Tag: obama

Not Conservative Enough

danielholter:

A Come to Jesus Moment for American Religion

The Republican Party in the United States—15 months before the next presidential election—has already burdened itself with an array of front-running presidential candidates […] [and] it now seems a necessary qualification for the Republican nomination, at least at the present primaries stage, to be a born-again fundamentalist Protestant. Yet in the United States the majority of the electorate is not fundamentalist, evangelical or Protestant.

This last bit is key. If we assume that the economic situation gets no worse and, perhaps, even improves a bit between now and 2012, and we further simply take the polling of the GOP field as it stands today (giving the nomination to Perry in a walk), it’s very hard to see how he beats Obama. So: Perry gets crushed in the general election. In the inevitable “we lost because we weren’t conservative enough” aftermath, how exactly does one make that case? Because that’s the case that will be made. The “message of the American voter” in delivering a massive tidal wave of support to 2012-Obama will universally be seen to have been a clear, ringing demand for lower taxes on the rich, a dismantling of the social safety net, and that the poor and out of work should just go die in the streets already.

Perhaps you just blame Boehner. You’ve presumably lost some House seats (but retained the majority). Cantor wants to be Speaker, so you spin it as “Perry only lost because Boehner was too easygoing on radical urban liberal Obama.” Seems impossible that anyone would buy it, but then most of FOXnews’ more successful narratives seem pretty unlikely when viewed in the abstract.

As settings go, [addressing a joint session of Congress] is in the swing-for-the-fences category. Presidential speeches to joint sessions of Congress are not for routine issues. And if Obama intended to aim low with his plan, throwing out a few tax credits and warmed-over ideas, he would not pick this venue

Steve Benen reads the tea leaves on the venue choice for the upcoming Obama “jobs” speech.
I hope Steve realizes this is the very same spot the annual State of the Union address is given. Seems to me the admittedly august podium there in the House is precisely the place for warmed-over ideas presented in yawning succession and interspersed with meaningless boilerplate, all packaged amidst plenty of applause breaks that can be further analyzed by pundits and party faithful alike once even the boilerplate platitudes have been well and truly exhausted. Sound and fury signifying nothing.
I’m not sure what makes me sadder, that the administration’s key advisers and experts uniformly still think that “aiming low” will make any Obama policy acceptable to the House, that they will then use the “passable” argument as an excuse for their perennially low aim, or that they’ll then express surprise when even that meager proposal fails to get anywhere near passing (and probably won’t even be taken up by) the House. Then it’s straight into “you dirty fucking hippies out there on drugs just don’t understand that even this tepid package didn’t get taken up. We never could have gotten anywhere with the GigantorJobs 3000 Plan that you’ve all been screaming at us about” time… Newsflash, Axe: you won’t get anything taken up. Would you rather fail small or large? Appear to hide in your safe and comfortable yet utterly feckless defensive crouch –or– go down fighting the good fight and showing America that you actually give a shit? Sadly, I think we all know the answer currently sitting on the tip of all tongues belonging to crack Strategists for The Democrat who happen to be reading Lemkin right this very second.
It’s go big or go home time, Obama. If you don’t realize that by now then the country’s in even bigger trouble than it was before you took office. Start with the basics. Use your oratorical capability to explain in the simplest terms possible what you want to do, why that approach would be effective, how it has worked in the past, why you won’t be allowed to do it now, and how that situation can be changed in the very near future. And then hammer the GOP with that every day from now until November 2012. They are teeing it up for you, sir. Why not take a swing? Just this once.

Results [matter]. If I were the one in charge of this pop stand, I’d direct my economics team to come up with the “If I were a prime minister instead of a president, this is what we would do” plan. And if all they came up with was minor tax breaks for hiring, “patent reform,” and “trade deals,” I’d, you know, fire them.

Duncan Black, being exactly right. The key thing that needs to happen in the immediate future (e.g. the imminent “jobs speech”) is for Obama to set the stage such that the eventual legislative outcome makes very clear exactly who is obstructing economic growth and recovery efforts.
The only way to do this is to swing for the fences and wait for the GOP to obstruct it. Not only does this paint the GOP as the party of economic obstruction, it also allows the eventual compromise to be closer to your “dream plan” than it is to whatever constitutes a GOP “go die in the streets” policy outcome. By taking the traditional “sensible Obama” defensive crouch approach and starting with the bar set at the lowest possible level (e.g. what they think might pass the House) all in the vain hopes that this time the GOP will suddenly start playing along for America, you’re actually only working to guarantee an outcome that favors the GOP in every way, politically, economically, and (most importantly for Obama) in 2012.
Once again: This is why they fail.

GOP Loves Tax Hikes

Marginal Revolution’s Alex Tabarrok:

If Republicans have their way, taxes will increase next year by $120 billion. Republicans in favor of tax increases? Sadly, yes.

The post goes on to lay out its theories on the GOP loving only tax cuts for the rich and so forth. But I think this is wrong.

The House GOP is against this particular tax cut continuing solely because Obama wants it to continue. Any policy underlying that singular issue is beside the point. “Obama’s for it” is reason enough for them to oppose anything to the bitter end.

