washington, dc

The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Month: April 2009

Post-Confirmation State Landscape

There’s an interesting feature up on the American Prospect’s site right now surveying the political landscape in states where Obama cabinet appointees have given up major officies. The premise of the piece, co-written by Dana Goldstein, Adam Serwer and Tim Fernholz is that Obama has “loosened up the politics of several swing states, putting the Democratic Party on shakier footing and creating the space where the next Republican opposition could take root.”
It’s a plausible argument, but not self-evidently right. Janet Napolitano of AZ and Kathleen Sebelius of KS were term-limited, so their early departures didn’t deny Democrats incumbent gubernatorial candidates in 2010. Yes, Napolitano’s resignation turned AZ over to Republican Jan Brewer, which is bad for Democrats in the short run; but given the current fiscal condition of the state, it may turn out to be a good thing that Republicans will go into 2010 controlling both the legislature and the Governor’s Office. The Bennett appointment to Ken Salazar’s Senate seat has caused some internal unhappiness among CO Democrats, but not enough to give Republican any clear advantage. And David Paterson’s political meltdown in NY isn’t primarily attributable to the controversy over his replacement of Hillary Clinton with Kirstin Gillibrand. Finally, it’s suggested that Tom Vilsack’s appointment as Secretary of Agriculture denied Democrats the one candidate who could have beaten (or forced into retirement) Chuck Grassley in 2010. But it’s not at all clear that Vilsack would have run for the Senate if he had remained in Iowa.
All this speculation is fun and has some analytical value, but the reality is that it’s hard to anticipate the national and state political landscape as it may exist in 2010. If you had to guess, you’d figure that incumbency may not be much of an asset this time around, And the notable shrinkage of the GOP’s electoral base nationally has implications in many of the red-to-purple states where the new Obama Cabinet Democrats have done so well. So at this point, whatever they can do to help Barack Obama become an effective president may well be worth the political questions they have left behind.


Cuba Policy Could Tilt Elections

Paulo Prada’s article “Cuban-Americans Ponder What U.S. Should Do Next” in today’s Wall St. Journal” reports on the splintering of Cuban American opinions on U.S. policy.

More than half the people of Cuban origin now living in the U.S. have emigrated since the 1980s, according to the Census Bureau. That means that they, unlike the Cuban exiles that fled as the Castro regime embraced communism, lived for extended periods with the harsh reality of that economy and are more likely to have immediate family there. Because of the decrepit state of much of the island, most Cuban-Americans no longer harbor a dream of returning to the houses, haciendas, and pueblos their families fled.
“You no longer think about going back to live because what you once had is no longer there,” said Miguel Vazquez, who fled the island as a boy and now runs Sentir Cubano, a store that specializes in such vintage Cuban goods as reproductions of Havana phone books from 1959. “You think about helping redevelop the country once the regime is gone.”

In terms of national public opinion, there is fairly strong support for liberalizing trade relations with Cuba. As Gallup reports:

Over the past decade, Gallup has found Americans remarkably steadfast in their views about U.S. relations with Cuba — particularly in regard to the U.S. trade embargo. Since 1999, Americans have been more likely to support than oppose the U.S. government’s ending its trade embargo against Cuba — with support narrowly ranging between 48% and 51%, including 51% in the new poll.[conducted 4/20-21]..Americans more widely support ending restrictions on travel to Cuba — with 64% in favor.

The poll also showed 60 percent favoring diplomatic relations with Cuba and 64 percent supporting ending travel restrictions.
It’s been a while since there has been a poll of Floridians on the topic of the economic embargo, but a Rasmussen survey conducted in Florida in March ’08 found that “Now that Fidel Castro has turned over power in Cuba to his brother, 37% of Florida voters believe it’s time to lift the economic embargo against Cuba. Thirty-seven percent (37%) disagree and 26% are not sure.”
Pablo Bachelet reports in his article “Democrats in No Hurry to Change Cuba Policy” in the Miami Herald’s series “The Cuba Puzzle” that congressional Democrats are anxious about Florida’s early presidential primary date and are waiting for the “post-Fidel Castro transition to unfold.” No doubt Democrats are thinking about the ’10 and ’12 elections. Florida’s popular Republican Governor Charlie Crist leads in polls for the ’10 Senate race, and President Obama knows that Florida can still be a make or break state for his re-election campaign. Bachelet also reports that “a majority of those who arrived in the United States prior to 1984 — and are more likely to vote — still oppose any concessions to Cuba.” Also Majority Leader Harry Reid supports a “tough line” on Cuba. Given all of these factors, President Obama’s policy of slowly opening up relations seems politically-prudent, if a tad overly-cautious.
In terms of fostering change in Cuba, however, Michael Kinsley made an interesting point in his WaPo op-ed “A Cuba Policy That’s Stuck On Plan A” last week:

As many have pointed out, we won the Vietnam War in a way. Two ways, in fact. Vietnamese fleeing communism have been a great new ingredient in our ethnic stew, and meanwhile Vietnam is embracing capitalism as hard as it can. We’ve already been enriched by the energies of Cubans who have arrived here since Castro’s revolution. So why do we continue to deny the Cubans still stuck on Castro’s Island the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of capitalism as well?

More accurate to say that our withdrawall from Vietnam made it possible for private enterprise to thrive, but his argument that a softer line on Cuba could do the same seems plausible enough. It will be a long time, however, before we can expect bipartisan support for the change. Once again, Dems will have to go it alone.


Texas Republicans Sour on America

We’ve all been talking lately about the self-marginalization of conservative Republicans, with one leading indicator being remarks made about states’ rights and even secession by Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the 43d president’s hand-picked successor as chief executive of the Lone Star State.
But who knew Texas Republicans as a group were ready to reject America?
A new Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll of that state indicates that half of Texas Republicans would prefer an independent Texas to a continuation of their affiliation with the United States. Texans as a whole disagree by a two-to-one margin.
This is interesting not just because it provides a particularly graphic example of conservative self-estrangement from the rest of the country: you’d have to figure that Texas Republicans have thought of themselves as super-patriots, certainly willing to support their former governor’s star-spangled crusades against the godless Muslims and French. This super-patriotism apparently doesn’t extend to an America led by an African-American Democrat.
Thus does ideology trump patriotism. It’s sad and scary.


Right Track Rising

I’ve been saying for a good while that President Obama’s approval ratings and the right-track/wrong-track numbers would eventually begin to converge, and where and when that happened would be politically momentous.
Well, it’s happening more rapidly than I would have guessed, and the point of convergence is quite good for Obama.
The latest AP-GfK poll has the percentage of Americans believing that the country’s headed in the right as opposed to the wrong direction leading by 48% to 44%. I honestly can’t remember the last time a poll showed a right-track plurality, but it was probably just following 9/11; the ratio was at 17 to 78% just prior to the last election. The same poll showed Obama’s approval rating at 64%, pretty much where it’s been since he became president.
Whatever else this ultimately means, Obama has already gotten across the crisis point where people begin to hold him responsible for a status quo that they hate. They still don’t blame him at all for the economic crisis, but his presidency is making them feel better about the future. That’s exactly where he needs to be right now.


Breakthrough On Defense Budget?

When Defense Secretary Robert Gates first unvelied a series of extensive weapons system curtailments and cancellations in the context of the Pentagon’s 2010 budget submission, there was a fair amount of eye-rolling from beltway veterans who knew how well-insulated such systems were in Congress via wide dispersion of manufacturing sites and careful protection of the status quo by senior figures in both Houses–not to mention the lobbying clout of the military-industrial complex.
Now, less than a month later, there are preliminary signs that Gates may win many of his fights over weapons systems. Here’s how Julian Barnes of the Chicago Tribune assesses the current state of play:

Gates and the Obama administration were expected to encounter organized opposition from Defense Department contractors, local officials and Congress. But nearly three weeks after Gates’ dramatic proposal, the lobbyists and lawmakers have been uncharacteristically quiet.
“My general perception is that Gates is going to get his way for 90 percent of these decisions,” said Mackenzie Eaglen, a senior policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation.
Analysts credit the relative calm to the strategy used by Gates. He imposed strict Pentagon secrecy, even making aides and commanders sign non-disclosure agreements, and announced the plan as Congress started on a two-week break. In addition, the proposals are seen as non-political and have bipartisan support.
So far, Gates has signaled he is not going to compromise easily. For instance, the defense secretary dismissed as wasteful a deal offered by one lawmaker to split a contract for new Air Force refueling tankers between two different companies — one favored by the lawmaker, the other by the defense chief.

