Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: un anno di Obama

bilancio negativo secondo il Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2010/jan/16/gary-younge-obama-first-year

 bilancio negativo secondo il Guardianhttp://
www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2010/jan/16/gary-younge-obama-f.
..
povera la tua sinagoga...quale parte di "Part one of Gary Younge's
documentary OPPOSING OBAMA will air 1 February on BBC World Service at
10am, 3pm and 8pm GMT" non è chiara? Non ti sembra strano che il 90%
dell'articolo sia dedicato ai buzzurri rednecks di Prestonsburg?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/18/barack-obama-one-year-anniversary-ratings
Barack Obama marks a year in power on Wednesday, battered by opinion 
polls revealing deepening disappointment and growing polarisation over 
his performance.
Nearly half of Americans say Obama has failed to deliver on major 
campaign ­promises, according to a Washington Post poll. During his 
first three months in office, the president maintained an approval 
­rating close to 70%, but it has sunk consistently since then, to just 53%.
Unsurprisingly, his lowest standing is among Republicans – having nearly 
halved to just 20% at the end of a year in which the angry right called 
the president a Nazi and a socialist for pressing for greater access to, 
and regulation of, healthcare.
Fox News persistently accused him of endangering America by seeking less 
confrontational relations with the rest of the world and by announcing 
he would close the Guantánamo Bay prison. Some have even questioned the 
legitimacy of his election, claiming that he is not a real American.
But the criticism that stings the most has come from some of the very 
people who helped propel Obama to power.
Prominent voices on the left of the Democratic party have grown 
increasingly concerned at what they see as too little change people can 
believe in, particularly on issues liberal activists are passionate 
about, such as healthcare legislation and America's wars.
Some of the most strident criticism has come from the former Democratic 
party chairman Howard Dean, who denounced the Senate's healthcare bill 
as "not worth passing" after Obama urged it to drop plans for a 
government-run insurance option in order to win votes in Congress.
Dean denounced it as a gift to private insurance firms and warned that 
the proposed bill "would do more harm than good to the future of America".
"No one will think this is healthcare reform. This is not even insurance 
reform," Dean said.
Liberals are also fired up about Obama's decision to go along with the 
US military's demand for tens of thousands more troops to fight the 
Taliban. Several members of Congress who were solid supporters of the 
president openly challenged him over the troop increase. Nancy Pelosi, 
the speaker of the House of Representatives and a strong Obama loyalist, 
said the president still had to "make his case" before she would throw 
her support behind it.
Outside the Democratic party, Michael Moore, the film-maker and Obama 
cheerleader, warned the president that he had become the "new war 
president".
Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political scientist, said it was 
predictable that many liberals would feel let down by Obama because they 
had expectations of him that he had never promised to fulfil.
"Obama's great strength on the campaign trail was that he was 'tabula 
rasa' [a blank slate]. People wrote what they wanted to write. That was 
true for moderates and independents and even some Republicans, and was 
certainly true for the left. He was going to be everything."
Sabato said healthcare legislation, particularly the lack of 
government-run medical insurance once promised by Obama, reflected the 
political reality of needing every single Democratic vote in the Senate 
to pass anything at all. He said that Obama has been consistent on 
Afghanistan.
Afghanistan
"Afghanistan has probably upset the left as much as healthcare. I have 
to say they have forgotten what Obama said on the campaign trail. Yes, 
he was very anti-Iraq but he was very supportive of Afghanistan. He 
always made that distinction. Again, this is the 'tabula rasa' aspect of 
the 2008 election. The left said: 'Oh, he's just saying that about 
Afghanistan. His position on Iraq tells us what he really thinks and 
when he's in: no more war'."
There's no doubt that the criticism has damaged Obama politically. Yet 
for all the noise from some liberal quarters, opinion polls of ordinary 
voters shows that he still retains the confidence of those who describe 
themselves as liberal.
A poll for the Pew Research Centre last month showed that 84% of 
Democratic party voters identified as liberal believe the president is 
doing an excellent or good job "in standing up for the traditional 
positions of the Democratic party". Support among conservative and 
moderate Democrats, who often tend to lean toward conservative 
positions, stood at 69%.
That's the good news from the poll for Obama. The bad news is that it 
shows that broader public opinion has moved to the right on many issues 
since he came to power, particularly in greater opposition to abortion 
rights, gun control and scepticism about global warming.
Disillusioned
Pew's president, Andrew Kohut, said the difficulty for the president is 
that while the polls show liberal voters are not as disillusioned as 
some politicians and activists, neither are they as passionate as the 
right about fighting their corner.
"Whatever the discontent is with the liberal politic types, it hasn't 
spread to the broader liberal population," he said. "There is strong 
approval among liberals on the economy and even healthcare. The issue 
for Obama is why, if liberals support him, they aren't more fired up. 
They haven't gone out and fought for healthcare. There's tepid support 
for healthcare reform compared to Republican positions on the issue," he 
said.
Sabato says the lack of political energy on the Democratic party's left 
– particularly among the young and minority voters, who were key to 
Obama's election win – is likely to undermine the Democrats in 
congressional and gubernatorial elections later this year. "It's going 
to matter in November because my guess is liberal Democratic turnout 
will be down. It won't be non-existent but it'll be down and that'll 
enable Republicans to pick up more seats than they would have otherwise 
in both houses," he said.
But Sabato said that does not mean that support for Obama is on a long 
slide, or that his prospects for re-election in 2012 are seriously 
threatened at present. "While it's possible that Obama could be another 
Jimmy Carter (a one-term president), if you look at his ratings and at 
the likely path of the economy, he actually is retracing Ronald Reagan. 
We thought Reagan was a one-term president after one year."