Pam Young is wiz at getting organized; from a reformed slob’s point of view. Her latest book. The Joy of Being Disorganized”, is a must read.

I wrote this poem to help you remember what the holidays are really all about. I think if you read the whole thing and then take the three minutes and twenty-five seconds to watch the YouTube video; it’ll help lift your spirits. Oh, and you just might need a tissue.

‘Twas the Aftermath of Christmas

‘Twas post Christmas morning when all through the place

The family was reeling from the Christmas rat race

The stockings were gutted, the gifts all unwrapped

There was chaos, confusion and energy sapped

Mom was in her jammies with unruly hair

The kids full of candy, there was smoke in the air

From the thunderous fire, Dad’s cramming, The Cause

Of paper and boxes from his arsonist claws

And out of the chimney and up on the roof

Hot chunks of packaging fiery proof

That Christmas was over and so was the fun

The only thing left was to dial 911

Outside were the sirens the fire truck arrived

They hosed off the roof and the house did survive

But inside the home as dry as a thistle

The Christmas tree threatened to launch like a missile

While mom made a pile of stuff to return

Dad kept on adding to the fireplace burn

The kids with their soon-to-be discarded stuff

Hadn’t a clue when enough was enough

“Get’em to want it so much that they buy

Stuff they don’t need and never ask why,”

The result of this brainwashing marketing trap?

Shelf-sagging, drawer-bulging, closet-jamming crap

Toys in containers no one can get into

Not with scissors, a crowbar, a blow torch or Ginsu

So how in the world can this chaos be nipped?

No one wants his Christmas wings clipped.

Here’s the solution all tied up in a bow

The secret of Christmas in a song you may know

I chose Julie Andrews rendition so fair

Three minutes, twenty-five seconds she’ll share

And when you get stuck in the world of stuff

This song will remind you, enough IS enough

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjXXNuXVJwQ

For more from Pam Young go to www.cluborganized.com. You’ll find many musings, videos of Pam in the kitchen preparing delicious meals, videos on how to get organized, ways to lose weight and get your finances in order, all from a reformed SLOB’s point of view.

Pam is a reformed slob, and co-author of the best-selling book, Sidetracked Home Executives: from Pigpen to Paradise, which has sold more than a million and a half copies. But don’t be too impressed by the number as Pam is positive 750,000 disorganized moms, bought it, lost it and had to buy it again. With that book, she and her sister became known as the “Slob Sisters” and appeared on Oprah, Live with Regis, The Today Show, CBS Morning Show, Donahue, Geraldo and many other popular television shows throughout the country.

Pam has spoken to thousands of groups from a small klatch of women in a church basement to Fortune Five Hundred companies like Standard Oil and General Mills. She toured the country on media tours for Proctor and Gamble and American Express teaching with humor and insight. Her practical steps to becoming more organized and having clean, cozy, peaceful and happy homes have helped millions of women.

Pam and her husband Terry live in Woodland, Washington, high in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. Together, they have created a new venture. With a major in drama (not in college, but in life) Pam has always been able to see with the eyes of a child. Writing a shelf of “self-help” books to inspire disorganized moms, Pam’s focus has always been on solutions to the challenges mothers have in life.

The video-based House Fairy Program on the Internet was designed to inspire and motivate children to keep their rooms clean and neat, have good manners, and help with the family chores. Pam’s hope is, “that we can help this next generation before they get homes of their own to trash, by letting the House Fairy inspire and motivate children and reinforce the desire of our magnificent moms to have happy, healthy, well-behaved children.” www.housefairy.org

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New York, NY

Though he is not Jewish, Rennick calls Israel the only place in the Middle East where he feels safe. He writes, “Israel is the only country where I can live without fear. I am free to adopt children, serve openly in the military, advocate for my community’s rights and be accepted as a human being.” He continues, “If I lived in Gaza or Israel’s neighboring states, I would be thrown in jail, mutilated or killed.”

In the powerful ad, Rabbi Shmuley and Stand With Us demand that the Western World hold autocratic governments accountable for the inhumane treatment of the gay community, using Israel as a model for the rest of the region.

“Israel is the only country in the only Middle Eastern country that is a bastion of liberty and human rights,” said Rabbi Shmuley. “It is a safe haven that respects the rights and humanity of every citizen. A place where the gay community need not fear persecution.”

Closing with “In Israel, I am Free,” the ad demands global support for Israel. To join the fight for justice and human rights, visit Shmuley.com, thisworld.com and StandWithUs.com.

