A Blue View

Obama Again Attempts To Bridge The Divide With The GOP

Wash Post:

President Obama brought Republicans to the negotiating table on Tuesday, hoping to stem a steady deterioration in relations between the two parties that has brought business in Washington to a standstill, left the Democratic agenda in tatters and angered voters who are eager to have lawmakers address their concerns.

The two-hour session was part of a renewed drive by the White House to create legislation by consensus, regardless of party label. Obama tried the approach after he took office, but it did not take hold. After the meeting, the president paid a surprise visit to the White House press room to brief reporters.

He accused Republicans of indiscriminate obstruction that he said has created legislative gridlock, especially in the Senate, but he also called on Democratic leaders to "put aside matters of party for the good of the country."

Obama outlined issues that could bridge the divide, including job creation, health-care reform, energy and trade. But he extracted few concrete commitments from his GOP visitors.

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll suggests that the public is frustrated by the bickering and recriminations. According to the survey, 57 percent of Americans consider the loss of the Senate Democrats' filibuster-proof supermajority a "good thing," but few think Republicans should wield their new power to block bills frequently. Nearly six in 10 say that Republicans are not doing enough to forge compromise with Obama on important issues, while nearly half view the president as doing too little to overcome differences with the GOP.

On the issue of health-care reform, public attitudes about the stalled Democratic legislation remain virtually deadlocked. But nearly two-thirds of voters, or 63 percent, want Congress to keep trying to tackle the issue.

A major test of whether Obama's new strategy will yield legislative results could come when the Senate takes up a job-creation bill, which Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) had hoped to introduce last week but which was sidetracked by a snowstorm.

Sens. Orrin G. Hatch (Utah) and Charles E. Grassley (Iowa) -- senior Republicans who walked away from health-care talks last year -- have been heavily involved in drafting the legislation but are reluctant to sign on to the bill unless it attracts broad GOP support. After the White House meeting, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said there is "a chance" that Republicans would back the jobs measure, although he said his conference is "not entirely comfortable with it yet."

Later, McConnell convened GOP members of the Senate Finance Committee for an impromptu gathering, and the senators emerged expressing some support for the overall framework. But Republicans were reluctant to agree to Reid's timeline for speeding the legislation to completion by the weekend. On Tuesday evening, Reid announced that snowstorms made continued legislative action all but impossible, and put off its formal introduction and a final vote until later this month ...

Obama has reached out to Republicans on health-care reform by inviting them to participate in a bipartisan summit on Feb. 25. GOP leaders have expressed wariness that the event will amount to little more than political theater and so far have not committed to attending.

BiPartisanship Washington Style

Gibbs Parodies Palin

The Caucus:

After President Obama left the White House briefing room today, his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, held up a surprise of his own, literally: a scribbled list of items on his hand, in an obvious mocking of Sarah Palin’s weekend crib sheet at the Tea Party Convention.

While Ms. Palin’s list included items like taxes, Mr. Gibbs’s was more domestic: “I wrote eggs, milk, bread,” he told reporters in the briefing room, adding that he’d crossed out bread. And at the end, “I wrote down hope and change just in case I forgot that.”

The Paradox Of American Financial Exceptionalism

NY Times:

The Debtor the World Still Bets On

For decades — through political upheaval and wars and wild bouts of deficits or inflation — the debt of the United States has always been rated AAA, the gold standard of creditworthiness by which all nations are compared.

That was true before President Obama published his budget on Monday, with its projections of huge American deficits over the next decade and beyond. Astoundingly or not, it was as true after those estimates were published. Of course, had it been the United States Widget Company projecting red ink as far as the eye could see, no one would lend it a dime.

The closest thing Washington got to a brush-back pitch was a warning from Moody’s, an investor service that rates the sovereign debt of nations: Without action to cut the deficit or a faster-than-expected recovery, the projections for the decade “will at some point put pressure on the triple-A government bond rating.” Nobody blinked — not Congress, not the White House, not the investors around the world who keep buying Treasury bonds to finance this year’s $1.6 trillion shortfall, at low interest rates.

What explains this oddity? Why is the world betting that the United States will overcome its political deadlock and solve its problems — believing, it seems, in the truth of Churchill’s biting quip that America will always do the right thing, after exhausting every other alternative? And how long can this aura of invincibility last?

Maybe a long, long time. One of the many things that makes the United States different is that it prints the world’s most important currency and can always print more — one reason investors in government debt remain confident they will be repaid, even if in dollars devalued by inflation or by changing exchange rates.

There is also value in being the one nation on which the world still depends for security. That helps explain why foreign investors, including China, can denounce American politicians, Wall Street bankers and sleepwalking regulators for creating the current mess — and still buy at the next Treasury auction.

This paradox of American financial exceptionalism was unusually clear last week. When the stock market shuddered on Thursday because of worries about national defaults, it wasn’t Washington’s mountain of debt that got everyone rattled. It was the plight of a handful of profligate spenders in Europe — notably Greece, Spain and Portugal — whose comparative foothills of debt suddenly made them dubious credit risks.

Each of those countries knows the meaning of “imperial overstretch.” But it’s been a few centuries since Madrid and Lisbon were centers of vast empires, and a lot longer for the Greeks. What brought them down this time was not global ambition but local gridlock, in which politicians could not, or would not, cut spending at a time of high unemployment and social need. Making things worse, they now are on the euro — meaning they can no longer print their own way out of the problem, either. And it is unclear whether their partners in the euro bloc can afford either to bail them out or to let them default.

“They have no easy option,” said Prof. Simon Johnson of M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management. “They can cut spending or raise taxes.”

Their problems may be minor compared to those of Japan, a battered economic superpower that prints its own currency and whose newspapers, two decades ago, regularly published charts projecting when Japan might overtake America as the world’s biggest economy. The papers still run such charts, but now the question is when China will overtake Japan for the No. 2 spot (likely later this year).

Today, like Toyota, Japan’s government is having a braking problem — it can’t figure out how to slow spending on a rapidly aging population, and like everyone else has reacted to recession by hitting the spending accelerator.

But unlike America, Japan is no longer considered so indispensible.

"Despite his roots, Obama struggles to show he's connected to middle class"

Wash Post:

... During his recent tour of blue-collar towns, factories and burger joints, Obama has tried to reconcile two pieces of his reputation. He turned down high-paying jobs after graduating from Harvard Law School and became a community organizer, compelled by the experience of growing up with a single mother who sometimes lived on food stamps. He married a woman from a working-class family on the South Side of Chicago, and they rented a walk-up condominium in Hyde Park.

But during his campaign for the presidency, Obama bungled some of his early attempts to connect with blue-collar workers, complaining about the price of arugula at Whole Foods and visiting a bowling alley only to roll an embarrassing score of 37. Some political rivals continue to disparage him as an elitist. Even his aides have sometimes worried that his intellect can be mistaken for condescension and that his composure can seem like detachment.

Those shortcomings were evident last month when Obama invited the previous two presidents to join him at the White House for a news conference about the U.S. relief effort in Haiti. George W. Bush was simple and frank: "Just send us your cash," he said. Bill Clinton spoke without notes and verged on tears as he recalled his personal connection to the devastated country: "I have no words to say what I feel," he said. "I had meals with people who are dead." Obama, meanwhile, spoke from prepared notes, looking all business, glancing to his left and to his right to establish eye contact while standing with perfect posture behind the lectern.

In the two weeks since, Obama appears to have learned from his predecessors' trademark strengths. He has traveled to Ohio, Baltimore, Florida and New Hampshire, each time emphasizing how much he enjoys leaving the strictures of the White House and the divisiveness of Washington. Like Clinton, he has told stories about his own struggles, recalling the 15 years he spent paying off student loans and the "family emergency" that forced him to cash out his 401(k). Like Bush, he has favored simple language and relatable analogies.

On life in Washington: "It can drive you crazy."

On one of the good things about the White House: "You live above the store."

On his relationship with the mayor of Elyria, Ohio: "He and I shared a burger at Smitty's."

On the media: "People with the pens and pencils."

On his reason for visiting a machine company in Baltimore: "I just like gettin' out of the White House, and then I like tooling around companies that are actually making stuff."

So it was little surprise in New Hampshire that, after Obama visited one manufacturing business, he was introduced at his town hall by the owner of another manufacturing business. Obama answered six questions from the crowd at a packed high school gym, referring to "folks" 13 times before aides indicated he had run out of time.

He lingered afterward for five minutes, shaking hands, slapping backs and exchanging hugs while his assistant, Reggie Love, followed to collect business cards and phone numbers. At 3:30 p.m., less than three hours after he landed in New Hampshire, Obama peeled away from the crowd, pointing apologetically at a cadre of aides and Secret Service agents who were suggesting it was time to go. The moment for direct connection had passed. Now it was back to the motorcade, onto his 166th flight aboard Air Force One and off to the White House -- back to a life apart.

Wake Up GOP Grass Roots: It's A Charade Designed To Get Your Vote

Remember this exchange on Friday where Obama talked about the man behind the curtain aspect of so much of Republican rhetoric (eg, how Republican voters honestly believe the politically expedient stuff Republican politicians say and how this then gives the politicians very little room to negotiate with him):

Well, here's a perfect example of Obama's it's-all-just-an-insincere-game complaint, from the Wash Post:

When Sen. John Cornyn put out a statement calling Obama's address to Congress flawed but "well-delivered," Politico blogger Ben Smith called out the Texas Republican on the fact that the release went out before the speech.

Cornyn says he was "a little offended by the lack of journalistic ethics," since he was making life easier for reporters -- but it was, after all, a minor deception. Smith responds that "you can't put something off the record or under embargo without a reporter's consent." Maybe next time, lawmakers will wait until the person they're castigating has actually spoken.

Can We Have More Debates? "The next test for Obama and congressional leaders in both parties"

EJ Dione:

Ultimately, the event may have been most beneficial for Obama, who badly needs a boost. He has emerged as the most polarizing first-year president in history. In that year, unemployment hit 10 percent, his health-care initiative failed to pass the Congress, his poll numbers eroded, independents deserted the Democrats in major statewide elections and some members of his party hit the panic button after Republican Scott Brown won the special Senate election in Massachusetts.

On Friday, however, Obama reminded his opponents of the singular power of the presidency, delivering a performance that easily eclipsed his State of the Union address. He was knowledgeable about GOP counterproposals. He was robust in his rebuttals without being peevish. He may not have won over his conservative critics, who snickered when he said he was not an ideologue, but he was able, repeatedly, to sound the call for bipartisanship and to challenge the opposition to help lower temperatures.

Ross Baker, a political science professor at Rutgers University, said the message Obama delivered in Baltimore was consistent with one of the broad themes of his presidential campaign and therefore likely to enhance his standing with the public. "If the polls are correct -- and they are certainly consistent -- that Americans want a cease-fire if not a full-fledged truce, the event boosted his stock as a peacemaker," he said.

Obama's appearance before the House Republican policy retreat was part of a White House strategy that began with the State of the Union, designed to reconnect him with voters who have grown skeptical of his agenda and to identify himself with the anger that many Americans are expressing toward the way Washington is working.

The best indication that Republicans realized Obama had helped himself came late Friday. Initial reactions to the president by GOP House leaders had been generally civil. Then in the early evening, Boehner's office issued a release with the headline: "Rhetoric versus reality: President Obama repeats discredited talking points during dialogue with House GOP" ...