Aside from the actual impact on U.S. national security, what’s significant about this development (if it sticks) is that Gates has managed to get people thinking and talking about the value of this or that weapons system or procurement program, instead of simply building a fence around the status quo, demanding more of the same, and denouncing anyone who doesn’t agree as “weak on defense.”
You may recall that the acceptance by Obama of Gates as at least a transition figure at the Pentagon was pretty controversial among progressives at first. Now it’s beginning to look like he will accomplish something that progressives and defense reformers have struggled with for years: saying “enough” or even “no” to proponents of well-established weapons systems. That could have a major impact down the road on the politics of national security.


More Factional De-Labelling

Yesterday James Vega made a compelling case for retiring “the left” and “centrists” in intra-party Democratic discourse, since both terms have widely variable meanings and are usually deployed as expressions of contempt.
I’d add a few other terms to the hit list, at least when it comes to the labelling of alleged party factions.
“Populist” is a useful adjective for describing a certain kind of rhetoric and message, and perhaps even a stance on clusters of specific issues (e.g., wealth concentration and progressive taxation, and maybe international trade). But “populism” is notoriously slippery as an ideological marker, since today’s self-styled “populists” aren’t calling for a revival of the platform of the People’s Party of the 1890s, with publicly-owned grain elevators and milleage of silver at a 16-to-1 ratio. There are also obviously left-of-center and right-of-center versions of “populism,” and the promiscuous use of the word suggests affinities between, say, Bernie Sanders and Mike Huckabee that are far less important than their differences.
“Social democratic” has a rich international pedigree, particularly in Europe, where it emerged as a common term for the non-Marxist left. It is often used in this country to denote the strain of public-sector activism introduced by the New Deal to shape post-World-War II liberalism. But like “populist,” the “social democratic” label is most useful in specific contexts, such as the perennial debate between universal and means-tested forms of social safety-net programs; it’s less evocative as a term for any comprehensive ideology or party faction.
Some–if you will temporarily excuse the expression–Democratic “centrists” are still using the term New Democrats, a monikker invented by the DLC around 1990 to underline the claim that it was applying traditional progressive principles to new social and circumstances. The predecessor to the “New Democratic” label was “neoliberalism,” associated with party reformers like Gary Hart in the 1980s who didn’t want to get confused with moderate-to-conservative dissenters from liberal orthodoxy. Like “liberalism” itself, “neoliberalism” suffered from a very different international usage, where it described the Reagan-Thatcher laissez-faire ascendancy in modern conservatism. Any “neo” or “new” label, of course, doesn’t have a very long shelf life, and is best consigned to history after a decade or two.
The relatively low utility of intra-party factional terms these days isn’t terribly unique. I’ve recently been doing some reading about American politics in the 1920s; that was a time when the word “progressive” was claimed as a primary self-identifier by elements of both national political parties, including Western isolationist Republicans and the Bryan faction of the Democratic Party, which was culturally conservative and often aligned with the Ku Klux Klan. Indeed, in 1920 one potential presidential candidate invariably described as “progressive” had significant support in both major parties: Herbert Hoover.
For all the terminological confusion, then, we should be pleased that “progressive” (or “progressive/liberal”) and “conservative” have found general acceptance as terms applicable to most people in the Democratic and Republican parties, respectively, as explained by John Halpin and Ruy Teixeira in their recent research for the Center for American Progress.
And ironically, though Vega is right in suggesting that “left” and “center” need to be retired as terms Democrats apply to each other, the term “center-left” remains a pretty good positioning marker for progressives and Democrats generally, denoting “left of center” within the distinctively American context of liberal egalitarianism.
I’m afraid for the time being that we’re all going to have to get by without the big broad factional labels of the recent past, sticking to specific and identifiable groupings of Democrats (e.g., congressional caucuses), specific issue positions, and even specific politicians. If the party continues to grow as it seems to be doing at present, we’ll eventually have enough variation in views and backgrounds that stable factions, and a vocabulary to match them, will re-emerge.


