Obama's complete disregard for the impact of his policies at a state level

Poor Obama, Poor America

By Daniel Greenfield
Saturday, January 23, 2010

When New York Michael Bloomberg delivered a speech blasting Obama’s proposed bank policies, it was an almost underwhelming reminder of how badly Obama has lost even the most supposedly hard core loyal states and their liberal leaders. California Governor Schwarzenegger, New York Governor Patterson and city mayor Bloomberg, all former allies of Obama, have turned on his policies based on their economic impact at a state level. And economic impact at a state level played a big part in Scott Brown’s MA victory.

California, New York and Massachusetts are not red states, and they are barometers of just how disastrous even one year of Obama has been for America. Schwarzenegger, Patterson and Bloomberg are not tea party activists. They are liberals, though two of them are officially Republicans, who were thrilled by Obama and were happy to be his allies. What turned them around is Obama’s complete disregard for the impact of his policies at a state level.

To Obama, there is only the federal, the centralized government that he and his congressional allies control. Despite being a State Senator, he doesn’t see things at the local level, and that has proven to be the biggest public achilles heel for his health plan, which took the worst of its beatings at the Town Halls, and took its wound from Brown’s completely unpredictable populist victory in MA.

While Obama has predictably enough tried to reorient himself in a populist direction, making noises about the “banksâ€