"The fading dream of realignment"

To whet your appetite, here's an excerpt from an excellent Matt Bai piece on the fading of political (and brand) loyalty in America:

... The realigning swing of the pendulum is almost certainly a relic of another age, never to be replicated, or at least not in our lifetimes. One reason is that politics in the television (and now Internet) age are less transactional and more ideological than they were in the long period between the Civil War and civil rights ...

Even more consequential, though, is the fast-growing swath of voters who can summon no affinity for either party ... The most prevalent ideology of the era seems to be not liberalism nor conservatism so much as anti-incumbency, a reflexive distrust of whoever has power and a constant rallying cry for systemic reform.

And so the fundamental mistake that Republican and Democratic strategists each made after their respective takeovers was to believe that their victories represented an ideological shift among independent voters, the kind of sweeping philosophical reassessment — Hey, you know what? We really do need a big centralized government! — that would empower a party for generations to come. In fact, far from swinging wildly between conservatism and liberalism, a critical mass of dissatisfied Americans cast the exact same vote in 2006 as they did in 1994 — a vote against entrenched power in the Capitol. The only real difference between those two elections lay in which party happened to be holding the gavel at the moment of revolt.

On a deeper level, the fading dream of realignment also reflects our attitudes about permanence in a society that judges its digital TVs by their “refresh rates” — that is, the number of times per second that the pixels on the screen rearrange themselves to create a more eye-popping picture than the one that just existed. In an accelerated culture, our loyalties toward just about everything — laundry detergents, celebrities, even churches and spouses — transfer more readily than our grandparents could have imagined. Now we dispose of phone carriers and cash-back credit cards from one month to the next, forever in search of some better deal. Forget the staying power of an institution like Johnny Carson; when Jay Leno starts to feels a little stale, he is shifted to prime time, then shifted back to late night. It was probably never very realistic for modern political thinkers of either party to dream of a 50-year reign. This century’s tectonic realignment is more likely to last 50 months or maybe 50 weeks, depending on how long it takes voters to seek out the latest offer or the newest best deal.

It isn’t only majority parties that will have to recalibrate their ideas of longevity in this new environment. It’s the individual politicians, too. <Continue reading.>

Tuesday's Election Is Not About The Right, It's All About The Left: Does The Future Of The Democratic Party Hang In The Balance?

In today's America, the problem with Obama trying to govern from the center is that his pragmatic, let's-get-the-best-we-can-get approach hasn't motivated the left (or worse, he's pissed it off) while the GOP's tactics of fear mongering ("Death Panels," "He's a socialist") has motivated the right. After all, emotional appeals to fear are intuitively understandable and are always more powerful than rational arguments that require thinking through to accept. 

So while traditionally, being in the non-dogmatic center has been the politically wisest place to be, the extremist nature of American politics today means the center maybe becoming toxic to winning elections. Voters in the center have easily swayable positions and are easily dissuaded from voting while those at the extremes are dogmatic and, if you push the right buttons, die hard voters.

The Senate election in Mass is all going to come down to turnout: will disaffected Progressives and Dems vote or sit this one out because Obama hasn't been pure enough? 

Tuesday's election is not really going to be about about the strength or resurgence of the Right. Instead, it will be about whether the Left is willing to govern from the center and occupy a position that, over time, will build an enduring political power base or whether it wants to emulate the Right and appeal just to its end of the spectrum (see Tea Party Goal: "Take the precinct, take the state, take the party." Tea Party Result: Taking The GOP Over The Cliff).

Tuesday's Mass Senate election is the Democrat's 23rd. Will enough purity-requiring-Progressives sit it out so that the Republican wins ... and therefore kill health care reform and Obama's progressive agenda?

Tuesday's election couldn't be any more important.

Tea Party Goal: "Take the precinct, take the state, take the party." Tea Party Result: Taking The GOP Over The Cliff

I am so happy the Tea Partiers are drawing the 180 degree wrong conclusion from the NY 23 election: rather than realizing they're a fringe that can't win elections, they've decided to take over the GOP so they can nominate more losing candidates, more often.

The NY Times:

Tea Party activists are trying to take over the establishment, ground up. Across the country, they are signing up to be Republican precinct leaders, a position so low-level that it often remains vacant, but which comes with the ability to vote for the party executives who endorse candidates, approve platforms and decide where the party spends money.

A new group called the National Precinct Alliance says it has a coordinator in nearly every state to recruit Tea Party activists to fill the positions and has already swelled the number of like-minded members in Republican Party committees in Arizona and Nevada. Its mantra is this: take the precinct, take the state, take the party — and force it to nominate conservatives rather than people they see as liberals in Republican clothing.

Here, in a perennial battleground district outside Philadelphia, Tea Party activists are trying to strip the local committee of its influence in choosing the Republican nominee to run against Representative Patrick J. Murphy, a Democrat who won the seat in 2006 by about 1,500 votes.

After the local party said it would stick to its custom of endorsing a candidate rather than holding an open primary, Tea Party groups decided to hold their own candidate forum where people could cast a ballot. If the party does not yield, the groups say they will host a debate, too.

“We kind of changed the rules,” said Anastasia Przybylski, one of the organizers ... 

If the Democrats are big-government socialists, the Republicans, in the Tea Party mind, are enablers ... As the movement looks toward the midterm elections in November, a growing number of activists argue that the best way to translate anger into influence is to infiltrate the Republican establishment (Democrats being, for the average Tea Partier, beyond redemption).

“If you want to have revenge against the Republican Party for using you for so many years, the best way is to turn around and use the Republican Party to your advantage,” said Eric Odom, a Tea Party activist in Chicago who recently started a political action committee, and on his blog urged Tea Partiers to stop complaining about the Republican Party and “move in and take it over.”

"For Obama, a tough year to get the message out"

Dan Balz:

In winning the White House, Barack Obama's team earned a reputation for skill and discipline in dominating the communications wars with opponents. In office, virtually the same team has struggled, spending much of the past year defending the administration's actions on the two biggest domestic issues -- the economy and health care.

The White House has sought to sell health-care reform as a way to make coverage affordable and accessible to middle-class families. But it was also presented at various times as a cost-containment measure, a restraint on greedy insurance companies, a moral imperative to cover the uninsured and, to Democratic lawmakers, as a "can't fail" enterprise. The president and his aides sent mixed signals on the "public option" as well, voicing support for a government-run plan while signaling their willingness to see it die to get a bill passed.

On the economy, administration officials put themselves at a disadvantage with faulty projections of the jobless rate and an overly rosy prediction of how many jobs the stimulus package would create or save. Once they had put in place policies to deal with the worst of the crises Obama inherited, they moved on to health care and later to Afghanistan. The result was a perceived loss of focus in addressing public unrest about unemployment that has prompted a shift back to the economy recently.

It is an axiom of political communication that the president wields the world's biggest megaphone and is therefore capable of setting an agenda and dominating a debate. Obama has used his rhetorical skills repeatedly to good effect, but officials acknowledge that there are limits.

"There is real power there," White House senior adviser David Axelrod said of the president's platform. "But it's not a magic wand. The bully pulpit does not put people to work."

Obama's advisers have learned what previous White House teams came to realize when they arrived in Washington, which is the vast difference between campaigning and governing. Asked what happened to the Obama team, Mark McKinnon, who was a media adviser to President George W. Bush, said, "They're human. They've walked into the propellers of the federal government."

Axelrod said the challenge of managing and controlling messages in a campaign and in the White House is "the difference between tick-tack-toe and three-dimensional tick-tack-toe. It's vastly more complicated." <Continue reading.>

Weekly Radio Address: Health Reform's Immediate Benefits

WhiteHouse.gov:

The President discusses the benefits of health reform that Americans will receive in the first year, and how reform will help build a new foundation for American families.

The NY Times' coverage:

President Obama said Saturday that Americans would see immediate benefits from a landmark overhaul of the nation’s health insurance system and he urged Congress to swiftly reconcile differences over the legislation so it could be signed into law in the coming weeks.

“Once I sign health insurance reform into law, doctors and patients will have more control over their health care decisions, and insurance company bureaucrats will have less,” Mr. Obama said. “All told, these changes represent the most sweeping reforms and toughest restrictions on insurance companies that this country has ever known.”

In his weekly Saturday address, Mr. Obama highlighted elements of the plan that would take effect soon after enactment of the bill. He said the law would allow people with pre-existing illnesses to be able to buy affordable insurance, children with pre-existing conditions would no longer be denied coverage and small business owners who could not afford to cover employees would receive tax credits to buy insurance.

“What every American should know is that once I sign health insurance reform into law, there are dozens of protections and benefits that will take effect this year,” Mr. Obama said.

Most of the proposed changes in the bill would not take effect until 2014, but the president used his weekly address to try to raise the urgency for the legislation.

The competing versions of the plan in the House and Senate would require most Americans to get health insurance and provide subsidies for those who cannot afford it. But significant differences remain over how to accomplish that goal, including what taxes will be raised.

House Democrats, along with leaders of organized labor, oppose a provision in the Senate bill to impose a tax on top-shelf insurance plans. Mr. Obama will meet on Monday at the White House with top labor leaders to discuss their opposition to that provision of the bill.

In his address, the president said the health insurance overhaul was needed to improve the economic fortunes for the nation’s middle class.

“We need to rebuild our economy in such a way that our families can feel a measure of security again,” Mr. Obama said. “Too many of the folks I’ve talked with this year, and whose stories I read in letters at night, tell me that they’ve known their own private recessions since long before economists declared one — and they’ll still feel the recession long after economists have declared it over.”

Liz Cheney Goes On The Attack With 24-Like Video

Now, Senator Nelson Wants All States To Be Exempt ... Just Like Nebraska

Prescriptions:

Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, has been under fire in recent days for winning some plum provisions for his home state in exchange for voting for his party’s big health care legislation. But in a statement on Thursday, Mr. Nelson said he would fight for all states to get the same benefits as Nebraska — a move that some Senate colleagues had predicted as inevitable.

When Mr. Nelson was negotiating with the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, over whether he would support the health care bill, he demanded that the federal government pick up the total cost of a proposed Medicaid expansion in Nebraska, even though other states would eventually have to share the cost of expanding their Medicaid programs.

Mr. Reid agreed and inserted a provision for the federal government to pay Nebraska’s new Medicaid costs indefinitely. But that provision has had its own political cost, with Republicans accusing Democrats of bribing Mr. Nelson with a “sweetheart deal” to win his vote ...

Now Mr. Nelson says he will fight for California and other states to get the corn, too. And that could cost the federal government a whole bunch of beans.

“As a former governor, I’ve long fought against unfunded federal mandates, which force Washington rules on states with little or no money to pay for them,” Mr. Nelson said. “The current health care bill has an unfunded mandate for expanding Medicaid. While helping more Americans obtain health coverage is important, this mandate could burden state budgets in uncertain economic times ahead.”

He added: “I’ve been in serious discussions with Senate leaders and others to secure changes in the bill to treat all states equally. At the end of the day, whatever Nebraska gets will apply to all states.”

Of course, the Medicaid provisions now in the Senate bill are not an unfunded mandate for Nebraska. And federal officials have long contended that Medicaid is not in fact a classic unfunded mandate. Medicaid, the federal-state insurance program for low-income Americans, has always been a partnership – with the federal government and states sharing the costs.

"In a political universe ruled by ideological yellers, [Obama] lacks both an ideology and the pipes"

Richard Cohen is worried. Are you?

Last month, no American soldiers were killed in Iraq. Last month, the unemployment rate dipped a bit, the stock market ended the year up, the financial system did not crater, Detroit's Big Three began to get a pulse -- and yet a consensus started to form that Barack Obama, who is either responsible for or merely presided over all this good stuff, is a failure.