Democrats: Let’s face it: the two terms “the left” and “centrists” have become so vague and imprecise they no longer have any use in serious discussions about Democratic strategy. They degrade the clarity of any argument in which they appear

These two terms have been around for so long that the reality of their present uselessness may not seem immediately obvious. But, in fact, there are actually three very different political groups who are lumped together inside the vague term “the left” and six or seven very distinct meanings of the term “centrist.” For any serious intra-Democratic political discussion to be productive, Democrats have to start making the effort to clearly distinguish between these differences.
In the case of the term “the left,” the problem is obvious to any Democrat who listens to Fox News. Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Glen Beck and their imitators relentlessly hammer away at a succession of straw men called “the loony left”, “the hard left”, “the extreme left” and so on — a powerful group who, they assert, have substantial if not total control of the Democratic Party.
Aside from other political commentators, the only specific examples they offer are — not really surprisingly – such powerful and influential figures as junior professors at small state colleges, eccentric elementary school teachers in communities no one has ever heard of before and a variety of well-known (or just as often barely known) Hollywood actors – individuals whose views or actions are confidently asserted to reflect the absolutely typical or dominant attitude of the entire Democratic community.
The truth, on the other hand — as all serious observers know perfectly well — is that there are actually three profoundly distinct groups that compose “the left” and they are so different that it is essentially useless to make any generalizations about them as a whole.

1. The first group is the traditional social movement organizations dedicated to causes like the environment, civil liberties, labor and so on. The most distinctive characteristic of these groups are their single issue focus and political strategy of bargaining with candidates to win their support.
2. The second group is the multi-issue, internet-based organizations like MoveOn and Daily Kos. Their political stance tends to be militantly partisan and pro-Democratic but not ideologically extreme. Surveys have shown that the political attitudes within this group tend to resemble traditional post-war liberal and progressive views.
3. The third group is the genuine “radicals.” These days they are less often doctrinaire socialists than eclectic ecological/peace/anti-establishment militants. They are concentrated among graying tenured faculty members and young energetic protestors in movements like the anti-globalization coalitions. Although their attitudes are asserted to be the dominant ones in the Democratic coalition, in fact they generally have relatively little interest in standard electoral politics and rarely become involved in the grass-roots organizational activities of the Democratic Party.

The differences between these three groups are generally greater than the similarities, a fact that is relatively obvious when comparing the authentic radicals and the others, but is also evident between the netroots and the traditional organizations (The Daily Kos’s Markos devoted an entire chapter in his book Storming The Gates to outlining the Netroots’ disagreements with traditional single-issue organizations)
Since Obama’s paradigm-breaking campaign, there has mercifully been far less abuse of the general term “the left” within the Democratic Party then in the years preceding. But Democrats nonetheless need to officially retire the phrase and replace it with more specific discussion of issues and questions concerning the positions and actions of the three distinct groups.
Meanwhile, the term “centrist” is, if anything, even more desperately in need of retirement than “the left”. It does not only refer to several different groups, but more confusingly to a cluster of fundamentally different concepts — each of which needs to be clearly distinguished from the others.
When Progressives criticize “centrism” they are generally focusing on three very distinct and specific political behaviors or characteristics (1) an excessive conservatism in ideology, becoming at the extreme nearly indistinguishable from Republicanism (2) a marked timidity or even cowardice in political strategy and (3) corruption in financial and ethical standards.
It is not hard to understand why grass roots Democratic activists who live outside Washington find it relatively easy to feel that these characteristics do all substantially overlap in the group generally known as the “beltway insiders.” From a distance, these people all appear extremely intimate and chummy – appearing on the same think-tank panels and sitting amiably side by side on the Sunday talk shows, referring to each other by first names in the most friendly and collegial way.
But, regardless of how many canapés and podiums the “Beltway insiders” share together, the three characteristics above simply do not necessarily imply each other or overlap. Lumping them all indiscriminately together conceptually in a single term “centrism” is intellectually sloppy thinking and is deeply detrimental to the quality and usefulness of progressive thought.
Let’s untangle the distinctions.


Worn-Down Wedges

Every now and then a journalist pens a piece which seems to state the obvious, but actually provides a useful summary of what really matters about things we think we all know. That’s true of Politico’s Jonathan Martin today, with an article entitled: “Obama skates while Right fumes.”
Here’s Martin’s basic thesis:

Several times a month in his young presidency, Barack Obama has done things that cause conservatives to bray, using the phrase once invoked by Bob Dole, “Where’s the outrage?!”
The outrage is definitely there, in certain precincts of Republican politics. What’s notable, however, is that it mostly has stayed there — with little or no effect on Obama.
He has been blithely crossing ideological red lines and dancing on cultural third rails — the kinds of gestures that would have scorched an earlier generation of Democrats — with seeming impunity. Obama’s foes, and even some of his allies, are a bit mystified.

