time trying to repeal Obama’s actions. They can’t, of course, but they have to show that they’re trying. So there’s a good chance that they’ll spend their first few months in semi-chaos, responding to Obama’s provocations instead of working on their own agenda.
I’m proud of our president. He hasn’t let the disastrous midterm election slow him down. He’s cementing his legacy, and no one can stand in his way.