What's more, the consensus came supported by numbers ... Obama began 2009 with 43 percent of Americans strongly approving of his performance and ended it with 26 percent feeling that way. Any way you measure the polls, Obama did not have a good year.

On the left, the president is being pummeled for health-care legislation that does not include a public option and that has not dispatched insurance executives to Guantanamo. On the right, he is being pummeled for socializing the economy, establishing death panels and allowing maniacal Nigerians to load their Calvins with boom-boom and fly into peaceful Detroit. It's a cartoon.

In foreign policy, Obama has sorely disappointed his fans on the left for escalating the war in Afghanistan and on the right for not escalating it enough. Guantanamo, which he vowed to close, is still open. He supports gay rights, but don't ask and don't tell about "don't ask, don't tell." He zigs, he zags. Change! Hope! But not much of the former and little of the latter.

To some, he's weak on the environment. To others, he's too strong on the environment. He is camouflaged in the incomprehensible, leaving no (carbon) footprint and quixotically tilting at energy-producing windmills. He confers too much with our allies, bows when he should shake and has not brought peace to the Middle East -- as, you will remember, George W. Bush did.

Much of this critique is asinine. If the Republican Party had its way -- and God sees to it that it doesn't -- the country would by now have reverted to the barter system and the unemployment rate would be around 25 percent. The GOP economic program simply does not exist, and even Bush knew this. When push came to shove, he tossed his ideology overboard and used government money to bail out financial institutions.

Still, the reason the GOP criticisms have started to stick is that Obama can be made into anything his critics want. He is a lean man of ideological clay who has let others mold his image. His bottom line is forever on the move. It's not that he's not good or smart; it's rather that in a political universe ruled by ideological yellers, he lacks both an ideology and the pipes.

The White House faces a major political problem. Obama's first year was not a bad one -- and yet he suffered. The coming year threatens to be much worse. Fatalities are going to increase in Afghanistan. Unemployment could fester. The debt is going to increase, and all over the country, state and municipal governments are going to go broke and look to Washington for help. The land will roil with anger, and Mr. Cool in the White House is not up to FDR-like fireside chats. He was born to blog.

Journalists like to believe that if they are getting criticism from both sides of the story, they must be doing something right. This is not true for journalists -- they may actually have gotten the story doubly wrong -- and it is certainly not true for political figures. In Obama's case, his misfortune is to be a leader without a cause.

He wanted a health-care bill. Why? To cover the uncovered. Maybe. To rein in the insurance companies. Maybe. To lower costs. Maybe. What mattered most was getting a bill, any bill. This is not a cause. It's a notch on a belt.

Obama could be a great president. He has already achieved much -- possibly saving the country from financial ruin, salvaging the auto industry, getting some sort of health-care reform. Possibly, possibly. Yet his numbers sink as his achievements rise. He is the Johnny Appleseed of cognitive dissonance, so utterly detached that when he wins it seems to be only for himself. Pollsters measure him but poets have described him. William Butler Yeats got it down years ago: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."

Hypocrite Cheney Does It Again; White House Hits Back

Wash Post:

The political war over the failed Christmas Day bombing of a U.S. airliner showed no signs of abating Wednesday as leaders of both parties escalated their attacks, employing fiery rhetoric in assessing blame for the Detroit incident.

Former vice president Richard B. Cheney led a GOP offensive to assail President Obama's leadership on national security, charging that the American people are less safe because, Cheney believes, Obama is "pretending" that the United States is not at war with terrorists.

"We are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren't, it makes us less safe," Cheney, one of Obama's strongest critics, said in a statement to Politico. "Why doesn't he want to admit we're at war? It doesn't fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office. It doesn't fit with what seems to be the goal of his presidency -- social transformation -- the restructuring of American society."

Top aides to Obama and Democratic leaders pushed back aggressively, accusing Cheney and other Republicans of politicizing the incident in ways they say Democrats did not during previous terrorist acts.

"Cheney was out there today saying that the president doesn't recognize that we have a war on terror," White House senior adviser David Axelrod said in an interview. "This is the president who has made a very tough decision to refocus our efforts in Afghanistan after seven years of drift."

Democrats said the Bush administration -- chiefly Cheney -- failed to keep its focus on the fight against al-Qaeda as it pursued war in Iraq.

"This president is not interested in bellicose rhetoric, he is focused on action," White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer wrote on a blog. "Seven years of bellicose rhetoric failed to reduce the threat from al Qaeda and succeeded in dividing this country. And it seems strangely off-key now, at a time when our country is under attack, for the architect of those policies to be attacking the president."

For days, a chorus of GOP leaders has sought to portray Obama as weak on national security because of his administration's response to the incident as well as the intelligence and security failures that allowed Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to board a Northwest Airlines flight carrying an explosive.

Republicans said Obama should have interrupted his Hawaiian vacation before Monday to address last Friday's attack. But Democrats called this a double standard, saying they did not attack then-President George W. Bush when he said nothing during his vacation in Crawford, Tex., for nearly a week after shoe bomber Richard C. Reid's failed attack in 2001.

"Republicans are simply hypocrites," Democratic National Committee spokesman Brad Woodhouse said. "There is nothing -- no bounds whatsoever -- to what they will politicize for their own political gain."

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) on Wednesday said the Detroit incident is evidence that Obama should reconsider his decision to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. "It's time for the president to halt terrorist transfers to other countries, including Yemen."

The detainees who ended up in the al-Qaeda leadership in Yemen were released not by Obama but by Bush two years ago.

"The unwillingness of the [political] parties to work together seems to be reaching new levels"

NY Times:

Keenly aware from recent history that political missteps can cause big swings in the make-up of the House and Senate, members of the party out of power increasingly see little advantage in working with those controlling Congress to help them achieve victories that could come at the minority’s expense.

Republicans have dug in almost unanimously this year against legislation that at least some should have been able to vote for, whether it was the economic stimulus, health care changes or a crackdown on Wall Street. Democrats did the same thing in the run-up to the 2004 and 2006 elections, with a new Medicare drug benefit providing an example of a policy many backed but did not support with their votes.

“Once you get in these battles where you break into camps, every vote is about the next election,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who occasionally works with Democrats on difficult issues. “As soon as the last election is over, those who lost are thinking, ‘What can I do to get back in power?’ and those who won are thinking, ‘What can I do to stay in power?’

“When you try to solve problems from the perpetual campaign mind-set, it is very difficult,” he said.

Only solid majorities in the House and the Senate have allowed Democrats to advance their chief initiatives this year. But it has been a mighty struggle, and the size of the majorities, if not the majorities themselves, is in jeopardy in next year’s elections.

Mr. Graham, other lawmakers and Congressional analysts say serious philosophical differences are at play in the present fights, differences that become more pronounced as more ideologically driven factions gain party influence. But there is little doubt that the struggle for Congressional control is playing a major role in the current party stalemate.

“There is no question that partisan parity tends to raise the stakes of any particular election because of the potential for change in majority party control,” said Thomas E. Mann, a Congressional expert at the Brookings Institution.

While partisanship is a constant in Congress, the unwillingness of the parties to work together seems to be reaching new levels. Some trace the beginning of the current trend back to the early 1990s, when House Republicans were trying to break out of their virtually permanent minority status.

Much to the distress of more rebellious Republicans, House Republicans who had never tasted life in power tended to try to cooperate with Democrats as their best chance of getting things done. It was not uncommon for top Democrats and Republicans to have close and cordial relationships.

But former Speaker Newt Gingrich and his allies showed that drawing the sharpest possible contrasts with the opposition could pay political dividends as they gained control of the House, and the see-saw fight for the Congressional upper hand began.

At the same time, a political toll was being taken on the centrist Democrats and Republicans who were most prone to compromise. Many left Congress or were defeated.

The Apocalypse The Right-Wing Fears With Stupifying Consistency Has Not Come To Pass

The New Republic:

Conservatives have lined up in near-unanimous opposition to any progressive legislation introduced during President Obama’s first year in office. Whether they’ve been railing against health care reform, a climate bill, or financial regulation, their ire has stemmed less from legislative specifics than from a generalized prophecy of doom: Obama’s proposals will move the country toward socialism, bankrupt entire industries and small businesses, and deny Americans their basic freedoms.

These arguments, however, aren’t new. Conservatives—not just Republicans, but various politicians and groups who’ve resisted major social changes—recycled them throughout the twentieth century. They used them to oppose numerous progressive measures that Americans now take for granted, from women’s suffrage to child-labor laws to Medicare. [See "The Republican Party ... [has not and] cannot come to grips with the very nature of the problems of modern American politics"]. Here we’ve collected a few choice predictions about disaster that never came. Conservatives today might prefer they be forgotten.

“It may be impracticable that our distinctively American experiment of individual freedom should go on.”

—Senator David Hill (D-NY), in 1894, bemoaning the creation of a federal income tax

“Woman suffrage would give to the wives and daughters of the poor a new opportunity to gratify their envy and mistrust of the rich. Meantime these new voters would become either the purchased or cajoled victims of plausible political manipulators, or the intimidated and helpless voting vassals of imperious employers.”

—Former President Grover Cleveland, in 1905, on why women shouldn’t be able to vote

“[T]he child will become a very dominant factor in the household and might refuse perhaps to do chores before six a.m. or after seven p.m. or to perform any labor.”

—Senator Weldon Heyburn (R-ID), in 1908, on why child labor should remain unregulated

“I fear it may end the progress of a great country and bring its people to the level of the average European. It will furnish delicious food and add great strength to the political demagogue. It will assist in driving worthy and courageous men from public life. It will discourage and defeat the American trait of thrift. It will go a long way toward destroying American initiative and courage.”

—Senator Daniel O. Hastings (R-DE), in 1935, listing the evils of Social Security

“[I]t would make it practically impossible for any publisher in the United States to accept any food, drug, or cosmetic advertising without facing squarely into the doors of a jail.”

—Federal Trade Commission Chair Ewin L. Davis, in 1935, on the dangers of empowering the Food and Drug Administration to regulate the food, drug, and cosmetic industries ...

“[The Act represents] a step in the direction of Communism, bolshevism, fascism, and Nazism.”

—The National Association of Manufacturers, in 1938, condemning a national minimum wage and guaranteed overtime pay

“It is destroying the amicable relations between the white and Negro races that have been created through 90 years of patient effort by the good people of both races. It has planted hatred and suspicion where there has been heretofore friendship and understanding.”

—Senator Strom Thurmond (D-SC), Senator Richard Russell (D-GA), and other Southern legislators, in 1956, describing the perils of integrating public schools

“It is socialism. It moves the country in a direction which is not good for anyone, whether they be young or old. It charts a course from which there will be no turning back.”

—Senator Carl Curtis (R-NE), in 1965, opposing Medicare

“[T]his bill could prevent continued production of automobiles . . . [and] is a threat to the entire American economy and to every person in America.”

—Lee Iacocca, executive vice president of Ford Motor Company, in 1970, on why the government shouldn’t regulate airborne contaminants that are hazardous to human health

“The effects include serious long-term losses in domestic output and employment, heavy cost burdens on manufacturing industries, and a resultant gradual contraction of the entire industrial base. The irony of this bleak scenario is that these economic hardships are borne with no real assurance they would be balanced by a cleaner, healthier environment.”

—The National Association of Manufacturers, in 1987, on the perils of an emissions reduction program to combat acid rain

“The doctor begins to lose freedoms; it’s like telling a lie, and one leads to another. First you decide that the doctor can have so many patients. They are equally divided among the various doctors by the government. But then the doctors aren’t equally divided geographically, so a doctor decides he wants to practice in one town and the government has to say to him you can’t live in that town, they already have enough doctors. You have to go someplace else. And from here it is only a short step to dictating where he will go.”

