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The White House 2013 Year in Review

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As 2013 draws to a close, I am reminded of how much I dislike end of year retrospectives. Charlie Pierce calls them “lazy journalism” … I call them boooooring. I saw all that 2013 stuff and I am ready to look Forward to 2014 which I think will be a very good year for Democrats.

But I will not begrudge the White House pointing to the accomplishments of the Obama Administration in 2013 and, being an O-Bot, I will willingly link to their website.



White House Year in Review

In 2013, our economy grew, and our deficit shrunk. For the first time in almost two decades, we said that we’re producing more oil at home than we buy from the rest of the world. We honored our heroes. We bounced back from national tragedies and natural disasters. We strengthened our relationships with allies around the world and took action to promote the American dream at home. Take a look at our 2013 year in review.

But what is more exciting to me, a Twitter-aholic, is the White House list of Top @WhiteHouse Tweets of 2013. Because history, 140 characters at a time, is worth preserving.

The Inauguration …

The Senate filibuster of the commonsense Gun Safety bill …

A reminder …

The Supreme Court rules on DOMA and Prop 8 …

Who we are, what we fight for …

The issue for 2014 …

PUPPY!!!!

The Affordable Care Act will endure longer than Republican intransigence …

Diplomacy, not bomb bomb Iran …

Our First Family …

~

p.s. Vote for Democrats in 2014 because Elections Matter. When we vote, we win … and when we win, the American people win. Let’s give President Obama a congressional majority so that we can get back to enacting his agenda which is our agenda.  


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/ 31 Comments

31 comments

  1. JanF

    What are your predictions for the new year?

    And, if you must  ;),  share your favorite story from 2013 … in 140 characters or less.



    A little birdie will tell you …

  2. kirbybruno

    It makes me proud to be, dare I say it, a democrat and obama supporter! Things could be better,  they always can, but look at the progress we have made despite the ridiculous obstacles. Or is it in spite of? I always gets confused. 🙂

  3. DeniseVelez

    some teary moments for me – I’m so tired of reading that POTUS has accomplished nothing.

    Let’s drink a toast tonight for more achievements in the year ahead – and let’s double our efforts to remove Teapublicans from office.

     

  6. JanF

    Blumner: Reasons to smile heading into 2014

    When reflecting on 2013, it’s easy to feel that the country is moving backward.[…]

    But don’t despair. There are tremendously hopeful signs, too. Despite the country’s do-nothing Congress and solid pockets of resistance to progressive values, positive changes are occurring.

    She enumerates a number of positive things, including better controls on banking and criminal justice reforms.

    Here is what she sees as the biggest piece of unfinished business:

    But on rising levels of economic inequality, what Obama rightly named as “the defining challenge of our time” in a speech earlier this month, a sea change is needed and one is nowhere in sight. Income inequality might seem to be a result of structural economic shifts, but in truth it’s a political problem with political solutions. Obama says he gets it; now he needs to act to give 99 percent of Americans a more economically secure 2014 and beyond.

    That will probably take more than one presidency. But the cause has been joined and we can hope that a generation of Democrats will take up the challenge and make it their cause.

  7. HappyinVT

    I hovered over the birdies ~ pretty good stuff there.  🙂

    I’m not a big fan of looking bad because there isn’t much point in it but I do wonder what we’ll think of this time period in, say, twenty years.  It is easy to get bogged down in the negative, see my earlier comment, but it isn’t all bad news particularly given where we could be.

    DOMA, ACA and the steps with Iran are huge on my list.

  9. creamer

    Yep, the HCA rollout sucked. It really did, the White House gets some blame, that was managed poorly. The fact that the media decided to make the web site the dominant lead for weeks was a huge gift to the GOP. Their need for ratings tends to trump everything, including fair play and facts. That being said, had the WH been on top of the web site they would have left their opponents and fair weather friends with no ammo.

     As Joe alluded, the diplomatic achievements where huge. In Syria we maneuvered Assad and Putin into disarming our neocons. As tragic as all civil wars are, getting sucked in would have not benefited us in any way, while turning Obama’s presidency into a train wreck. The diplomatic movement with Iran again blunted the plans of the guys banging their swords on their shields, while leaving open the possibility of a non bomb Iran.  

  10. JanF

    Dave Barry’s Review of 2013, the Year of the Zombies

    It wasn’t just people who came back alarmingly in 2013. The Cold War with Russia came back. Al-Qaeda came back. Turmoil in the Middle East came back. The debt ceiling came back. The major league baseball drug scandal came back. Dennis Rodman came back and went on humanitarian missions to North Korea (or maybe we just hallucinated that). The Endlessly Looming Government Shutdown came back. People lining up to buy iPhones to replace iPhones that they bought only minutes earlier came back. And for approximately the 250th time, the Obama administration pivoted back to the economy, which has somehow been recovering for years now without actually getting any better. Unfortunately, before they could get the darned thing fixed, the administration had to pivot back to yet another zombie issue, health care, because it turned out that Obamacare, despite all the massive brainpower behind it, had some “glitches,” in the same sense that the universe has some “atoms.”

    E.J. Dionne: 2013: Not as Bad as You Think

    Moreover, something else happened this year that may, over time, prove far more important than the great website flop. In 2013, the tea party began to decline in both real and perceived power, and Republicans began a slow retreat from the politics of absolutism.

    In this fall’s budget fight, Obama did not blink and Democrats did not break ranks when House Speaker John Boehner bowed to tea party pressure to shut down the government. The public was furious. Republicans plummeted in the polls and eventually gave in.

    Even as House Republicans were backing away from their far right, Senate Democrats struck a blow of their own against obstruction by ending the filibuster for presidential nominees, including most judges. It was another move away from near-total gridlock.[…]

    By the measure of Obama’s ambitious State of the Union address, this was a year disheartening enough … But on a longer view, 2013 could be remembered as the year when the far right began to weaken, the forces of obstruction began to recede, and the country began moving toward at least the possibility of constructive government.

    I guess that “not as bad as you think” means “could have sucked worse”. Well, yes it could have but it is a sad place to be.

  11. princesspat

    On Christmas, Republicans Quietly Declare War on Themselves

    The problem with blowing off the whole governing thing in favor of a decade-plus of cynical pandering and generally treating presidential politics like a fraternity pranking competition is that it eventually comes back to bite you.

    If you spend years letting your voters think Saddam Hussein was an agent of al-Qaeda, that passing a national health care program will result in the formation of Stalinist “death panels,” or that Barack Obama is secretly a foreigner, you’re going to end up with some loopy candidates prone to saying crazy things that will turn off voting majorities, which in turn will make it hard to the deliver policy objectives you actually care about for your big-money donors.

    The Republican establishment is only just figuring this out. Hence this new $50 million initiative, which according to the WSJ will involve the Chamber working with party leaders in”an aggressive effort to groom and support more centrist Republican candidates.”

    But this sudden decision by the party’s Washington establishment to reverse course and blame their failures on “fools” out there in the heartland is a joke. If you spend a decade treating your constituents like morons, you can’t point the finger at them when your party gets a reputation for being stupid.

    You’re going to make George “Is our children learning?” Bush the face of your party for eight years and then turn around and call your voters stupid? Jesus. No wonder they decided to make the move during Christmas.

    While I know it will be better for our country to have thoughtful governance on both sides of the aisle, I can’t help but hope thr R’s will just keep nominating fools that won’t win elections!

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