Martin goes on to note that Republicans have been going nuts over nearly everything the new president has been doing or saying, but it’s not sticking, particularly when it comes to culturally symbolic matters. And every time the conservative base of the GOP gets lathered up over Obama words and deeds that other Americans don’t find that scandalous, the Right marginalizes itself a bit more, making the next round of unechoed outrage look even stranger.
The piece quotes all sorts of folks in both parties who speculate over this pheonomenon, and some cite generational change, some cite Obama’s solid personality and careful style, some cite the experience Democrats gained during the Clinton years, and still others cite the economic circumstances that make symbolic politics less evocative.
You can read it all yourself, but the question I have is less about the effect of this dynamic on Obama, than its effect on the credibility of the Republican opposition. How many times can they go to the well with wedge-politics attacks that just don’t work anymore? How relevant can they be when perpetually trotting out the rhetoric of the 1990s, particularly when it’s the less-than-credible spokesmen of the 1990s, like Newt Gingrich, who’s hot to trot? And at a time when Republicans have no obvious national leader, who is in a position to police the cumulative party message? Certainly not RNC chairman Michael Steele, who is on permanent probation.
If, of course, Barack Obama’s agenda fails to work in the real world, Republicans will get some traction in criticizing him, and maybe they’ll even grow some new leadership. But right now they are giving the new administration a lot of breathing room by resorting to worn-down wedge issues, offered by worn-out politicians, to the self-destructive excitement of a whipped-up activist base that thinks Glenn Beck makes sense.


‘Center-Right Nation’ Meme Shredded

TDS co-editor Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin, both senior fellows and co-directors of the Progressive Studies Program at the Center for American Progress (CAP) have a co-written post up at The American Prospect, discussing new studies by CAP’s Progressive Studies program which debunk the conservative myth that the U.S. a ‘center right’ nation. The two new studies, “The State of American Political Ideology, 2009” (See also Andrew Levison’s two part TDS strategy memo on this study here and here) and “New Progressive America,” address beliefs and demographic trends. In a core graph, the authors note:

The 2008 presidential election not only solidified partisan shifts to the Democratic Party, it also marked a significant transformation in the ideological and electoral landscape of America. In two major studies of American beliefs and demographic trends–the State of American Political Ideology, 2009 and New Progressive America, both conducted by the Progressive Studies Program at the Center for American Progress–we found that the president’s agenda reflects deep and growing consensus among the American public about the priorities and values that should guide our government and society. Not surprisingly, conservatives are the ones who are out of line with the values of most Americans

The studies indicated that the U.S. is essentially an evenly divided nation in terms of political ideology, segmented into roughly equal ‘liberal/progressive’, ‘moderate/other’ and ‘conservative/liberarian’ thirds. Interestingly, however, only 35 percent of self-decribed conservatives rated the term ‘libertarian’ favorably and follow-up questions to moderates indicate they lean equally toward progressive and conservative views. So much for the “America is a center-right nation” meme. Halpin and Teixeira also provide a revealing analysis of responses to a series of 40 statements reflecting conservative and liberal ideas:

Nearly 80 percent of Americans agree that “government investments in education, infrastructure, and science are necessary to ensure America’s long-term economic growth.” Overall, the unanimity of opinion found on this issue is rare, showing that conservatives are out of step with the rest of the country in opposing new government investments. More than two in three Americans agree that “government has a responsibility to provide financial support for the poor, the sick, and the elderly,” while 15 percent are neutral and another 15 percent disagree. Democrats remain almost unanimously supportive, and independents lean strongly toward this progressive position. A slim majority of Republicans similarly agree.
While conservative elites have long held government regulation as an impediment to economic growth, nearly three in four Americans disagree, believing instead that “government regulations are necessary to keep businesses in check and protect workers and consumers.” Once again, there is surprising partisan and ideological harmony among Americans, with agreement topping 60 percent among both Republicans and conservatives. Seventy-six percent of Americans also agree with the president’s argument that “America’s economic future requires a transformation away from oil, gas, and coal to renewable energy sources such as wind and solar,” with 12 percent neutral and just 11 percent who say such a transformation is not needed. A major pillar of Obama’s economic vision, and the key to his cost-containment strategies, is ensuring affordable health coverage for all Americans. Nearly 65 percent of Americans are on board with this goal, including 44 percent who strongly agree that “the federal government should guarantee affordable health coverage for every American.”