—Ronald Reagan, in 1961, arguing against the creation of Medicare

The Idealist / Pragmatist Split Within The Democratic Party

NY Times:

Howard Dean ran for president in 2004 as the outsider ready to battle an entrenched establishment in Washington. And so, four years later, did Barack Obama.

Now, one year into Mr. Obama’s presidency, a sharp dispute between the president and Mr. Dean over the health care bill the Senate approved Thursday — Mr. Dean denounced it as a sellout, while Mr. Obama heralded it as a historic breakthrough — is illustrating the roots of the ideological breach within the Democratic party.

It is not just that the left wing of the party thinks that its centrists hold too much sway and are too quick to cave when faced with pressure from the right. It is also that this White House, stocked as it is with insiders, people whose view of politics is shaped by the compromises inherent in legislating, is confronting a liberal base made up largely of outsiders to the lawmaking process who are asking why they should accept politics as usual.

As much as Mr. Obama presented himself as an outsider during his campaign, a lesson of this battle is that this is a president who would rather work within the system than seek to upend it. He is not the ideologue ready to stage a symbolic fight that could end in defeat; he is a former senator comfortable in dealing with the arcane rules of the Senate and prepared to accept compromise in search of a larger goal. For the most part, Democrats on Capitol Hill have stuck with him.

By contrast, Mr. Dean, the former Democratic Party chairman who has long had strained relations with this administration, said the White House was slow to fight and quick to make concessions — particularly on creating a public insurance plan — and demanded that Democrats kill the Senate version of the health care bill.

That sentiment was echoed by liberal efforts that grew up around the Dean campaign, notably Daily Kos and MoveOn.org, which argued that Mr. Obama was not tough enough in staring down foes, be they insurance companies or Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, the Democrat-turned-independent from Connecticut.

“He ran as someone who would fight against entrenched special interests on behalf of the little guy,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which has emerged as one of Mr. Obama’s leading critics in recent days. “And what we learned in this debate is that he’s not willing to fight and exert pressure on entrenched special interests when it comes to big ideas.”

Of course, it is easier to be an outsider when you are on the outside, which is where Mr. Dean is these days, after making an unsuccessful effort to win a post in the Obama White House. And Mr. Dean’s longtime feud with Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, was noted by many Democrats who were taken aback by the sharp tenor of Mr. Dean’s attack on others in the party. (Mr. Dean declined to comment.)

Still, Mr. Obama’s approach to this battle should not be a surprise to anyone who has followed his career or his campaign for the White House. He served in the United States Senate and in the Illinois Senate. His choice for chief of staff — Mr. Emanuel — was the No. 3 person in the House Democratic leadership, and many of his top West Wing aides came out of staff jobs in the Senate.

Mr. Obama may find it frustrating that it is impossible under Senate rules to get something through without 60 votes, but those are the rules and he is going to play by them. He was not about to go to Connecticut and to whip up the public against Mr. Lieberman, or to press for him to be relieved of his leadership positions in the Senate, as Mr. Green suggested he do.

“The president wasn’t after a Pyrrhic victory — he wasn’t into symbolism,” said David Axelrod, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama. “The president is after solving a problem that has bedeviled a country and countless families for generations.”

All of this has come at a time of strains between Mr. Obama and the left. Mr. Obama has come under fire on several fronts, like health care, escalation of the war in Afghanistan and his failure so far to make good on a campaign pledge to end the ban on open homosexuals in the military.

Mr. Obama has moved to the center on some issues since he became president, particularly on elements of national security. Still, he never presented himself as a doctrinaire liberal, and much of what he is doing as president tracks with what he talked about during the campaign.

Mr. Obama’s call to send more troops to Afghanistan is what he always talked about in the context of outlining his opposition to the war in Iraq. “It’s not like he woke up one morning and said, ‘Let’s go fight a war in Afghanistan,’ ” Mr. Emanuel said. “He talked about it in the campaign.”

And Mr. Obama never exhibited the left’s passion for establishing a public insurance option as part of an overhaul of health care. He rarely talked about it during scores of debates, speeches and interviews during the campaign; instead he focused on expanding coverage, lowering costs and ending health insurance abuses.

During the campaign, many people saw in Mr. Obama what they wanted to see in him, and in the Democratic primaries he often appealed more directly to the left than did Hillary Rodham Clinton, his main rival for most of the contest. The question now is whether legislative and policy accomplishment — signing a health care bill, however imperfect in the eyes of liberals, steadying the economy, winding down the war in Iraq — will be enough, assuming Mr. Obama achieves them, to maintain the support and enthusiasm of those on the left who wanted even more from him.

Mr. Green said that Mr. Obama’s failure to push for the public option — or to enlist his network of grass-root supporters behind it — had sapped the energy out of the base and would have consequences for the 2010 elections. If Mr. Green is correct, that could be a real problem for Democrats, particularly given how energetic opposition to the health bill and the entire Obama agenda appears to be among Republicans.

But this could also prove to be a test of just how much power the outside voices in the left wing have over the insiders in the White House and on Capitol Hill. The stinging attack from Mr. Dean and organizations on the left calling for the defeat of the health care bill failed to dissuade a single Senate Democrat from voting for it. And Mr. Axelrod said he was not worried that would hurt the party come November.

“When people focus on what this bill is and not what it isn’t and recognize what an enormous landmark achievement it is, progressive achievement, you’ll see folks rallying around this and not running away from it,” he said.

Blue Dog Benefits: Some Are Among The Most Loyal Of Democrats

Nate Silver:

What makes a congressman valuable to his party? One fairly intuitive answer is that it's someone who votes with his party on key pieces of legislation more often than a typical congressman from his district would.

I have, therefore, compiled roll call votes on ten key pieces of legislation -- in my opinion, the ten most important pieces of legislation -- that came before the House of Representatives this year. These items are: the stimulus package, the FY 2010 budget, the health care bill, the Stupak Amendment to the health care bill, the jobs bill, the financial regulation package, the cap-and-trade bill, the Fair Pay Act, the Guantanamo detainee transfer vote, and the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which was attached to a defense appropriations bill. This is a little heavy on economic policy versus social policy or foreign policy, but that's how the House's agenda been this year. The Democrats won each of these votes in the House, except for the Stupak Amendment, although several of the policies have yet to pass the Senate.

What I then did was to run a logistic regression for each vote, comparing each representative's vote to his predicted vote based on his district's PVI.

      ... <discussion of his methodology> ...

Here, then, are the 25 most valuable Democrats, relative to their districts:

 

The most valuable Democrat is ... Bart Gordon of Tennessee. He voted with his party on each policy except health care and Stupak, in spite of being in a R+13 district. Unfortunately for Democrats, he's retiring.

Gordon is followed by several other veteran members, such as John Spratt of South Carolina and Ike Skelton of Missouri. The key thing to notice is that some of the most conservative Democrats are actually the most valuable. For example, Chet Edwards of Texas voted against his party on health care, cap-and-trade, the jobs bill, and financial regulation, but with the Democrats on the other six policies. But because he hails from an R+20 district, each of those yea votes (and these were yea votes on important policies, not tokens) qualifies as something of a minor miracle. Indeed, 12 of the 25 most valuable Democrats are Blue Dogs.

Today's GOP Cartoons

The GOP's 2010 campaign strategy (cartoon)

 

The End Of Polling (cartoon)

 

Forget the 2010 Election: Demography Is Destiny And It's On The Dems Side

A fascinating, must-read analysis from Ron Brownstein that helps take you away from the day-to-day fight and realize that time is on the Dems side:

The transformation of Connolly's once lopsidedly white district places him at the forefront of a demographic and political upheaval. With Hispanics providing the principal engine, the nation's minority population is not only increasing but also dispersing beyond the big cities where it traditionally congregated. And as minorities enlarge their numbers in the suburbs and even the exurbs, the number of House members representing districts with heavily diverse populations is soaring--probably to unprecedented heights.

A National Journal analysis of new Census Bureau data has found that 205 members in the House--almost half of the chamber--represent districts in which minorities constitute at least 30 percent of the population. That's nearly double the one-fourth of members who hailed from districts that diverse during the 1990s. This pervasive diversity is literally changing the House's complexion, opening fresh fault lines both between and within the parties, and adding twists to their legislative and political competition.

"We're entering a new era which is being defined to a great degree by the incredible explosion of the nonwhite electorate and its distribution around the country," says Simon Rosenberg, president of NDN, a Democratic group that studies electoral trends. "The growth of this nonwhite population is creating a fundamentally new politics in the United States."

Two dynamics are driving the spread of heavily diverse districts. One is the sheer growth in the nonwhite share of the population, defined as everyone except non-Hispanic whites. In 1980, those nonwhites, including Hispanics, African-Americans, and Asians, constituted 20 percent of the population; that figure rose to 24 percent in 1990, 31 percent in 2000, and 34 percent in 2008, according to Census Bureau figures.

Accompanying this growth has been a dispersal of the minority population from its historical concentration in the largest cities across a much broader landscape of communities of every size, in almost every region of the country. That trend has been powered primarily by immigrants, especially Hispanics, notes Douglas Massey, a sociologist at Princeton University and the author of New Faces in New Places, a 2008 book on the phenomenon. "That's the big story starting in the 1990s: Immigration shifted from being a regional phenomenon affecting a handful of states to truly being a national phenomenon," Massey says. "That's for the first time in 100 years--or maybe for the first time in all of American history."

The searing recession has slowed this process somewhat. As housing and job markets have contracted, fewer immigrants have relocated beyond major metropolitan areas. But that reconcentration is likely only a temporary phenomenon, says Brookings Institution demographer William Frey, who has been at the forefront of documenting the shift. "All of this migration slowdown that we're seeing and dispersal slowdown has to do with the short-term blips in the housing markets," he says. "If you are looking at long-term projections four years out, eight years out this dispersal is going to be back, and it is going to continue."

High School Rejection Of War: Concord-Carlisle Students Anti-War Video

A fitting complement to yesterday's High School Acceptance Of Diversity: Concord-Carlisle's Staging Of "Falsettos" First In Nation, there's this new student created video:

The Official 4 Minute Summary Of The New Afghanistan Plan

An official summary of the plan from WhiteHouse.gov that helps boil away the fluff in the speech and the spin in the subsequent commentary. The way it ends is interesting too:

The main points of President Obama’s plan for Afghanistan as delivered on December 1, 2009 at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

Is The Announced 18 Month Exit Date Just A Shiny Object Designed To Draw Our Attention? Are Both Obama & The GOP Being Disingenuous?

As I posted yesterday, pairing a 30k troop increase with a date on which they will start leaving might be a wise, Solomon-like decision or an attempt to split the baby down the middle (depending on your view of the likely effectiveness of the new strategy).

Today, however, I'm starting to wonder if the exit date part of the equation is actually a shiny object designed to draw the attention of, and appease, Obama's & the GOP's respective bases. Are both Obama, in the prominence he gives the exit date, and the GOP, in their vocal rejection of a timeline, being disingenuous?

From the Wall St Journal:

The timeline has emerged as the linchpin in Mr. Obama's strategy to quickly turn the tide against Afghan insurgents, pressure the Afghan government to do its part and win over Americans skeptical of any escalation nine years into the conflict. It calls for 30,000 fresh troops to be deployed by next fall, and start returning less than a year later.

