Washington, July 12 (IANS) With the November midterm election looming, top aides are claiming that President Barack Obama has achieved more in two years in advancing a solid progressive agenda than anyone else in a generation.
‘My admonition would be: Don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good,’ Obama senior adviser David Axelrod told CNN Sunday responding to criticism that the president has not been aggressive enough in pursuing a progressive agenda.
‘We’ve achieved more in these two years – in terms of advancing a solid progressive agenda for this country that will help working families and make this a better, more balanced economy – than anyone has done in you know, in our generation.’
Citing comprehensive reform to the health care system that would extend coverage to more of the uninsured and improve care for those with insurance, Axelrod said: ‘We’ve been talking about that for a hundred years. Barack Obama got it done.’
‘We’ve been talking about financial reform for a long time. We’ve got the deepest reform since the Great Depression.’
Axelrod also mentioned the administration’s move to boost fuel efficiency standards and Obama’s desire to repeal the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy on gays and lesbians serving in the US military. ‘That policy is going to be changed,’ said Axelrod.
‘And I can go through a long list of things that have languished for years and decades and generations that this president got done in the midst of a very difficult time,’ he added.
Axelrod also said the Obama’s slide in approval ratings with independent voters isn’t surprising given the circumstances.
‘This is not a big surprise,’ he said referring to Obama’s poll numbers which have gone down to 38 percent approval now compared to 56 percent approval same time last year.
Axelrod said that he told Obama in late 2008, as the country’s dire economic situation came into greater focus, that Obama’s poll numbers would not be nearly as good a year later.
‘We would have had a tough election in any case in 2010. This will make that election a little tougher. So this is not a big surprise. We’re going through a very difficult time in this country,’ Axelrod told CNN.