About This World: The Values Network: This World: the Values Network’s mission is to disseminate universal Jewish values in politics, culture, and media, making the Jewish people a light unto the nations. Based on the teachings of Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the goal of This World: The Values Network is to bring universal Jewish values to mainstream American culture and beyond. Rabbi Shmuley’s teachings provide a means for healing and strengthening families, diverting society’s focus from material greed and inspiring children to practice caring and compassionate relationships. Their renowned lectures, debates, radio and TV broadcasts, religious services, websites, social media, and published essays cater to a broad international audience. The goal is to inspire people to apply Jewish values into their everyday lives, ultimately conveying Jewish values in print and on the airwaves to both help America heal some of its greatest ills and to inspire Jewish youth with the power of its ideas.

About Stand With Us: Stand With Us is an international, non-profit organization that believes that education is the road to peace. Stand With Us is dedicated to informing the public about Israel and to combating the extremism and anti-Semitism that often distorts the issues. We believe that knowledge of the facts will correct common prejudices about the Arab-Israeli conflict, and will promote discussions and policies that can help promote peace in the region. Through print materials, speakers, programs, conferences, missions to Israel, campaigns, social media and internet resources, we ensure that the story of Israel’s achievements and ongoing challenges is told on campuses and in communities around the world. Based in Los Angeles, Stand With Us has sixteen offices across the U.S., Canada, Israel and in the UK.

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Hon. Richard Brodsky.

President Barack Obama

This is the guy I remember. Calm, not detached. Decisive, not timid. Smart, not brainy. Yes He Can.

So where’s he been?

It is a fair criticism of his last two years that he seemed unable to confront a united opposition, even if he didn’t waver in his stated positions. He did seem passive when others, mainly the Tea Party, defined him as a weak tyrant, an oxymoron not easy to concoct. So with elections behind him forever, bang, bang, bang. Immigration, global warming, Cuba, Keystone, with much more to come. For the Left, it comes as a kind of relief. For the Right, the gauntlet has been thrown down and the fight has begun.

The change in style is smart and will be effective, politically. Presidents are supposed to be decisive and benefit from the simple fact of having done some damn thing, even if the public isn’t sold on the merits of what’s been done. It is, after all, the Executive Branch.

The merits of his actions are, as always, hard to figure. Results matter, especially on the economy and the conditions of daily life. If wages and jobs continue to improve, he will leave the presidency with an unblemished record of economic growth. If Obamacare survives, there will be 15 million more people with health insurance and costs will be relatively under control. If the Iranian and Cuban negotiations advance, and the Russian economy finally constrains Putin, he will have a string of foreign policy successes, without war, that is also unparalleled. Not bad.

In political terms, his moves are precise and effective. Republicans are now backing torture, continuation of the Cuban embargo, and the deconstruction of health care for ten million people who gained health insurance under Obamacare.

All these realities bump into a visceral dislike and opposition to Obama which has spread from the hard Tea Party right to a significant number of Americans who are not birthers, social reactionaries or allies of the Koch brothers. Put aside the reasons, and calculate if anything can move the Obama needle back toward favorability. Maybe, certainly incrementally, and certainly based upon actual results. And if you’re handicapping 2016, it all will help Hillary against Jeb/Rand/Scott/Marco/Mitt/Chris etc. They’re going to be busy not offending their crazies.

It certainly has changed the dynamic and public debate. And it is a reminder of why he was such an extraordinary candidate in 2008. It will be difficult to redeem the promise, hope and ardor of those days. But the first steps have been taken. It won’t be dull.

First published December 22, 2014 by The Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-brodsky/obama-reborn-change-you-c_b_6367386.html

Hon. Richard Brodsky is a fellow at the Demos think tank in New York City and at the Wagner School at New York University. Follow Richard Brodsky on Twitter: www.twitter.com/richardbrodsky 

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Bob Weir is a veteran of 20 years with the New York Police Dept. (NYPD), ten of which were performed in plainclothes undercover
assignments.

After reading about the gruesome murders of two New York City police officers I was reminded of my early years as a cop. On a cold blustery night in February 1964, at the tender young age of 21, I walked my first “beat” as a rookie in a high-crime area of Brooklyn. After graduating from the 4-month Police Academy course, I was assigned to the 79 Precinct in the middle of the predominantly African-American section known as Bedford/Stuyvesant. Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were murdered on the same street where I walked that first midnight to 8 am tour of duty. Fresh out of the classrooms and exercise areas of the Academy, I was thrust into a world that no amount of academic training could prepare me for. I stood roll call with about 30 veteran cops in that old station house on Gates and Throop Avenues, as the duty sergeant performed a quick uniform inspection and told us to “be careful out there.”