That should provide "sufficient time in order to train Afghan national security forces to assume control of providing security," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Wednesday. That argument was repeated from Kandahar to Capitol Hill Wednesday, by Mr. Gates, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of allied forces in Afghanistan, and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The withdrawal timeline also doesn't apply to the 68,000 U.S. troops there now, or other troops under NATO command.

From the NY Times:

The American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, made the same point while speaking to reporters in Kabul, the Afghan capital. He said he was “absolutely supportive of the timeline” laid out by Mr. Obama, but he also cautioned that the timeline was flexible and “is not an absolute.”

“It’s not, ‘At 18 months, everybody leaves,’ ” the general said.

So the thing that seems to be how surge proponents on the left are selling the new strategy ("this is the beginning of the end, we're leaving Afghanistan in 18 months") and how surge proponents on the right are critiquing it ("you can't tell the enemy you're leaving in 18 months if you want to win") is not actually going to happen. American forces will not begin "leaving" Afghanistan in 18 months, only the "surge" troops will be.

What do you think?

A Wise, Solomon-like Decision Or Splitting The Baby Down The Middle: Major American Newspapers Coverage Of Obama's New Afghan Strategy

The spin the major American newspapers have taken in their analysis pieces of Obama's new Afghan strategy is interesting.

The Wall St Journal played it uncharacteristically neutral:

Obama Bets Big on Troop Surge
Extra 30,000 U.S. Soldiers for 18 Months; Republicans Say Timetable Poses Risk

President Barack Obama announced Tuesday a surge of 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, along with plans to begin withdrawing the reinforcements in 18 months -- a potentially high-risk political and military strategy.

Such a firm date for troop drawdowns was unexpected. Administration officials hope that will pressure Kabul to reform its notoriously corrupt government. At the same time, it allows the White House to begin bringing soldiers home ahead of the 2012 elections.

With Tuesday's address, Mr. Obama made Afghanistan his war ... By increasing U.S. forces to nearly 100,000 -- while limiting their deployment -- Mr. Obama appeared to be trying to thread a middle path between a plan proposed three months ago by his commander in Kabul, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, which sought an open-ended commitment, and proponents of a more limited engagement.

The NY Times' perspective is stated right in their headline:

Two Messages for Two Sides

President Obama went before the nation on Tuesday night to announce that he would escalate the war in Afghanistan. And Mr. Obama went before the nation to announce that he had a plan to end the war in Afghanistan.

If the contrasting messages seemed jarring at first, they reflect the obstacles Mr. Obama faces in rallying an increasingly polarized country that itself is of two minds about what to do in Afghanistan. For those who still support the war, he is sending more troops. For those against it, he is offering the assurance of the exit ramp.

He used language intended to appeal to different parts of the spectrum, at times echoing former President George W. Bush in reasserting America’s moral authority in the world while repudiating what he sees as the mistakes of the Bush years and insisting that “America has no interest in fighting an endless war in Afghanistan.” He tried to persuade people on both sides of the divide — and a Congress that must finance the war — to swallow their misgivings and come together long enough to see if his strategy works.

While the most comprehensive analysis was provided by the Wash Post:

President Obama assumed full ownership of the war in Afghanistan on Tuesday night with a speech arguing that the fastest way out of the conflict is a rapid and significant escalation of it. But the muted response from key Democratic congressional leaders and the skepticism from Republicans about an exit strategy signaled that the president faces a stiff fight to sell the policy.

Obama adopted the risky approach of both calling for a sizable troop surge -- bigger in terms of percentage than the Iraq surge ordered by then-President George W. Bush -- and outlining an exit strategy in the same speech. That was a clear acknowledgment of the fragile state of public opinion after eight years of conflict in Afghanistan, as well as the political divisions.

Obama stood his ground against his critics and wrapped his new policy in a call for the kind of national unity that existed in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. His speech was clearly argued and reflected his determination to chart his own course to disrupt al-Qaeda while preventing Afghanistan from becoming a quagmire like Vietnam.

While he granted most of the request for troops from his top commander in Afghanistan, the reshaping of the timing and deployment of those forces during the decision-making process allowed White House officials to argue that the result was the president's own, not a rubber-stamp of the Pentagon's vision.

But those changes -- and the commitment to begin leaving Afghanistan in July 2011 -- may not be enough to head off a major battle within his own party to fund an expanded war.

How's Obama Doing?

Joe Klein thinks it's too early to tell (me too):

Over the past few weeks, Barack Obama has been criticized for the following: He didn't go to Berlin for the 20th anniversary of the Wall's coming down. He didn't make a forceful enough statement on the 30th anniversary of the U.S. diplomats' being taken hostage in Iran. He didn't show sufficient mournfulness, at first, when the Fort Hood shootings took place, and he was namby-pamby about the possibility that the shootings were an act of jihad. He has spent too little time focusing on unemployment. He bowed too deeply before the Japanese Emperor. He allowed the Chinese to block the broadcast of his Shanghai town-hall meeting. He allowed the Chinese President to bar questions at their joint press conference ... He didn't come back with any diplomatic victories from Asia. He allowed Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other 9/11 plotters to be tried in the U.S. criminal-justice system rather than by the military. He has dithered too long on Afghanistan. He has devoted too much attention to — and given congressional Democrats too much control over — health care reform, an issue that is peripheral to a majority of Americans.

And all this has led to a dangerous slippage in the polls, it is said, a sense that his presidential authority is ebbing. 

As a fully licensed pundit, I have the authority to weigh in here ... but I demur. Oh, I could sling opinions about every one of the events cited above — some were unfortunate — but it would matter only if I could discern a pattern that illuminates Obama's presidency. The most obvious pattern, however, is the media's tendency to get overwrought about almost anything.

Why, for example, is the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall demolition so crucial that it requires a President's presence? Which recent U.S. President has gotten the Chinese to agree to anything big? (In fact, Obama has secured significant diplomatic cooperation from the Chinese on North Korea, Afghanistan and Pakistan.) Was his deep bow indicative of anything other than his physical fitness? ...

Stepping back a bit, I do see a metapattern that extends over the 40 years since Richard Nixon's Southern strategy began the drift toward more ideological political parties: Democrats have tough first years in the presidency. Of the past seven Presidents, the two Bushes rank at the top in popularity after one year, while Obama and Bill Clinton rank at the bottom, with Jimmy Carter close by. There is a reason for that. Democrats come to office eager to govern the heck out of the country. They take on impossible issues, like budget-balancing and health care reform. They run into roadblocks — from their own unruly ranks as well as from Republicans. They get lost in the details. A tax cut is much easier to explain than a tax increase. A foreign policy based in bluster — railing against an "axis of evil" — is easier to sell than a foreign policy based in nuance. Of course, external events count a lot: the ratings of Bushes I and II were bolstered, respectively, by the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the flattening of the World Trade Center. Reagan's rating — 53% and headed south — was dampened by a deepening recession. 

So it is way too early to make pronouncements on Obama's fate. One pattern that can be limned from the recent overseas controversies is that this President has a tendency to err in the direction of respect toward other countries. This is a witting reaction to the Bush Administration's tendency to diss our allies and insult — or invade — our enemies. It is a long game, which will yield results, or not, over time. After a first year spent demonstrating a new comity, Obama has gained the global credibility to get tough — on Iran, for example — in his second year. But the real evaluation of Obama's debut must wait for the results of the two biggest problems he's tackling: his decision on Afghanistan and the congressional attempt to pass health care reform. And even here, it will be difficult to render judgment immediately — as difficult as it was to judge Clinton's decision to spend his political capital on deficit reduction in his 1993 economic plan, a triumph that didn't become apparent for nearly five years.

Obama's Decision Making Style Now Clear: Head Over Gut

Wash Post:

President George W. Bush once boasted, "I'm not a textbook player, I'm a gut player." The new tenant of the Oval Office takes a strikingly different approach. President Obama is almost defiantly deliberative, methodical and measured, even when critics accuse him of dithering. When describing his executive style, he goes into Spock mode, saying, "You've got to make decisions based on information and not emotions."

Obama's handling of the Afghanistan conundrum has been a spectacle of deliberation unlike anything seen in the White House in recent memory. The strategic review began in September. Again and again, the war council convened in the Situation Room. The president mulled an array of unappealing options. Next week, finally, he will tell the American public the outcome of all this strategizing.

"He's establishing his decision-making process as being almost diametrically the opposite of the previous administration," says Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel who served as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's chief of staff. Wilkerson, who teaches national security decision-making at George Washington University, says the Bush-Cheney style was "cowboy-like, typical Texas, typical Wyoming, and extremely secretive."

Stephen Wayne, who teaches about the presidency at Georgetown, said: "He's not an instinctive decision-maker as Bush was. He doesn't go with his gut, he thinks with his head, which I think is desirable." Referring to the Afghanistan decision, Wayne said, "I don't think he is an indecisive person, I just think this is a tough one."

But to his critics, Obama's prolonged Afghanistan review suggests weakness rather than wisdom. Former vice president Richard B. Cheney lobbed the "dithering" accusation last month. Then last week, former senator Fred D. Thompson (R-Tenn.) said on his radio show that Obama has waited so long to decide on an Afghanistan strategy that the war is now lost. "The president does not have the will and determination to do what's necessary to win it. His heart's not in it, and never has been," Thompson said.

Obama's style has been attacked from his left flank as well. Liberals have zinged him as being too cautious, too much of a compromiser. Some of his supporters would like to see him show more fire in the belly and recapture the energy that propelled him to victory last year.

"I think the Obama we've seen as president is a very different Obama than we saw during the campaign. He doesn't seem to be connected, he doesn't seem to have the passion, he doesn't seem to be conveying the grand and inspiring vision," says the progressive historian Allan Lichtman of American University. "If you want to be a transformational president, you've got to take the risks."

Sean Wilentz, a history professor at Princeton, says Obama has suffered from unrealistic expectations among those who put him in office. "They kind of were sold Utopia, and they bought it, and it didn't happen," he says. "People were comparing the candidate to Abraham Lincoln before he served a day of his presidency. Nobody can live up to that."...

Obama's Approach Goes Against The American Grain For Immediate Gratification

NY Times:

President Obama’s scramble for a health care overhaul, like his dash across Asia last week, obscures an irony of his first year in office. As he tries to effect his agenda, the politician who campaigned on “the fierce urgency of now” plays for time to demonstrate the benefits of policies that, if they work, will not work quickly.

Mr. Obama, backed by some independent economists, believes that his stimulus plan has helped pull the economy into recovery. But he is at least months away from being able to make that case by pointing to a decline in joblessness.

Mr. Obama returned from Asia to lobby Congress on his health policy goals, and won a significant preliminary victory in the Senate over the weekend. Many changes would not even be in place until 2013 — including such popular provisions as subsidies for buying coverage and prohibitions against insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.

His initiative to curb global warming by limiting carbon emissions may raise energy costs long before Americans perceive environmental or economic benefits, if they ever do. The most demonstrable near-term result of his forthcoming Afghanistan strategy will be more troops for an unpopular war.

In Asia, Mr. Obama pushed to “rebalance” the world economy through policy shifts in Beijing that he hoped would benefit Americans via more exports to China. The world’s oldest continuous major civilization showed no sign of a quick pivot.

The president’s challenge is pursuing far-reaching changes in a political and media culture centered on short-term consequences. He has disdained the values of the “24-hour news cycle” and vowed to ignore day-to-day fluctuations in polls, financial markets and cable-TV chatter.

“I’ve got to be looking at the horizon,” Mr. Obama said in a January interview. That becomes harder to afford with an approaching election ...