The authors’ demographic analysis is all good news for Dems:

The share of black, Asian, and Hispanic voters in presidential elections has risen by 11 percentage points, while the share of increasingly progressive, white, college-graduate voters has risen by four points. But the share of white working-class voters, who have remained conservative in their orientation, has plummeted by 15 points. This pattern is repeated in state after state, helping to send these areas in a progressive direction. For example, in Pennsylvania the white working-class population declined by 25 points between 1988 and 2008, while white college graduates rose by 16 points and people of color rose by 8 points. And in Nevada, the white working class is down 24 points over the same time period, while voters of color are up an astounding 19 points and white college graduates are up by 4 points…By 2050, the country will be 54 percent people of color as Hispanics double from 15 percent to 30 percent of the population, Asians increase from 5 percent to 9 percent, and African Americans move from 14 percent to 15 percent.

But it’s not a slam-dunk future for Dems, note the authors, inasmuch as

…Voters are often fickle and prone to significant shifts in opinion if their demands and desires are not met or if leaders fall short of their expectations…The economy, public spending, and the financial bailouts are the most likely issues to trip up progressives; they are areas where our study found clear undercurrents of anti-corporate, anti-bailout populism across many segments of the electorate.”

Teixeira and Halpin nonetheless believe that the survey points strongly to a “marvelous opportunity” for progressives which could lead to “a real and durable political realignment” benefiting Democrats. By carefully addressing demographic change and rapidly-evolving political attitudes, Dems are in a strong position to make the coming decade a new era of progressive transformation in America.


National Service Takes Long-Awaited Step Forward

In times like these, it’s important to acknowlege good news when it happens. And for me personally, along with countless other long-time advocates of voluntary national service, President Obama’s signing of the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act today was good news that we’ve awaited for a long, long time.
When national service was first emerging as a serious issue in Congress back in the late 1980s (I was involved in drafting a bill introduced by Sen. Sam Nunn at the time), its support in both parties was limited, with many Republicans scoffing at the idea of compensated service and some Democrats worrying that participants might undercut public employees. Ted Kennedy successfully shepherded through Congress a small national and community service demonstration program in 1990, and I was lucky enough to help set up a pilot program in Georgia. Bill Clinton embraced the idea in 1992–against the advice of some of his political advisors–and in 1993 secured authorization of AmeriCorps, the first service program since the Great Society’s VISTA primarily focused on full-time service.
Though Democrats by then had largely come to support voluntary national service, AmeriCorps struggled for survival throughout the balance of the Clinton administration, as congressional Republicans repeatedly sought to kill it, mainly because it was a signature Clinton initiative. It didn’t get much better after 2000, even though George W. Bush devoted much of his 2002 State of the Union Address to a call for expanded national service (and then did little or nothing to implement it).
The 2008 presidential campaign witnessed a revival of interest in national service, as most of the Democratic candidates–most notably Barack Obama and Chris Dodd–made specific national service commitments, while Republican nominee John McCain had long supported a major AmericCorps expansion, once cosponsoring a bill with Evan Bayh that proposed much of what the legislation today accomplished.
But it’s still somewhat astonishing to see this expansion enacted after so many years of frustration. Yes, many conservatives still attack the very idea, and some told preposterous lies about the latest legislation, suggesting it would create re-education camps or lead immediately to compulsory service. But the Kennedy Service Act won 79 votes in the Senate and 275 votes in the hyper-polarized House, and the President didn’t have to look too far, for once, to find Republicans to share some credit with for a signature accomplishment of his own.
Another long-time national service warrior, Progressive Policy Institute president Will Marshall, had these pertinent words to say when the bill cleared Congress:

Although it didn’t get the attention it deserved, passage of the Serve America bill is a major breakthrough. It enables us to build a uniquely American approach to public problem solving that has proven its worth over the past 15 years in communities across the country. It multiplies opportunities for people to give back to their communities while earning money to pay for their education. It establishes a growth trajectory that eventually could move national service from the margins to the center of our national life, where it belongs.

I think this is an Obama achievement that’s going to be remembered positively for a long time.