So, here I was, my first time in the official blue uniform, walking hurriedly toward Myrtle and Tompkins Avenue, where I’d be doing foot patrol under the elevated train structure on Myrtle, from Nostrand to Stuyvesant Avenues, for the next 8 hours. My first introduction to this new world began about 3 am, when I was making another round trip from one end of my half-mile post to the other. Hands shoved deep in the pockets of my thick blue overcoat, I pushed against the icy wind and felt thankful for the wool sweater I had donned as extra padding under the knee-length garment. About a block away, I could see what looked like a large bundle lying on the sidewalk, something that wasn’t there 20 minutes earlier, when I had made my last trek past that end of the street.

The closer I got, the faster I walked, until it became clear that it was the supine body of a man, with a knife sticking out of his chest. He was sprawled on the pavement, just a few feet from a bar that I’d walked by several times that night. I remember kneeling over him and seeing a bit of steam coming off the warm blood that was oozing from around the handle of the dagger that was embedded up to the hilt. A quick check of his pulse assured me that he was gone. The cheerful music emanating from the bar, only a few feet away from a murder victim who wasn’t even cold yet, added a surreal image to the grisly scene. When I queried some of the people in the gin mill I received the expected responses. “He wasn’t in here, officer,” said the bartender, grinning like a Cheshire cat. “It’s a damn shame that people ain’t safe on the streets no more,” said a giggling patron as he gulped a shot of whiskey.

It soon became evident that life was cheap on the streets of that hellhole where cops from mostly middle-class families would get culture-shocked by a segment of the population that viewed them as an abhorrent occupying force, rather than a benevolent guardian of their safety. Sadly, a half-century later that seems to still be the prevailing view. During the violent decades of the sixties and seventies, we had our version of today’s race-hustlers. There was Malcolm X, H. Rap Brown, Stokely Carmichael, Eldridge Cleaver, and a cadre of other radical blacks who waged war on blue uniforms. Cops were always being publicly threatened by thugs who called themselves The Black Panthers, the Black Liberation Army (BLA), and an assortment of other titles that were merely used as political cover for their savage criminal behavior.

On May 21, 1971, Patrolmen Waverly Jones and Joseph Piagentini were shot in the back in an ambush on a street in Harlem. The BLA boldly proclaimed credit for the cowardly attack, once again citing their hatred for whites in general and white cops in particular. But it wasn’t only skin color that motivated their malevolent acts; Jones was black, and Piagentini was white. No, their homicidal behavior was a result of a revolutionary fever that emerges among the malcontents of society every couple of decades. The police are the symbols of law-enforcement that stand in the way of those who seek to terrorize their communities, while masquerading as their saviors.

In January 1972, Patrolmen Rocco Laurie and Gregory Foster were fatally shot as they walked out of a diner in the 9^th Precinct in Manhattan’s East Village. Foster, 22, was black, and Laurie, 23, was white. Their young lives were snuffed out by sub-humans who were undoubtedly released from their cages by a permissive system, that continues today to put savages back on the street, creating an imminent threat to unwary citizens. The creature who executed Liu and Ramos was another example of a system, so overwhelmed by the sheer volume of criminality, that it can no longer keep the predators from the prey. In that same 79 Precinct, on April 2, 1978, police partners Norman Cerullo and Christie Masone were shot dead by 2 men carrying 9 mm semi-automatics, after the officers stopped them for questioning on Willoughby Avenue. Over the course of about a dozen years, the BLA fatally targeted 16 police officers around the nation.

People often ask me if I’m glad that I’m not a cop these days. Yes, I’m thankful to have survived 20 years in an urban jungle which, thanks to a loving family in suburbia, provided a daily civilized break from a feral environment that could have severely impacted my emotional balance. My heart hurts for those grieving families who lost their loved ones at the hands of a maniac whose homicidal act was precipitated by the latest version of race-hustling, spewed by cretins whose names are not worthy of mention. A cop’s job will always be perilous because there’ll always be evil in the world. It’s tough enough to deal with that evil when we meet it on the street. But, when we hear from the provocateurs, fanning the flames of every violent black/white encounter, it jeopardizes everyone’s safety.