White House aides bristled at news media reviews suggesting Mr. Obama had failed to secure diplomatic victories in China. “This isn’t an immediate gratification business,” said David Axelrod, the presidential adviser.

But midterm elections arrive in 11 months. For Congressional Democrats — facing politically risky votes on Mr. Obama’s health care, energy, budget and immigration initiatives — the horizon is approaching rapidly.

For their sake and its own, Team Obama is not ignoring that reality.

A White House “jobs summit” will explore near-term steps to accelerate job creation, even though the administration is loath to widen the budget deficit and additional spending may not reduce unemployment rapidly anyway.

To ensure that voters see immediate benefits from health legislation, Democrats have included quick-trigger provisions to bar insurers from putting lifetime caps on benefits and to help expensive-to-cover patients buy insurance through government “high-risk pools.” Weeks before visiting Beijing, Mr. Obama nodded to the anxieties of American workers by imposing tariffs on Chinese tires.

Mr. Obama enjoys thicker political insulation than Democrats in Congress; polls show that voters like him personally, and he does not face re-election until 2012. But he feels the pressures of his strategy, nonetheless.

Before returning to Washington, he took solace in the timelessness of the Great Wall. “It gives you a good perspective on a lot of the day-to-day things,” he mused. “They don’t amount to much in the scope of history.”

As Obama's Challenges Mount, He "clearly recognizes the constraints on his actions"

Wash Post:

President Obama retreated briefly to the serenity of Camp David this weekend, leaving behind seven days that showcased both the promise and the limits of his presidency.

The respite lasted fewer than 24 hours, and his return to the White House was marked by a victory for the ambitious agenda he has embraced. His allies in Congress had secured -- if only by a hair -- a historic milestone on the march toward comprehensive health-care reform.

"Moments like this are why they sent us here," Obama said, back in the Rose Garden Sunday afternoon. "To finally meet the challenges that Washington has put off for decades."

A year after his election, the health-care vote in the House was a reminder of the power that he still wields to shape the country's future, cajoling change that he promised as a candidate over the objections of a nearly unified GOP and a sharply divided party of his own.

But the victory came on the heels of sobering evidence that even a president as popular as he remains is subject to the shifting public mood, an economy struggling to recover and events that are beyond his direct control.

Obama clearly recognizes the constraints on his actions -- the narrow range of choices in Afghanistan, the shrunken group of political moderates that might have accelerated his agenda, the decades of policy prescriptions that would take years to unravel.

The president has hardly shied away from confronting those challenges. But the almost naively hopeful "Yes, we can!" spirit of his campaign is harder to see with the more realistic Barack Obama in the White House.

"Given the heated and often misleading rhetoric surrounding this legislation, I know that this was a courageous vote for many members of Congress," Obama said Sunday, a nod to the 39 Democrats who voted against him. "Now it falls on the United States Senate to take the baton and bring this effort to the finish line."

If he needed any reminder of how difficult that remains, the week began with a blunt message for his party from voters, who resoundingly rejected two Democratic candidates for governor and sent a shock through members of Congress who are up for reelection next year.

Turns Out, Transformational Elections Are A Lot Easier To Pull Off Than Transformational Presidencies

NY Times:

For a president elevated to power on the back of history, the tears and euphoria of Grant Park feel like a thousand years ago. It has been just one year, of course, since Barack Obama’s election, a year since that moment when supporters felt everything was possible amid lofty talk of “remaking this nation” and determined chants of “Yes, we can.”

Some White House aides are wistful for the days right after Mr. Obama won office, when everything seemed a lot simpler.

A year later, as a few smaller elections yielded a more critical judgment, the hope and hubris have given way to the daily grind of governance, the jammed meeting schedule waiting in the morning, the thick briefing books waiting at night, the thousand little compromises that come in between. The education of a president is complicated, and as Mr. Obama has spent the last 12 months learning more about wielding power, his country has learned more about him.

Given the enormousness of the crises he inherited and the scope of the economic package he pushed through in his early weeks in office, it might seem odd to suggest that the hardest and most defining choices are only now confronting Mr. Obama.

But as he reaches the endgame in his campaign to remake the health care system and determines whether to escalate the war in Afghanistan, he will have to decide how much he is willing to lead, how much of the political capital earned in Grant Park he will expend to push a nation outside of its comfort zone.

The tough calls could help fill in the emerging picture of just what kind of president Mr. Obama has become. So far, it is safe to say he is an activist with an appetite for transformative ideas even as he avoids defining them, or himself, too sharply.

He is a study in dichotomy, bold yet cautious, radical yet pragmatic, all depending on whose prism you use. He has discovered that the oratory that proved so powerful on the campaign trail does not as easily move votes on Capitol Hill or stir souls in the Kremlin. His faith in his ability to bring people together has foundered in a polarized capital, as has his interest in trying.

After tackling the deepest recession in generations, Mr. Obama now presides over an economy finally growing again but still bleeding jobs and piling on debt. He looks likely to get a health care program through, an achievement that has eluded presidents for decades, and yet none of the options for Afghanistan offer any guarantee of success. Then, beyond those issues loom Iran, climate change, Guantánamo Bay, immigration and financial regulations, among others.

“The central question that emerges after these months is can he make it all work?” said Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman who in recent years helped lead commissions on the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the Iraq war.

“These problems look simpler when you’re talking to an audience like that” in Grant Park in Chicago, Mr. Hamilton said. “But they’re much harder than that. I think he’s learned that governing is harder than campaigning, and I think he’s learned it with a vengeance.”

MSM Pundit Stupidity: Independent Voters Aren't A Cause, They Are A Symptom

Nate Silver makes some excellent points:

Karl Rove:

The trend here is that suburban and independent voters moved into the GOP column. The overall shift away from Democrats was 13 points in Virginia, 12 points in New Jersey, and eight points in Pennsylvania. [...]

Looking ahead, the bad news for Democrats is that the legislation that helped lead to the collapse of support for their party on Tuesday could yet inflict more pain on those foolish enough to support it.

The Washington Post:

But moderate and conservative Democrats took a clear signal from Tuesday's voting, warning that the results prove that independent voters are wary of Obama's far-reaching proposals and mounting spending, as well as the growing federal debt.

Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN)

"Lesser mortals need to be worried about their independent voters because they have shifted strongly against Democrats in recent months. Independent voters tend to look at the issue, not the party, and they don't like a lot of what Congress has done."

This is what passes for analysis nowadays.

Why did Democrats lose in Virginia and New Jersey on Tuesday? Because independent voters moved against them, say the pundits.

This is true, insofar as it goes; Democrats lost independents nearly 2:1 in the gubernatorial race in Virginia, and by a 25-point margin in New Jersey. But it doesn't really tell us very much. It's a lot like saying: the Yankees won the Game 6 last night because they scored more runs than the Phillies. Or: the unemployment rate went up because there were fewer jobs.

In almost every competitive general election, the party that loses the contest has also lost independent voters. This is because most people (although less so in gubernatorial elections) vote strictly along party lines: the Democrat might be all but guaranteed 80 to 90 percent of the Democratic vote, and the Republican 80 to 90 percent of the Republican vote. Except in certain regions of the country where one or another party encompasses a particularly wide range of ideologies (such as NY-23's Republicans or vestigial "Solid South" Democrats), it's independents who swing the vote, since they represent the overwhelming majority of the votes which are up-for-grabs. This must necessarily be the case.

But in politics, it's not the proximate cause we're interested in but the ultimate one. Yes: independents went mostly for Republicans in New Jersey and Virginia (we could have inferred this without having to look at the exit poll). Yes, this "caused" the Democratic defeats. But what caused the independents to move against the Democrats? That's what we're really interested in, since that's what will have implications for future elections.

Too often in "mainstream" political analysis, once it is pointed out that independents have swung in one or another direction, the analysis stops. The pundit inserts his own opinion about what caused the independent vote to shift ("Obama's far-reaching proposals and mounting spending", says the Washington Post), without citing any evidence. It's a neat trick, and someone who isn't paying attention is liable to conclude that the pundit has actually said something interesting.

But in New Jersey, there's literally almost no evidence that the Democrats' agenda had anything to do with Jon Corzine's defeat. Voters who cited a national issue were more likely to vote for Corzine, and voters who cited a local one, the Republican Chris Christie.

In Virginia, the evidence is certainly a little stronger, insofar as the national agenda may have affected the lopsided turnout (the electorate which turned out Tuesday had voted for John McCain by 8 points, a near-reversal of the actual results). Even there, however, the quarter of the electorate that cited health care as their main issue went for the Democrat Deeds 51-49. And in NY-23, which was supposed to have been the ultimate smackdown of the Democrats' agenda, the Republican Conservative candidate unexpectedly lost.

Part of the problem is that 'independents' are not a particularly coherent group. At a minimum, the category of ‘independents’ includes:

1) People who are mainline Democrats or Republicans for all intents and purposes, but who reject the formality of being labeled as such;
2) People who have a mix of conservative and liberal views that don’t fit neatly onto the one-dimensional political spectrum, such as libertarians;
3) People to the extreme left or the extreme right of the political spectrum, who consider the Democratic and Republican parties to be equally contemptible;
4) People who are extremely disengaged from politics and who may not have fully-formed political views;
5) True-blue moderates;
6) Members of organized third parties.

These voters have almost nothing to do with each other and yet they all get grouped under the same umbrella as 'independents'.

But that's getting away from the point. Independent voters are treated as a cause, when all that they really are is a symptom. The key is in figuring out what ails the patient.

The Republican Challenge Coming Out Of Tuesday's Election: Push Forward Or Dial Back?

In an attempt to get a bit closer to the truth, I thought I'd try an experiment in cross ideological quoting. Below is the liberal NY Times' take on where the GOP stands after Tuesday's election. After that, you can read the conservative Wall St Journal's take on where the Democrats stand.

In an interesting bit of symmetry, both sources concur that both parties have the same task before them: appealing to their base without alienating the independent middle.

Republicans emerged from Tuesday’s elections energized by victories in Virginia and New Jersey, but their leaders immediately began maneuvering to avoid a prolonged battle with conservative activists over what the party stands for and how to regain power.

The victories, in races for governor, were cast by the party’s national chairman, Michael Steele, as a sign of a “Republican renaissance.” In New Jersey, Gov. Jon S. Corzine, a Democrat, was toppled by the Republican nominee, Christopher J. Christie. In Virginia, Robert F. McDonnell, the Republican, defeated his Democratic opponent, R. Creigh Deeds.

Republicans said the victories showed that President Obama and his party were vulnerable on the economy, government spending and other issues.

Yet throughout the day Wednesday, Republicans grappled with the disappointing outcome of a special election for what had been a reliably Republican House seat in upstate New York. That contest became a battleground between the party establishment and a conservative insurgency demanding more ideological purity from candidates.

The race was won by a Democrat, Bill Owens, after the Republican nominee, Dede Scozzafava, a moderate, quit as conservative leaders and grass-roots organizations rallied around Douglas L. Hoffman, who ran on the Conservative Party line.

Despite Mr. Hoffman’s loss, many conservatives promised to press on with opposition to centrist Republican candidates. That vow intensified concerns among party leaders that the opportunities they see coming out of Tuesday’s results could be dimmed by intramural battles over whether to reach for the political center or do more to motivate the base on the party’s right.

“When our party is united, whether you run in a Northern state or a Southern state, our party can win,” said the House Republican whip, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia. “But when you are divided, you can lose a seat that has been in the Republican column for quite a long time.”