A simple experiment would clear this up for the broader electorate. Obama should choose two or three of the most dearly held GOP beliefs and take them up. Argue for their immediate passage. But he should be sure to stand clear of the microphone, as there will be a stampede of Tea Klanners vying to be the first to refudiate lower capital gains taxes, or an end to the “death” tax, or massive corporate welfare giveaways to our Galtian Overlords.
We’ve said it before, and Serious People tend to think it’s some kind of a joke when you point it out to them, but if he wants to succeed on the policy front Obama needs to come out against wind power, trains, lower taxes, and single payer health care. It’s the only way those issues will ever get any traction from either party.

Try it and see. It’s the awful truth of today’s politics and sadly how things “work.”

GOP Loves Tax Hikes

What Perlstein Said

So good:

There are few or no historical instances in which saying clearly what you are for and what you are against makes Americans less divided. But there is plenty of evidence that attacking the wealthy has not made them more divided. After all, the man who said of his own day’s plutocrats, “I welcome their hatred,” also assembled the most enduring political coalition in U.S. history.

The Republicans will call it class warfare. Let them. Done right, economic populism cools the political climate. Just knowing that the people in power are willing to lie down on the tracks for them can make the middle much less frantic. Which makes America a better place. And which, incidentally, makes Democrats win.

What Perlstein Said

File Under: Cogent

Hendrik Hertzberg deftly summarizes why Obama is systematically losing the left (the only folks who supported his Presidency to begin with):

Obama’s seeming refusal to hold [invoking the 14th Amendment to the Constitution] in reserve (“like the fire axe on the wall,” in Garrett Epps’s words) is emblematic of his all too civilized, all too accommodating negotiating strategy—indeed, of his whole approach to the nation’s larger economic dilemma, the most disappointing aspect of his Presidency. His stimulus package asked for too little and got less. He has allowed deficits and debt to supersede mass unemployment as the emergency of the moment. He has too readily accepted Republican terms of debate, such as likening the country to a household that must “live within its means.” (For even the most prudent householders, living within one’s means can include going into debt, as in taking out a car loan so that one can get to one’s job.) He has done too little to educate the public to the wisdom of post-Herbert Hoover economics: fiscal balance is achieved over time, not in a single year; in flush times a government should run a surplus, but when the economy falters deficits are part of the remedy; when the immediate problem is what it is now—a lack of demand, not a shortage of capital—higher spending is generally more efficacious than lower taxes, especially lower taxes on the rich.

The whole piece is fantastic, but this paragraph could easily form the basis of a savage, intellectually driven attack on Obama from the right. Well, it could if such a concept as “appealing to the intellect” or “thoughtful” even existed over there anymore. They’re too busy arguing over who loves the country the very most or who would starve the most children to death in their first 100 days to worry one little bit about convincing even a single Democrat or independent to join their particular crusade. For once: this is why the GOP will fail.

File Under: Cogent

This Is Why

Standard and Poors to downgrade US credit rating:

A source says Republicans [steadfast refusal] to accept any tax increases as part of a larger [deficit] deal will be part of the reason cited [for the historic downgrade].

How do you imagine the radical Socialist Obama administration plans to respond on behalf of The Democrat?

[An administration] official says that S&P made a “serious mistake” in its analysis, “based on flawed math and assumptions,” so the Obama administration is pushing back.

This is why they fail.

This Is Why

Number Two

LA Times: “Investors are looking past the budget situation and realizing this is an austerity plan,” said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Harris Private Bank in Chicago. “We have an economy that’s struggling to stay afloat and we don’t have the ammunition to keep prodding it forward.”
Kevin Drum: Oh really? Now you tell us? There are really only two options here. (1) The Times is wrong. (2) The Times is right and America has the stupidest goddamn investors on the planet. For months they sat around cheering on the tea partiers and declaring solemnly that the federal budget was just like a household budget and we needed “real action” on the debt in order to build confidence in the economy. Then, suddenly, when they got it, they realized that what they really wanted wasn’t dumb slogans but actual policies that would help spur the recovery. And that means looser monetary policy and fiscal stimulus.
Lemkin: I’ll take #2 for $1000, Alex. Tea Klan nonsense works because it feels good. It’s fun to rage away and tilt at grand conspiratorial windmills. Never you mind that actions have consequences, many of which will have direct and painful consequences in your lives. FOXnews and its political wing, the GOP, have a President to defeat. Nothing else matters. Pure electoral nihilism.

The United States never had a debt ceiling until 1939, and doesn’t need one now. Congress can control debt by its control over revenues and expenditures; all the debt ceiling does is create the possibility that the government will not be able to borrow the money needed to carry out the laws Congress has already passed.

Mark Kleinman says what should be the first thing out of Obama’s (and every other Democratic) mouth every time a microphone is switched on. Or, perhaps, paired with the depressingly ever-present “God bless you and may God bless America” tagline. Whatever works for them.

Give the utter lack of any unified message on the issue, it’s genuinely remarkable that public opinion has turned so mightily in favor of what you could broadly call the “Obama position” on the debt ceiling. People still don’t seem to grasp what the hell the debt ceiling is or what purpose, if any, that it serves… but they’re beginning to dislike GOP demagoguery on it no matter what. At least we’ve got that going for us.