Moreover, having a man in the Oval Office, waving a fan that carries a lot more wind is very alarming. Then there’s that feckless wimp in Gracie Mansion, holding hands with and taking advice from the lowest specimen of bacteria that ever escaped a petri dish. Cops have always had to deal with vicious rhetoric from fraudulent opportunists in the black community. But I never thought I’d see the day when the President of the United States played the race card as vehemently as some of the worst rabble-rousers in the country. Add to that a mayor with a condition known as contraction of the cajones, and it’s nearly impossible to enforce the law. With so much opposition facing cops these days, I can only emphasize what my first sergeant said to us before my first tour of duty; be careful out there!

Bob Weir is a veteran of 20 years with the New York Police Dept. (NYPD), ten of which were performed in plainclothes undercover
assignments. Bob began a writing career about 12 years ago and had his first
book published in 1999.  Bob went on to write and publish a total of seven
novels, “Murder in Black and White,” “City to Die For,” “Powers that Be,”
“Ruthie’s Kids,” “Deadly to Love,” “Short Stories of  Life and Death,” and “Out of Sight.” He
 also became a syndicated columnist under the title “Weir Only Human.”

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Hillary Clinton

Hon. Richard Brodsky

There’s actually some deep thinking going on as 2016 presidential hopefuls configure their campaigns and their positions. The lesson of 2014 is there to be learned: It’s The Economy, Stupid. Some will learn the lesson. Some won’t.

For Republicans, the task is simple but difficult. Their electorate is way to the right of the establishment and the country. While Karl Rove and Wall Street could weed out individual Senate candidates, it will be much tougher to whip red meat voters into line in a presidential year. Immigration, immigration, abortion, guns, impeachment and immigration trump economics in Republican primaries. How Jeb Bush or Chris Christie, who pass for moderates these days, get by this problem to a general election is a big unknown.

For Democrats, it’s more complicated, but easier. With Hillary assuming the position, there’s no real primary contest. She can craft an image and an agenda with an economic message that can win in a general election. But so far, there’s not much out there but charm and inevitability.

Hillary is electorally vulnerable to a Republican campaign that paints her as the candidate of economic extremes. Here’s the Republican argument: She’s good for the top 10 percent of Americans who are wealthy and comfortable, and she’s good for the bottom 10 percent of Americans who are poor and rely on government programs. For the 80 percent in the middle, like all Dems, she’s nowhere.

If you listened carefully to the Republican campaigns in 2014, it’s the argument they made and Democrats had no real comeback. The Obama coalition of communities of color and progressives seem more concerned with social and identity issues, important to be sure, but not the priority of voters. The economic insecurity and anger of the Great American Middle ended up routing Dems. Hillary’s got a problem.

Lest you think that this is a Red State phenomenon, take a hard look at the election in New York, the bluest of Blue States. Incumbent Governor Andrew Cuomo had $45 million, a weak, unfunded opponent, a free hand in developing signature issues, considerable skill and experience. The result: A bad showing in the Dem primary against an unknown, and an awful showing in the general election, falling to an 11 point margin from a 27 point margin four years ago.

The reason was clear. Cuomo was a strong progressive on identity and social issues like gay marriage, guns and reproductive rights. But on economics he was a Tea Party, cut taxes, cut spending, corporate welfare austerity bug. He eliminated the bank tax, cut the estate tax, cut the income tax for those making more than $300,000, reduced school aid and put billions in the hands of big corporations. Just like Paul Ryan. It didn’t play. Dems and Independents revolted, some by moving to third party candidates and some by staying home. Cuomo had the lowest voter turnout in New York in eighty years.

Hillary could make the same mistake. Anything short of a populist, prosperity for working families, anti-1 percent, middle class economic agenda will be a prescription for electoral disaster. There’s reason to worry. Bill had a fondness for Wall Street, and Obama leaned on the Wall Street Dem establishment. It won’t be enough for Hillary to seem sympathetic and rely on women and progressives.

She needs an easy-to-understand economic message that focuses on good-paying middle class jobs, investment in physical and human infrastructure, getting Wall Street and the 1% to pay their share of taxes. an end to corporate welfare and attention to the retirement needs of average Americans. She doesn’t yet have one.

Eight years ago she tried to coast in. Didn’t work. If she presents early and often in 2015 as the candidate of an economy that works for average citizens she will establish herself on the key issue just when Republicans start their tribal gyrations on immigration and Obama. If not, she goes the way of Andrew Cuomo and Wall Street Democrats. Like in 2014 all over again.