The debate has been fueled by a somewhat inchoate populist anger that has taken hold among grass-roots conservatives, encouraged in part by political leaders like Sarah Palin, the party’s vice-presidential nominee last year, and commentators like Glenn Beck of Fox News. In that sense, the divisions within the party extend beyond the traditional strains between the shrinking ranks of Republican moderates and the social and economic conservatives who have dominated the party in recent years.

The situation is all the more complicated because, after the party’s defeats in 2008, it has no dominant leaders or cohesive establishment to bridge the divides and help articulate a positive agenda. In that vacuum, the conservative activists and party leaders were both jockeying for advantage on Wednesday.

The Democratic Challenge Coming Out Of Tuesday's Election: Push Forward Or Dial Back?

In an attempt to get a bit closer to the truth, I thought I'd try an experiment in cross ideological quoting. Below is the conservative Wall St Journal's take on where the Democrats stand after Tuesday's election. After that, you can read the liberal NY Times' take on the GOP.

In an interesting bit of symmetry, both sources concur that both parties have the same task before them: appealing to their base without alienating the independent middle.

Elections this week left Democrats scrambling to renew the coalition that elected President Barack Obama after independent voters, whose power to determine U.S. elections is rising with their numbers, broke heavily toward Republicans.

Voters gave the GOP a boost on Tuesday, electing Republicans to lead two states that backed President Obama just one year ago. Also, Maine dealt a huge blow to the same-sex marriage fight. Video courtesy of Reuters.

But even as Republicans celebrated their victories, they faced a struggle to build unity between the party establishment and the conservative activists who have helped lift the GOP out of the doldrums after two successive election cycle defeats.

For Democrats, officials in the White House and the Democratic National Committee said a precipitous falloff in minority and youth voters in Virginia and New Jersey served as a warning for 2010.

Voters ages 18 to 29, who made up more than one in five of the 2008 electorate in Virginia and voted overwhelmingly for the president, were just 10% of voters there Tuesday; those who went to the polls backed the Republican, Bob McDonnell, by a wide margin.

White House senior adviser David Axelrod said the 2010 elections would almost certainly revolve around Mr. Obama's agenda. He added the president will have an easier time using his popularity to win votes for Democrats if the candidates help the president with his legislative agenda. "You're not going to excite those voters by running away," he said. "You're going to excite them by helping create success."

Some liberals say that means Democrats should move faster to pass bills on health-care overhaul, climate change and other liberal priorities. But Democrats who represent conservative swing districts said Wednesday that it was time for Mr. Obama and Democratic congressional leaders to change tack.

"What the exit polls showed was real voter fatigue with how crowded the plate is," said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D., Va.). "We need to take a deep breath, step back and clean the plate before we add to it."

"I think voters sent a clear message that the administration and Congress need to focus on the economy," said Rep. Dan Boren (D., Okla.). "We need to focus on creating jobs right now, and you don't do that by raising taxes on small business."

Mr. Boren called himself "a solid no" on Mr. Obama's health-care overhaul. House leaders are scrambling to round up votes from undecided members, including freshmen and other members in swing districts. The bill could be up for a vote as soon as this weekend.

Those advocating caution pointed to Virginia, where Mr. McDonnell defeated Democrat R. Creigh Deeds for the governorship in a state Mr. Obama carried a year earlier. "I do consider Virginia a bellwether state," said Rep. Gene Taylor of Mississippi, a conservative Democrat. "I would encourage the leadership to get back to the center."

The debate among Democrats underscores the dilemma facing both parties as they look for lessons in Tuesday's vote.

Both parties are seeking the formula to fire up their respective voter base without turning off independents critical to winning in competitive 2010 congressional and state elections.

While the party in power almost always loses seats in midterm election, Democrats, with a 40-seat majority in the House, must keep losses to a minimum if they are to carry out Mr. Obama's legislative agenda.

In the Senate, Republican retirements give Democrats the opportunity to gain seats if they can strike the right balance in such states as Ohio, Missouri, New Hampshire and Kentucky. To win, candidates in both parties will need to show they have plans to spur economic growth and jobs that voters worried about record budget deficits will believe.

Exit polls from Virginia and New Jersey indicated that Republicans won over voters concerned about pocketbook issues: jobs, the economy and taxes. Voters who identified themselves as independents were critical in both states.

Independents made up 30% of those who voted in the Virginia governor's race -- and they voted by a 2-to-1 margin for Mr. McDonnell, according to exit polls. In the New Jersey governor's race, Republican Chris Christie also benefited from strong independent support ...

White House officials and congressional leaders said, meanwhile, that delivering such items as a health-care overhaul and financial-services regulation will show voters they are accomplishing things while the Republicans complain and obstruct. They cited the 1994 election, when Democrats failed to deliver a health overhaul and promptly lost control of Congress.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.), who leads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which coordinates Democratic House races, said, "I think the message was: We need to get things done."

One indicator of how Mr. Obama will respond to the election might be reflected in his decisions over the overhaul of U.S. immigration laws. The president's approval rating remains sky-high with Latino voters, one official said, but they didn't come out to vote Tuesday.

To turn them out, Democrats may have to press ahead with a broad overhaul of immigration laws next year, including the creation of a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

That might seal defeat for some Democrats in southern Republican districts -- such as Rep. Tom Perriello of Virginia -- but could energize the Latino vote elsewhere and give Mr. Obama a head of steam heading into 2012.

Mr. Axelrod said the White House wouldn't make its decision on immigration based on political considerations. "The president is committed to immigration reform," he said. "When the support is there and ready to go, then he's ready to go."

More Election Political Cartoons

Tuesday's Winners & Losers

From Hotline:

Govs.-elect Chris Christie and Bob McDonnell were the biggest winners, while NY-23's Doug Hoffman was the biggest loser. But who else came out on top last p.m.? And who came up short?

Winners:

-- Dede Scozzafava: Hoffman underperformed in Dede's base in the Watertown media market, suggesting that her endorsement of Bill Owens was a major factor in helping him win this seat.

-- Indie voters: Always a powerful group, they broke heavily for GOPers in NJ and VA (after lining up for Dems and Pres. Obama in '08), guaranteeing they'll be heavily courted in '10. Said one smart strategist to The Hotline this a.m.: Indies are "starting to understand their power."

-- VP Biden: The only member of the WH team to stump for a winner (Owens) and Romney (the only '12 GOPer who backed Christie and McDonnell, but opted to stay out of NY-23).

Losers:

-- Sarah Palin: McDonnell and Christie stayed as far away from her as possible -- and they won. Hoffman didn't, and he didn't. In fact, in NY-23 it's probably fair to say Palin proved to be more polarizing than Pelosi.

-- Pete Sessions: Under his leadership, the NRCC has gone 0-2 in special elections. The NRCC can blame the "process" in NY, but the reality is that a stronger leader would have tried to fix the mess before it blew up into a full-fledged disaster. Should House GOPers be worried about his ability to lead the charge in '10?

-- Club For Growth: Fairly or not, a lot of the blame for Hoffman's loss will be laid at their feet. But it does raise the question, should FL's Marco Rubio really want to be the next "cause célèbre" for conservatives? Sure it helps him in the primary, but will this give Kendrick Meek an opening for attack in a general?

"President Obama’s arms-length strategy on health care appears to be paying dividends"

The NY Times gives voice to something I've thought for a while:

After months of plodding work by five Congressional committees and weeks of back-room bargaining by Democratic leaders, President Obama’s arms-length strategy on health care appears to be paying dividends, with the House and the Senate poised to take up legislation to insure nearly all Americans.

Debate in the House is expected to begin this week, and the Senate will soon take up its version. Democratic leaders and senior White House officials are sounding increasingly confident that Mr. Obama will sign legislation overhauling the nation’s health care system — a goal that has eluded American presidents for decades.

The Senate Finance Committee chairman, Max Baucus of Montana, described “a sense of inevitability, the sense that, yes, we’re going to pass health reform.” In interviews, senior advisers to the president said the progress on Capitol Hill vindicated Mr. Obama’s strategy of leaving the details up to lawmakers, though they are wary of sounding overconfident ...

The bills have advanced further than many lawmakers expected. Five separate measures are now pared down to two. But the legislative progress has come at a price. In the absence of specific guidance from the White House, it has moved ahead in fits and starts. From here on, the challenges will only grow more difficult.

In the House, where leaders have vowed to pass a bill by Nov. 11, a fight over abortion coverage could still imperil the legislation, and Mr. Obama could lose some votes from liberals upset that the bill includes a weakened “public option,” a government insurance plan to compete with the private sector. Mr. Obama, trying to keep progressives in line, met with them Thursday night in the White House Roosevelt Room.

“He is making the case to them that this isn’t the exact bill you’d write, however, let’s take a step back and look at what we’re about to do here, and what a historic moment this will be,” said a senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a private meeting.

In the Senate, where Democrats will need support from every member of their caucus to reach a critical 60-vote threshold to avoid a potential filibuster, Mr. Obama’s hands-off strategy carries particular risks. Without clear direction from the president on the public option, the Democratic leader, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, moved ahead last week on his own, unveiling a bill that includes a government-run plan, but allows states to opt out.

Within hours, the proposal was being questioned by centrist Democrats whose concerns Mr. Obama must now address. As Senator Benjamin L. Cardin, Democrat of Maryland, said, “When you are seeking 60 votes, every person is a kingmaker.”

Last week’s back-and-forth in the Senate was emblematic of a process that has at times seemed on the brink of anarchy. Lawmakers have missed many deadlines, including the one Mr. Obama set for all five Congressional committees to wrap up work by August. (Only four did.) Even close allies of the White House sometimes questioned its approach.

“It felt like it was getting out of control at the end of July and in the beginning of August,” said John D. Podesta, a former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton who informally advises the Obama White House. “People were getting nervous that it was going every which way.” Mr. Podesta said the president risked “giving too much rope to a Congress that is liked a lot less than he is.”

Mr. Obama said early on that he would not repeat the mistakes of Mr. Clinton, who wrote his own detailed plan, only to see it fall flat on Capitol Hill. Instead, the president set out broad principles — an approach that the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California, acknowledged at a rally last week, when she thanked Mr. Obama for “the intellectual contributions” he had made to the legislation.

The president’s distance caught Congressional Democrats by surprise. It took them months to realize that Mr. Obama would not weigh in on some issues, like the precise shape of a government insurance plan. One House Democrat called it a “a laissez-faire strategy.”

But in an interview in his West Wing office on Friday evening, Mr. Emanuel — joined by other top members of Mr. Obama’s health care team — disputed that characterization. He said the White House had given “leeway to legislators to legislate,” but “not leeway to take a policy off track.”

Mr. Emanuel also said it was no accident that “the basic bones” of the House and Senate legislation were, despite some big differences, quite similar. “While there was a cry for more presidential direction,” he said, “that direction was being provided by the president’s staff.”

Shortage Of H1N1 Vaccine Could Become Political Problem For Obama

NY Times:

The moment a novel strain of swine flu emerged in Mexico last spring, President Obama instructed his top advisers that his administration would not be caught flat-footed in the event of a deadly pandemic. Now, despite months of planning and preparation, a vaccine shortage is threatening to undermine public confidence in government, creating a very public test of Mr. Obama’s competence.

The shortage, caused by delays in the vaccine manufacturing process, has put the president in exactly the situation he sought to avoid — one in which questions are being raised about the government’s response.

Aware that the president would be judged on how well he handled his first major domestic emergency, the Obama administration left little to chance. It built a new Web site, Flu.gov — a sort of one-stop shopping for information about H1N1, the swine flu virus. It staged role-playing exercises for public health officials and members of the news media.

