Jack & Jill Politics

So I just read this post over at Politico, and here’s an excerpt

Clinton most likely would have been apologizing and taking heat for such a gaffe for far longer. It was Clinton, after all, who spent a chunk of his first year in office grappling with how to address gays in the military and even whether he was spending too much time palling around with Hollywood celebrities. But Obama has been helped by the progressive infrastructure that sprouted up during the Bush years and now serves to match or even drown out the fierce right-wing attack machine that often made Clinton’s life miserable.

“President Clinton was all alone,” Begala said. “He was like Michael Jordan with no Scottie Pippen or any teammates.”

Now, for example, when Obama is caught on videotape seeming to bow before Saudi royalty, he has liberal allies outside the White House to resurrect those photographs of Bush holding hands with the same Saudi king.

And Obama and his political team, while going where few Democrats would have dreamed of previously, are hardly pushing a Kucinich-esque Strength Through Peace foreign policy.

They seem to know exactly what they can push or where to draw the line.

This strikes me as quite possibly correct. While there are many angles of attack President Obama faces that Clinton and other dems did not (his unAmericanness and other race-based ignorance like his Boyz N The Hood handshake with Chavez), the polls have him holding steady with nearly 2/3 of the country behind him. And let’s not forget, Clinton was under seige. I mean people accused him of murder! Right wingers have always shown their asses and been crazy when it comes to their views of a Democratic president.

On top of that, views of the Republican party, the opposition, are straight up wack. From Chris Bowers at OpenLeft:

As part of my irregular series documenting unpopular stuff that is more popular than Republicans, (see Legalizing Marijuana more popular than Republicans, and Republicans less popular than China), new polling from CNN indicates that anti-American, oil-cartel, socialist block forming Venezuela is now viewed more favorably than the Republican Party.

That’s not to say things are easy for progressives. Not at all. I’m just saying that the right wing slinging isn’t working as well as it has in the past, and I’m pretty sure all of us are part of the reason why.