State of the Change

January 20, 2015

Barack-ObamaOnce again clear and cold this early Tuesday on California’s north coast — in the mid 30s right now, and as expected, we’re supposed to be ‘nearly the same‘ weather-wise as yesterday.
Yet change is the norm nowadays, anything-wise.

Tonight, the original, ‘Mr. Change,’ President Obama, postulates the State of the Union speech just in time to see his overall poll numbers go up (per MSNBC): ‘The president’s overall job-approval number now stands at 46 percent, which is his highest rating since Oct. 2013 during the government shutdown…What’s more, 49 percent of Americans approve of Obama’s handling of the economy – the most since his first year in office.’

(Illustration found here).

It’s always been the stupid economy, asshole! And now within the last three months, US economic fortunes have been on an uptick, a nice push for Obama, though. In another poll, 45 percent of Americans say they’re satisfied with the state of the U.S. economy, the best seen since January 2004, a decade.

And all that on a new fire from the Oval Office since the ‘drubbing’ last November. Launching initiatives from immigration to Cuba, Obama’s appears on a roll, and tonight hopefully it continues.
A shift in power, or the perception of power in DC, via a Guardian editorial yesterday, which seemed to emphasize/nutshell about all I’ve read about this speech, and a possible change in political winds:

But a watershed seems to have been crossed since the midterm elections two months ago.
Mr Obama seems not to be banking on Tuesday’s speech to transform his standing in the way he might have wanted to do in the past.
Instead he looks to have his eyes on the 2016 election and the post-Obama political battle.
If this is indeed his approach, it is both realistic and right.
When he was first elected in 2008, Mr Obama took relations with Congress very seriously.
He tried to forge consensus with Republicans, notably on healthcare.
He was repeatedly rebuffed on a range of issues.
Last November Americans elected a wholly Republican Congress for the first time in Mr Obama’s presidency.
Facing two years of gridlock, he has even less hope now of crafting the big legislative deals that eluded him in apparently more favourable times.
So in recent weeks the administration has started to do politics rather differently from in the past.
The president has taken executive action on issues including relations with Cuba, an overhaul of US immigration and deportation practice, and a climate-change deal with China.
Last week, the White House even went public with several of the key economic ideas in Tuesday’s speech.
We now know that Mr Obama will on Tuesday urge Congress to put inequality at the centre of the stage, raising taxes on the richest in order to finance tax cuts for middle-income Americans whose wages have stagnated since the financial crisis of 2008.

Maybe a watershed moment, which will cause terrifying shit to hit the GOP fan — and hopefully stick.

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