Mother Jones Magazine: Obama Has Not Delivered

The leftist reporter David Corn, writing in the online edition of the leftist Mother Jones magazine, laments the failure of the President to fundamentally transform the United States into a socialist nanny state.  It just warms the cockles of my heart to excerpt the following:

A year ago, President Barack Obama delivered two speeches that sent a clear signal: His second term would be much devoted to a progressive agenda.  In his second inaugural speech, he reaffirmed the progressive tradition of the nation, celebrating the value of “collective action,” defending the social safety net, and challenging the tea party’s core message.  (Government programs, he said, “do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great.”)  The policy matters he raised were left-of-center priorities: protecting Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security, addressing climate change, ensuring equal pay for women, promoting marriage equality, ending the wars he inherited, securing immigration reform, opposing restrictive voter identification programs, and building infrastructure.  Three weeks later, in a State of the Union address, Obama reiterated that he would pursue a distinctly progressive to-do list that included universal preschool, boosting the minimum wage, and passing gun safety legislation in the wake of the horrific massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Yet the fifth year of his presidency turned out not to be a grand time of progressive achievement, and in the State of the Union speech he will deliver Tuesday night, Obama faces a challenge: how to advance this progressive agenda in a way that it doesn’t seem doomed.

And if the Democrats lose control of the Senate this fall, next year’s State Of The Union could be really pathetic.  For those that want more, the entire article is HERE.