President Obama heralds his supporters for pressuring Congress for a debt deal that most of his supporters dislike.
Ari MelberPresident Obama released a new video for campaign supporters on Monday, crediting them for the tentative debt deal that he just reached with Congress.
“The pressure you put on Washington is one of the reasons we finally reached a resolution,” Obama says, “in the only way we could, through an agreement between both parties.”
That feels like a stretch, since the tentative agreement covers most GOP priorities without addressing any of the proposals traditionally associated with the Democratic base.
One of the early, popular comments on YouTube pushed back on that score.
“What a joke, this isn’t an agreement between both parties, it’s the republicans holding the nation hostage and the democrats giving them all they want,” wrote commenter Aetrion on Monday morning.
Obama campaign manager Jim Messina forwarded to the video to the campaign’s massive email list under the headline, “Here’s the story,” and asked supporters to take it viral.
“Please share this video with everyone you know,” he wrote.
Along with the video, the campaign website features a brief fact sheet touting the benefits of the tentative plan.
The video is below—for more Nation coverage of the debt agreement, check out reactions from Katrina vanden Heuvel and William Greider.
Ari MelberTwitterAri Melber is The Nation's Net movement correspondent, covering politics, law, public policy and new media, and a regular contributor to the magazine's blog. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and a J.D. from Cornell Law School, where he was an editor of the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy. Contact Ari: on Facebook, on Twitter, and at amelber@hotmail.com. Melber is also an attorney, a columnist for Politico and a contributing editor at techPresident, a nonpartisan website covering technology’s impact on democracy. During the 2008 general election, he traveled with the Obama Campaign on special assignment for The Washington Independent. He previously served as a Legislative Aide in the US Senate and as a national staff member of the 2004 John Kerry Presidential Campaign. As a commentator on public affairs, Melber frequently speaks on national television and radio, including including appearances on NBC, CNBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, C-SPAN, MSNBC, Bloomberg News, FOX News, and NPR, on programs such as “The Today Show,” “American Morning,” “Washington Journal,” “Power Lunch,” "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell," "The Joy Behar Show," “The Dylan Ratigan Show,” and “The Daily Rundown,” among others. Melber has also been a featured speaker at Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Columbia, NYU, The Center for American Progress and many other institutions. He has contributed chapters or essays to the books “America Now,” (St. Martins, 2009), “At Issue: Affirmative Action,” (Cengage, 2009), and “MoveOn’s 50 Ways to Love Your Country,” (Inner Ocean Publishing, 2004). His reporting has been cited by a wide range of news organizations, academic journals and nonfiction books, including the The Washington Post, The New York Times, ABC News, NBC News, CNN, FOX News, National Review Online, The New England Journal of Medicine and Boston University Law Review. He is a member of the American Constitution Society, he serves on the advisory board of the Roosevelt Institute and lives in Manhattan.