First published December 14, 2014 by The Huffington Post.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-brodsky/hillary-on-the-cusp-its-t_b_6324360.html

Hon. Richard Brodsky is a fellow at the Demos think tank in New York City and at the Wagner School at New York University. Follow Richard Brodsky on Twitter: www.twitter.com/richardbrodsky 

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State Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-I-WF) of Yonkers was elected by her colleagues to serve as Leader of the Senate Democratic Conference in December 2012, becoming the first female leader of a legislative conference in New York State history and was re-elected as Leader in 2014. Stewart-Cousins was first elected to the State Senate in 2006 and represents Greenburgh and Scarsdale, and part of Yonkers, White Plains, and New Rochelle in the 35th State Senate District.

“I applaud Governor Cuomo for allowing the science regarding hydraulic fracturing to determine if drilling should be allowed in New York and I commend the experts at the State Department of Environmental Conservation and Department of Health for their diligent work on this matter. The Senate Democratic Conference has been a leader in the fight to protect our state’s natural resources and New Yorkers’ health and we are glad that Governor Cuomo’s administration stands united with us in this effort.”

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Larry M. Elkin, CPA, CFP®, has provided personal financial and tax counseling to a sophisticated client base since 1986. He is President, Palisades Hudson Financial Group LLC, and
President, Palisades Hudson Asset Management, L.P.

Current Commentary By Larry M. Elkin, CPA, CFP®,

The origin of the phrase “dark money” when referring to indirect campaign funding from unknown sources is, perhaps appropriately, a bit murky.

It seems likely that the phrase was coined in this sense by the Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit whose stated aim is open and accountable government. However, it really took off when left-leaning magazine Mother Jones began a regular column on the subject in the wake of the Citizens United decision.

Since then, Democrats have used the term with abandon to attack undisclosed campaign contributions – to their opponents. These protests reached a predictably high pitch in the run-up to this year’s midterm elections. Earlier this year, Senate Democrats introduced legislation that would have forced outside advocacy groups to publicly disclose their donors. The Democrats who introduced it surely knew it had no chance of passing, since similar measures fizzled in 2010 and 2012. But they needed to make it clear, in this election as in previous ones, that dark money is a problem.

Senator Harry Reid and T. Boone Pickens. Photo by and courtesy of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

That is, a problem when they aren’t using it themselves. In this election, Democrat-aligned nonprofits such as Patriot Majority USA allowed anonymous donors to underwrite advertising campaigns in races in Arkansas, Louisiana and North Carolina, among others. Democratic thinking this year seems to be, “If you can’t beat ‘em, try to join ‘em – but hedge your bets by claiming they’re cheating at the same time.”

As Casey Mann, the executive director of the North Carolina Democratic Party, put it, “These are the rules that are set before us. You have to actually win first… to get the kind of policies you want to see.” In other words, dark money is bad, but not so bad Democrats are willing to lose elections by foregoing it. It may sound hypocritical, but in the world of politics it seems fair enough.

But then we have outgoing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, opening new frontiers of hypocrisy by employing not only stealth money, but a stealth candidate. This is the same Harry Reid who, in June, gave testimony before the Senate Judiciary committee claiming “the flood of dark money [into campaigns] poses the greatest threat to our democracy that I have witnessed during my time in public service.” This was consistent with Reid’s aggressive and longstanding campaign against the Koch brothers, whom he has made the objects of his scorn for their political activities.

Yet in the campaign season that ended in last month’s Democratic rout, Reid’s former political advisers sent money to a candidate who was nominally not even associated with Reid’s party, in a last-ditch subterranean effort to save his party’s Senate majority.

The chicanery began with Reid and fellow Democrats pushing their own candidate out of the Senate race in Kansas, where incumbent Republican Pat Roberts was seen as vulnerable if his opposition could unite against him. After Chad Taylor, the Democrats’ nominee, dropped out of the race, the party opted not to replace him – leaving the field clear for the campaign of independent Greg Orman, who seemed the stronger challenger.

Orman tried to play coy with voters in reliably Republican Kansas about which caucus he would join if he made it to Washington. He insisted that, were he elected, neither side could take his vote for granted.

Yet Democrats were willing to take that chance. Political contributions to national party committees and super-PACs made after October 16 weren’t required to be disclosed until a month after the election. When these contributions came to light, it became clear that Democrats had doubled down on Orman.

Senate Majority PAC, a super-PAC run by Reid’s former advisers, sent about $1.5 million to two super-PACs supporting Orman. It seems obvious in hindsight that Democrats were careful to keep this support in the dark in order not to undermine Orman’s claim that he was not, in fact, aligned with Reid and his fellow Democrats.

Kansans were not fooled. While the race was very close in polls, with Orman leading slightly, on Election Day he lost to Roberts by a wide margin.

The Koch brothers make no secret about which candidates and which party they generally support, nor do many other prominent backers of both parties. But private citizens have a well-established constitutional right to freely associate in political causes and to do so anonymously if they prefer. The Supreme Court acknowledged that right to anonymity decades ago when it was exercised by supporters of the civil rights movement in the segregated South.

Unlike private citizens, who can vote or publish their political opinions anonymously if they like, we expect candidates for public office to at least be forthright about their intentions should they be elected. While Democrats did not break any rules, they certainly made it impossible to take their complaints about lack of transparency seriously.

Orman and Reid sought to use a smokescreen to add a vote to Reid’s caucus. If that doesn’t constitute midnight-dark politics, I don’t know what does.

Larry M. Elkin, CPA, CFP®, has provided personal financial and tax counseling to a sophisticated client base since 1986. After six years with Arthur Andersen, where he was a senior manager for personal financial planning and family wealth planning, he founded his own firm in Hastings on Hudson, N.Y., in 1992. That firm grew steadily and became the Palisades Hudson organization, which moved to Scarsdale, N.Y., in 2002. The firm expanded to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in 2005 and to Atlanta in 2008.

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Hon. Richard Brodsky.

The widely-accepted critique of Obama is that his cool, detached and depersonalized style has cost him and the country dearly. No relationships with the Congress, White House-centric controls on agencies, and a lone wolf approach to running the country that doesn’t work.

That meme was advanced to me this week by a very savvy and experienced Democratic operative, who bemoaned the state of the country, and the Democratic Party as we await The Time Of Hillary. “Lyndon Johnson knew how to make things happen.” he said, “Obama doesn’t.”

It’s an interesting perspective and almost completely an insider’s view of history. Johnson’s storied ability to pressure his fellow Southerners on Civil Rights and poverty issues was a function of post-assassination Kennedy politics and an historic shift in the national attitude towards race. It’s just as possible that an Eisenhower-ish hands off approach would have yielded the same result.

What’s not arguable is that the Johnson presidency collapsed over Vietnam, and the ghastly loss of blood and treasure it caused. The same arm-twisting and pressure that looked so effective on domestic issues was a disaster of much greater proportion on the defining issue of the Johnson years. I’ve got no nostalgia for the Lyndon Johnson presidency, nor for his governing style.

Comes now Obama, who seems to have embraced the opposite approach. He’s cool and detached to be sure. But whatever his style, he’s entitled to judgement on the evidence, and to application of the question Ronald Reagan asked the American people in 1980. “Are you better off now that you were four years ago?” It was a brilliant stroke then, and a fair measure of any president.

As I understand reality we are mostly out of two wars, trying diplomacy rather than military adventure to resolve conflicts, the job market is partially/largely recovered, the stock market is at an all-time high, millions of Americans have health care coverage, health care costs seem under control, and we’re moving toward addressing income and opportunity inequality. Lots of things are not where they should be, for sure. The economic pressure on the middle class is not getting better, education costs have skyrocketed, Wall Street still runs Washington, the immigration crisis is unresolved, the national security state flourishes. But it seems to me that, good and bad taken together, the country is in remarkably better shape than it was six years ago.

I understand the unwillingness of Republicans to admit all this, for political and ideological reasons. They’re largely stuck in thrall to their Tea Party reactionary wing, on social and economic policy. Their offer to the American people is failed economic austerity and social policy that play well in the Old South and Far West. They’re going to find that distaste for Obama won’t win a Presidential election.

But Democrats? Hillary is making decisions about how to present herself to the American people. The mistakes of 2008 are behind her, but there’s no assurance that she sees more deeply into 2016 than the Obama-skeptics. She needs to be able to answer the challenge Ronald Reagan propounded, not an insiders view of the stylistic sins of Obama. A genuine, programmatic concern for the economic condition of the middle class would be a great start, coupled with a willingness to reject the Lyndon Johnson Model of the presidency.

First published December 10, 2014 by The Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-brodsky/obama-v-johnson-obama-win_b_6300916.html

Hon. Richard Brodsky is a fellow at the Demos think tank in New York City and at the Wagner School at New York University. Follow Richard Brodsky on Twitter: www.twitter.com/richardbrodsky 

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