Given my 27 years with the EPA--many of those years working directly in the field of air enforcement--I've hesitated to wander into this controversy here or elsewhere. Not for lack of info & background, but because of it...being so steeped in environmental issues & skirmishes involving proposed regulation development for so many years can elevate my emotions.

IMO, the full-court press by the anti-enviro Repub crowd left little room for truthtelling to be seen let alone heard. Recall that a fundamental aim of the powerplaying Koch Bros industry has been the demolition of environmental regulation (and many Rs are on record these days calling for the abolition of EPA.) While I disagree with deferral by the WH, I completely understand and completely accept the how & why of it. In brief: The hullabaloo & boogeyman portrayed by the likes of the hardnose, longstanding enviros has seeped into the realpolitik to such an extent as to take focus/direction away from the critical jobs & economic area. (A few years back, I had a conversation with former Congresswoman Betsy Markey, a Democrat from the almost 50-50 district east/northeast of Denver. She courageously voted for the Dems climate change legis in 2009; part of her 2010 loss is attributed to that courageous act. She knew it was coming; she lost. Realpolitik.)

As for costs v. perception of costs: In the last few years before my retirement, I was fortunate enough to participate in a small group--about a dozen--state, industry, federal members--whose task was to explore combined steps for pollution reduction from drycleaners. It was one of the most instructive times in my career...learning about PERC and alternatives, learning about distribution from the key distributor & about the realities of instructing employees where changeover is large, learning about the perceived fears of individuals who ran samll cleaning operations, and finally--after two years of push-pull, growing understanding on everyones' part, including the national SBA ombudsman, we produced a booklet defining expectations & individual pollution-reducing steps...and, when checking a year or so ago, that booklet can still be found & used in the Denver market.  Why go through this recitation? Well, honestly, I wanted to recount something that may have worked just a bit AND, mostly, to underscore your contention about complications in the small business program.

Again, this is about much more than the oil industry. Small business concerns are a large factor here...whether or not the cost is perceived as reality or real in terms of debilitating economic effect.  

Turnout (in 1996) was only 49.1% because people were generally disgusted with the politics that was offered.

Turnout was low because the economy was humming along, there were no wars, and people were generally content ... but it's nice to know that you were "disgusted with the politics that was offered".

Clinton was also using tactics called "Mediscare" by Republicans (so it was mostly negative campaigning) to win.

Seriously?  A link to an article where Dole's crying about "Mediscare" is supposed to prove that "it was mostly negative campaigning"?

Pfffffttttt ....

Hate to break it to you, but there is some negative campaigning in any campaign.  In '96, Clinton spent a huge amount of money during that summer advertising his own record and agenda.  The economy was greatly improved (and improving), and he was happy to point to his record.

I am of course happy that Clinton won in 1996, however let us not pretend that he did not win by running a negative campaign.

Did Clinton use Medicare? He sure did. He used Dole's stance on cutting Medicare against him. He used Dole's own record to defeat him.

And at the top of the heap is a president who has not - as he campaigned on - set himself apart from the ideas and policies and actions of his Republican predecessor, working boldly and diligently to reverse those policies, but one who has embraced some of the worst of what the Bush/Cheney years gave us.

A "huge" difference would be a Democratic president who resisted calls for massive spending cuts, for changes to how safety-net program benefits are calculated, who didn't pander and cater to the banks and Wall Street, who wasn't in bed with health industry special interests, who got behind a HOLC-type program to really make a difference in the housing market, instead of creating one of the worst programs ever - HAMP - that has probably hurt more people than it has helped.

The environment?  Come on, chris - that's your area; are you not puzzled, angered, dismayed that we have a Democratic president whose idea of "balance" is to come down on the side of big business, to the environment's detriment?  Tar oil sands?  Expediting the process for approving that pipeline?

There are huge differences in what I expect from a Democratic president and what I am getting, but there are not enough ideological differences among the powers that be who are making and legislating policy for us to make anywhere near the kind of forward movement on the many fronts where that movement is so badly needed.

Will Republicans be worse?  Maybe they'd like to be, but I see more chance for Democratic resistance against Republican rule than I do for resistance from within the ranks of Democrats against a Democratic president pushing Republican policies.

That enables you no doubt to pride yourself quite contentedly on having "countered" what somebody else has said, while not actually having even come close.  If you really are a paid shill, your employers are not getting their money's worth.

I was, as I think you very well know, characterizing what I think the majority of the electorate will think by the time 2016 rolls around.  I said, I believe, if not here then repeatedly in other comments, that I do think, given the hideous GOP candidates, that Obama will likely pull it out in 2012.  But the Republicans will not be so stupid in 2016.

I'll say it again.  Obama, with the help of his congressional Democratic Party enablers, are in the process of utterly destroying what little meaning remains for the Democratic Party. However stupid you think the broader electorate is (you know, all those bitter knitters who cling to guns and church), they're not so stupid that it's escaped them that the Democratic Party no longer stands for anything that affects their lives in a positive way.

The ACA is an utter disaster, the "financial reform" is a big, fat joke, and frankly, my dear, they don't care all that much that Obama was finally dragged kicking and screaming all the way to giving DADT the boot and grudgingly supporting doing away with DOMA-- well, maybe some day.  I suspect they do care, however, about gutting the environmental regulations that protect their health on behalf of dirty corporate interests.

For anybody older than about 25, they, as we, are aware that Obama's few tentative lurches partway into liberal policies don't even match Ronald Reagan's liberal policies.  And those of us old enough to remember Nixon shudder to realize that he was far left by comparison.