It commissioned public service announcements, featuring the fuzzy Sesame Street characters Elmo and Rosita singing in English and Spanish about “the right way to sneeze.” The president added a swine flu update to his regular intelligence briefing — he also receives an in-depth biweekly memorandum on the prevalence of the disease worldwide and in the United States — and appeared in the Rose Garden to urge Americans to wash their hands.

Early on, Mr. Obama told his aides he wanted them to “learn from past mistakes,” said John O. Brennan, Mr. Obama’s domestic security adviser, who has been coordinating the flu-preparedness effort.

Mr. Obama and his top aides studied earlier flu outbreaks, including one in 2004, when a vaccine shortage created a political problem for President George W. Bush, and another in 1976, when President Gerald R. Ford ordered a mass vaccination campaign for an epidemic that never materialized — and faced intense criticism for it.

In late June, Mr. Obama invited veterans of the 1976 effort to a private meeting in the White House Roosevelt Room, and asked what his own role should be. (Mr. Ford was photographed being vaccinated; Mr. Obama has not yet received his flu shot because children, pregnant women and people with underlying health conditions are being vaccinated first.)

“We talked very realistically,” said Dr. David Mathews, who was Mr. Ford’s health secretary, “about the fine line he has to walk in being responsive and showing people that he cares, and that the federal government is on top of the issue, and on the other hand not provoking undue fear or irrational responses.”

Dr. Mathews advised Mr. Obama, “You’ve got to be willing to take the criticisms for being over-prepared, because there’s no defense for being underprepared.”

Now, with officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reporting that H1N1 is widespread in 46 states, public health experts and leading senators are giving the Obama administration only mixed grades. “I would give them a B for performance so far,” said Dr. Eric Toner, a senior associate at the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, who has advised the administration on pandemic planning.

What Was Harry Reid Thinking?

Prescriptions:

What exactly is Harry Reid thinking?

After weeks of suggesting that he had no intention of putting a government-run insurance plan in the Senate health care legislation, Mr. Reid, the majority leader, announced on Monday that he would do just that. After months of pursuing at least a hint of bipartisanship through the support of Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, Mr. Reid said Monday that he recognized that she would no longer support the legislation as a result of his decision.

And after years of playing small ball in the Senate, pursuing the Democratic agenda through one excruciatingly incremental procedural vote after another, all of a sudden Mr. Reid stood up in the Senate Radio-Television Gallery on Monday and took a swing for the fences.

Or did he?

A majority of Senate Democrats support the idea of a government-run insurance plan, or public option. Mr. Reid has often said that he personally supports it. So do President Obama, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and a majority of House Democrats. So do all of the major liberal interest groups and a substantial percentage of the American public.

In one sense, Mr. Reid was simply putting himself at the front of a fairly large parade, already on the move and with the marching bands playing up a storm.

At his news conference on Monday afternoon, Mr. Reid looked stressed. Clearly, there’s a lot on the line. But his decision to include the public option in the legislation is hardly set in stone. If for some reason members of his caucus balk and join Republicans in opposing a motion to proceed to the legislation, Mr. Reid can always make changes and try again.

He could replace his version of the public plan, which would allow states to opt out, with the “trigger” mechanism proposed by Ms. Snowe, which would allow a government-insurance plan to operate only in states where the legislation otherwise fails to provide affordable insurance to enough people.

And if there were still not enough votes for that proposal, Mr. Reid could remove the public option from the bill entirely, knowing that the conversation still isn’t over because the House plans to have a public option in its bill and eventually the two bills have to be reconciled.

For the moment, Mr. Reid is a champion of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. And should he be forced to compromise, liberal lawmakers will presumably be more forgiving, given that he has now shown a willingness to push hard for the public plan.

On the other hand, Mr. Reid’s willingness only goes so far.

Insanity Pays In The Washington PoliticaMedia Complex

 

Obama Must Be Doing Something Right: Wall St Doesn't Want To Fund HIm

From the NY Times:

Part of the reason, several Democratic fund-raisers and executives said, is a fear of getting caught in the public rage over the perception that Wall Street titans profiting from their government bailout may use their winnings to give back to Washington in return. And the timing of the event, as the industry lobbies against proposals for tighter regulations to address the underlying causes of last year’s meltdown on Wall Street, has only added to the worry over public appearances.

“There are sensitivities there,” said Scott Talbot, a lobbyist for the industry’s Financial Services Roundtable. Political contributions “can make a donor a target,” Mr. Talbot said. Many involved, though, say the low attendance from those Wall Street giants also reflected a broader disenchantment with Mr. Obama over the angry language emanating from the White House over the million-dollar bonuses and anti-regulatory lobbying.

“There is some failure in the finance industry to appreciate the level of public antagonism toward whatever Wall Street symbolizes,” said Orin Kramer, a partner in an investment firm who is a Democratic fund-raiser and one of the event’s chairmen. “But in order to save the capitalist system, the administration has to be responsive to the public mood, and that is a nuance which can get lost on Wall Street.”

Dr. Daniel E. Fass, another chairman of the event who lives surrounded by financiers in Greenwich, Conn., said: “The investment community feels very put-upon. They feel there is no reason why they shouldn’t earn $1 million to $200 million a year, and they don’t want to be held responsible for the global financial meltdown.” Dr. Fass added, “How much that will be reflected in their support for the president remains to be seen.”

Mr. Obama remains a potent fund-raising draw. Plunging into the 2010 midterm campaigns last week, he raised more than $3 million in one night in San Francisco, speaking at a similar $30,400-a-couple dinner and a larger rally with tickets at $1,000 and under.

In addition to the big-ticket dinner on Tuesday, Mr. Obama will also address a more small-d democratic event at New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom, where roughly 2,500 donors paying $1,000 or less will also make cellphone calls to promote his health care overhaul. Over the next five days he will appear at fund-raisers for Bill Owens, a candidate for a House seat in New York; Gov. Jon Corzine of New Jersey (himself a former Goldman Sachs banker); Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts; and Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut.

Cash for Geezers Cartoon

 

The Emerging Obama Meme: Obama Has Too Many Things On His Plate & He's Ineffectual

At the same time that a new poll shows Obama's job approval rising and disapproval falling (on all issues--including health care & the economy--except Afghanistan) a new meme is emerging that portrays the Obama Administration as too diffuse and incompetent. While it has its roots on the Right ("he's a great speech giver, but he can't do anything"), it's now being picked up by some on the Left.

Last week, SNL Skewered Obama for a supposed lack of accomplishment. Then yesterday, Obama supporter Chris Mathews acted as if the meme were accepted fact and debated the personnel changes Barack must make to get things done:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Also yesterday, The Daily Show joined in, focusing on Obama's inability to change Don't Ask, Don't Tell, urging Barack to "chow down" on at least some of the things on his plate:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Gay After Tomorrow
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Ron Paul Interview

Do you think this new meme is partisan and unfair or do you share its underlying concerns? Is this something the Administration should strongly push back against or should it be treated as valuable feedback that should motivate them to change their approach?

One thing is certain: if this meme becomes the Conventional Wisdom, it will cripple the young Obama Presidency.

Meet The 25 Biggest Spenders On Health Care Lobbying

From the National Journal:

Since August, Under the Influence has profiled the 25 top-spending groups involved in the health care debate, based on the amount of money devoted to all lobbying activities in the first half of 2009.

To find out which groups want a public option, how much money they've spent on TV advertising, where key players are going to voice concerns and much more, read all of the profiles here.

The "Health Care Players" for the first half of 2009 are:

Group	Lobbying Spending, First Half 2009
1. Chamber of Commerce	$17,426,000
2. PhRMA	13,060,000
3. AARP	9380000
4. American Medical Association	8,220,000
5. Business Roundtable	7,360,000
6. American Hospital Association	7,070,000
7. Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association	4,640,000
8. America's Health Insurance Plans	3,900,000
9. Biotechnology Industry Organization	3,720,000
10. American College of Radiology Association	2,090,218
11. American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network	2,000,000
12. Federation of American Hospitals	1,840,000
13. National Federation of Independent Business	1,565,402
14. American Dental Association	1,510,000
15. American Academy of Family Physicians	1,450,434
16. Service Employees International Union	1,382,272
17. American College of Emergency Physicians	1,376,138
18. AFSCME	1,280,000
19. National Association of Children's Hospitals	1,170000
20. American Association of Orthopaedic Surgeons	1,133,000
21. Generic Pharmaceutical Association	1,105,926
22. Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care	1,092,605
23. AFL-CIO	1,080,000
24. College of American Pathologists	775,717
25. Academy of Managed Care Physicians	675,478

America's More Civil Past (cartoon)

  

The WSJ: Left Circles The Wagons Around Obama As The Right Attacks--For Now

From the Wall St Journal, well known for its ability to know what the Left thinks & wants ;)

President Barack Obama has disappointed liberals in his party on a range of issues, from union organizing to indefinite detention of terrorism suspects to gays in the military.

But relations between the president and his liberal base appear to have strengthened in recent weeks. The reason: As attacks on Mr. Obama grow stronger from the right, his left flank has circled the wagons round the White House.

Now, as the president nears critical decisions on health care, the war in Afghanistan and the fate of the Guantanamo detention camp, both the White House and its supporters on the left are wondering whether the alliance can hold. Robert Borosage, co-director of the liberal Campaign for America's Future, said "people are holding their breath."

"There are a number of things that are key policy initiatives for allies of the president, and he faces this incredibly crowded agenda, with everything being pushed back by health care," Mr. Borosage said. "You could just imagine the crackup that's coming."

The demands of the left on Mr. Obama are myriad: Go to the Copenhagen climate-change summit in December, do more to stop the killing in Darfur, end "don't ask, don't tell" as a policy for gays in the military, repeal the federal law banning same-sex marriage, move legislation that gives illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, end indefinite detention of terrorism suspects and repeal the Patriot Act, to name a few.

House Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter of New York, a member of the Democratic leadership, complained recently that the White House should have intervened to cut off bipartisan Senate Finance Committee negotiations over the health-care bill weeks ago. She said Mr. Obama still has not pushed forcefully for the element most sought by liberals, a government-run insurance plan. That "public option" was shot down by the finance panel Tuesday ...

Brush fires have erupted between the White House and the left several times in the past eight months. Some liberals still seethe over an agreement between the White House and pharmaceutical makers not to extract additional cost savings from the industry in the health-care bill. The American Civil Liberties Union continues to take Mr. Obama to task over indefinite detention and the use of Bush-era secrecy defenses to keep past events in the war on terror out of public view. Activists have been particularly angered by what they have seen as insufficient support for liberals in the administration who have come under attack from conservative activists and media personalities.

But those flash points have failed to create much sustained heat, liberal activists say, largely because conservatives have made supporting the president all the more urgent. Misgivings in the liberal blogs over Mr. Obama have given way to anger over attacks on the president: a poll on Facebook asking whether the president should be assassinated, a column on a conservative Web site suggesting a military coup is in the works and Rep. Trent Franks (R., Ariz.) calling Mr. Obama "an enemy of humanity."

"When the right is screaming that Obama is a left-wing communist trying to take over the world, it makes the difference between us seem very small," said Eddie Vale, a spokesman for the AFL-CIO.

That said, Jane Hamsher, publisher of the liberal blog Firedoglake, noted that comity between the White House and its base may depend on the outcome of the public-option debate.

Who Puts The Words In Politician's Mouths (cartoon)

 

Frank Lutz Speaks For The Silent Majority

Pat Buchanan would be proud: