2009 and 2017

Kevin Drum had a pretty good blog post on Mother Jones yesterday. He compared the press headlines and stories in 2009 versus 2017. In 2009, on the federal level, Obama had won a very decisive victory and Congress was controlled by the Democrats. The narrative then--even in The New York Times--was that Obama was not reaching out to the Repubs enough (even though he was, but that's another story), and that this was some sort of failure. In 2017, by contrast, the narrative is a lot different. There is no expectation that the Repubs should "reach out".  In fact, it seems to be presented as a sign of strength that they are not.

If you have followed the press the last few years, this is not surprising, since it was pretty consistently presented--again, also in The New York Times--that this failure to compromise was the fault of the Democrats, and specifically Preident Obama. And this was true whether the Dems or the Repubs controlled Congress.

It's not worth whining about but I think it's pretty interesting. (Kevin Drum has his own idea on why this is so.)