Dec
17
Where’s The Leadership?
Filed Under American Politics | 5 Comments
Democratic activist John Aravosis has a scathing attack on the Democratic leadership (Obama right at the front) at AmericaBlog:
I’ve heard people say that it’s not fair to criticize the Democrats for botching health care reform because the Democrats never truly had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Sure, they have 60 votes in principle, the argument goes, but with Lieberman, Nelson, Landrieu, and Bayh counted as four of those votes, it’s not really a solid 60.
Perhaps. But then how was George Bush so effective in passing legislation during his presidency when he never had more than 55 Republicans in the Senate? In fact, during Bush’s most effective years, from 2001 to 2005, the GOP had a grand total of 50, and then 51, Senators. The slimmest margin possible.
And look at what George Bush was able to accomplish in the Congress with fewer Senators than the Democrats have today:
- John Ashcroft nomination
- Iraq war resolution
- Repeated Iraq funding resolutions
- 2001 & 2003 tax cuts
- Patriot Act
- Alito
- John Roberts
- Medicare Part D
There are two differences between Barack Obama and George W Bush. Barack Obama was inexperienced; a part-time Senator of only four years having come from the Illinois Senate where him voting “present” demonstrated his commitment to not being committed. in other words, no executive experience at all. Bush on the other hand was a two-term Governor of one of the largest states in the union – a huge gap in respective experience. The second difference is one of partisanship. Obama and the Democratic congressional leaders (Pelosi in particular) have shown that they are more interested in getting one over on the enemy (or Republicans as most people know them), whereas Bush was comfortable reaching out to Democrats to get his legislation passed. Bush demonstrated political experience and maturity; something Obama is seriously deficient in.
It’s not about the votes, people. It’s about leadership. The current occupant of the White House doesn’t like to fight, and the leadership in Congress has never been as good at their jobs, at marshaling their own party, as the Republicans were when they were in the majority. The President is supposed to rally the country, effectively putting pressure on opposition members of Congress to sit down and shut up. And the congressional leadership is supposed to rally its members to hold the line, and get the 51 votes necessary for passing legislation in a climate where the minority is too afraid to use the filibuster. When you have a President who is constitutionally, or intellectually, unable to stand for anything, and a congressional leadership that, rather than disciplining its own members and forging ahead with its own agenda, cedes legislative authority to a president who refuses to lead, you have a recipe for exactly what happened last night. Weakness, chaos, and failure.
We lost real health care reform not because we don’t have a “real” filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. We lost health care reform because we don’t have a real leader anywhere in our party. It’s not going to get better if we elect more Democrats to the Senate and it’s not going to play out any differently should we try to revisit this issue in the future.
And that’s coming from the left. Ouch! Mind you, the right are just saying “we told you so!”
Nov
12
Thankyou Obama And Pelosi
Filed Under American Politics | 6 Comments
Exciting times for Democrats the last few years. Big election victories, a supposed permanent Democratic majority and the Republican party on the run.
In December last year, Democrats had a 15% lead in the generic congressional ballot. In 2007, they had a high of a 23% lead over the GOP. In the space of nine months and on the back of unpopular bailouts, unpopular cap and trade and marginally unpopular healthcare reform, that lead has evaporated.
In previous years, as Gallup note, when Democrats have done well at the polls, they have held double digit leads over the Republicans. As I’ve noted before, Democrats do not turnout as well as Republicans in elections and thus they need that large registered voter cushion to compensate for the more committed Republican voter.
But today, Democrats trail by 4%:
In November 1994, the year of the Republican Congressional takeover, Republicans and Democrats were tied. Whilst another 1994 is probably not on the cards, the Democrats need a big turn around in popularity to even maintain the status quo.
Gallup have modelled what the national share of the vote represents in terms of the number of seats won (you can see the graph here). 44% of the vote, as they have now represents approximately 180 seats, far below what is needed for majority purposes. They need to get to 48% to just retain control of the house.
Republicans lead Democrats amongst independents by a whopping 22%. For perspective, Independents went to Obama by an 8% margin. That’s a 30% turnaround in the space of a year. And the gap continues to widen:
It’s not 2010 yet and the elephant in the room is healthcare reform. But Barack Obama and particularly Nancy Pelosi have presided over a dramatic fall off in Democratic support, I mean let’s face it, this isn’t about strong Republican messaging. So thankyou to the gruesome twosome at the top of the Democratic party and let’s hope for more of the same over the next three years.
Nov
9
Two Thoughts On Obamacare
Filed Under American Politics | Leave a Comment
Firstly, I just want to post this comment from Ed Morrissey at HotAir.com, I think it speaks to issues that still exist in getting healthcare reform passed:
Democrats have another problem, even in the House. The Senate is not considering the Pelosi plan, but one they wrote themselves. Unless Reid pulls his own bill out of consideration and substitutes Pelosi’s — which is a possibility — that sets up a conference committee and second vote in each chamber, assuming that the Senate passes anything at all. If that happens, a conference committee will have to meet to produce another bill that would then go for a full floor vote in each chamber. If abortion funding makes its way back into the bill, or if mandates or taxes increase, or if conscience protections get stripped, then all of the hurdles that Pelosi barely cleared the first time return, and without the ability to amend the bill (conference reports get straight up-or-down votes without amendments in order to have both chambers pass identical legislation for the President to sign.)
The Democrats have been able to move the ball, albeit laboriously, but the Senate is where the real action will be. Pelosi had a nice big majority to play with, Reid however has to navigate the 60 vote requirement to stop filibusters. That puts moderates like Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson, Kent Conrad and of course Joe Lieberman in play. Interesting times.
Now I have two questions for you to hopefully engage with.
1. As you know, the reform proposals mandate that everyone, either personally or through their employer, has health insurance. Leaving aside whether or not this is a good thing, the question is: Is it constitutional? Do government have the right to force people to do something regardless of any actions they take themselves? Nancy Pelosi was very dismissive on this, but I think it’s a very appropriate and important qestion. Without a mandate, the whole basis for the Democratic plan of banning the disallowing of pre-existing conditions falls apart; it all becomes way to expensive for the health insurance customer.
2. Healthcare reform passed the house narrowly 220-215, despite a Democratic majority of 75. Also, bearing in mind that more Americans oppose this reform, and increasingly more so (see below), should the Democrats be taking on something which is both divisive and relatively unpopular? Their House majority is so large, that they could pass virtually anything, but to lose 70 votes from their own side is telling.
If 20% of Americans self-describe as Liberals and therefore ideologically supportive of healthcare reform and the uninsured account for 15% of the population and stand to directly benefit from the reform, that leaves less than 10% of Americans supporting it that don’t directly have a dog in the fight. Now I realise that that is a somewhat simplistic calculation, but it does suggest, along with the dissenting Democrats, that there isn’t, by a long way, any pragmatic, or even egalitarian, consensus on this reform amongst the population at large.
I’m biased on this and I admit that shapes my views. I can see an argument that says that we elect politicians precisely to make the beneficial but unpopular decisions for us. And I recognise that being a majority party allows you to set the legislative agenda., But the growing unpopularity of the reform, the debatable constitutionality of parts of it and the lack of even partisan political consensus tells me that even if one thinks that healthcare reform is a good thing, the Democrats are wrong to pursue the reforms that they have, in the way that they are. The opportunity to change the direction of reform has passed, but if they had spent less time trying to dismiss the great unwashed during the Townhalls in August and pandering to their base, and spent more time wondering why there was increasing antipathy towards the proposed bills, perhaps they could have crafted a better more consensual proposal.
Nancy Pelosi will get credit for passing the legislation, but in my view she should be criticised for being so stubborn.
Nov
3
The Spendocrats
Filed Under American Politics | 3 Comments
Barack Obama called for a health care bill costing less than $900 bilion. High enough one might think, but that high bar enabled Nancy Pelosi to just edge under, claiming (ahem!) that the House bill will cost $894 billion.
Cue the Democratic party!
The health care bill headed for a vote in the House this week costs $1.2 trillion or more over a decade, according to numerous Democratic officials and figures contained in an analysis by congressional budget experts, far higher than the $900 billion cited by President Barack Obama as a price tag for his reform plan.
While the Congressional Budget Office has put the cost of expanding coverage in the legislation at roughly $1 trillion, Democrats added billions more on higher spending for public health, a reinsurance program to hold down retiree health costs, payments for preventive services and more.
Give them a blank cheque book and watch them run riot with other peoples money.
Oct
12
Charlie Rangel Needs To Go
Filed Under American Politics | 1 Comment
By Israel
Okay, first a little story.
One of my closest friends received his notice for jury service. Knowing his views on the UK criminal justice system l asked him with some humour how he was going to handle sending people off to jail, knowing that it would lead to one of his famous rants against “the man”.
A week into it he met us in the pub and looked pretty glum. When we asked what was wrong he told us which left us pretty amused as we knew it would have upset him to make the decision he did. The case he was on at the time involved a robbery. After hearing the evidence of the case the jury retired to their room and a show of hands was asked for a preliminary idea of guilty or not guilty. Every hand was raised for a guilty verdict, including his!!
This led to peals of laughter and a plea from my friend to review te security tape again. As they did so one of the jurors noticed that the defendant was wearing the same jacket in court has he had on while doing the robbery!! Instead of wasting any further time they returned to the court to announce the unanimous guilty decision.
My friend was pretty glum so l asked him “Well, what did you think of that?”
His reply was simple, “when you’re guilty, you’re guilty. There’s noting l could do to change that.”
Which brings me to Charlie Rangel.
I cannot say that Charlie Rangel is guilty because he hasn’t been charged but frankly, with an expanded ethics probe it doesn’t look good for him.
What is worse is Nancy Pelosi’s defence of Rangel which is opposite to what she said when she became Majority Leader about “draining the swamp” in Washington and quite frankly provides cover for Republicans and their media mouthpieces just as William Jefferson did during the Jack Abramoff scandals as listed by Josh Marshall’s TPM http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/gra… .
There have been calls for the Democrats to wake up on this including Eugene Robinson, who also points out the hypocrisy of the party that kept Tom “M.C. Hammer” Delay as Majority Leader while under a greater ethical cloud screaming for resignations, and Arianna Huffington, who called for him to step down on ABC’s “This Week” programme this past Sunday.
Josh Marshall has done a pretty good job listing what Rangel has done in gory details which l know most here will drool over, but the simple fact is that Rangel needs to go.
Aug
10
Nancy Pelosi Is Un-American.
Filed Under American Politics | 59 Comments
No, really, she say’s so herself.
In an Op-Ed with Steny Hoyer in the USA Today about healthcare reform and the nature of the protests, she had this to say:
These disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views — but of the facts themselves. Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American. Drowning out the facts is how we failed at this task for decades.
A short memory. Here’s what happened in The House in August 2008:
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the Democrats adjourned the House, turned off the lights and killed the microphones, but Republicans are still on the floor talking gas prices.
Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and other GOP leaders opposed the motion to adjourn the House, arguing that Pelosi’s refusal to schedule a vote allowing offshore drilling is hurting the American economy.
And June this year:
Rep. Steve King, Iowa Republican, said in an interview on The Washington Times’ morning radio show “America’s Morning News” that Mrs. Pelosi and the Democratic majority had recently authorized an unprecedented change in House rules to curb the right of the minority to offer amendments to appropriations spending bills.
Pelosi is a good leftist. Shutting down debate is only bad when one side does it. In reality of course, shutting down debate is bad when any side does it, a fact that both left and right need to discover.
But then Nanny Pelosi does have a very strange view of what is American and what isn’t. For example,
enforcing immigration laws is un-American:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently told a group of both legal and illegal immigrants and their families that enforcement of existing immigration laws, as currently practiced, is “un-American.”
The speaker, condemning raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, referred to the immigrants she was addressing as “very, very patriotic.”
“Who in this country would not want to change a policy of kicking in doors in the middle of the night and sending a parent away from their families?” Pelosi told a mostly Hispanic gathering at St. Anthony’s Church in San Francisco.
“It must be stopped….What value system is that? I think it’s un-American. I think it’s un-American.”
In fact, in her strange world, the most patriotic people are illegal immigrants:
“You are special people. You’re here on a Saturday night to take responsibility for our country’s future. That makes you very, very patriotic.”
She was addressing illegal immigrants when she said this. So for Nancy Pelosi, enforcing the law is un-American, breaking the law is patriotic. Forgive me if I don’t take her exhortations very seriously.
Aug
4
A Perfect Storm
Filed Under American Politics | 7 Comments
Obama was swept into office on the back of a perfect storm. Circumstances were so favourable to his candidacy, that, on hindsight, any other outcome of the 2008 election was unthinkable:
- An unpopular war in Iraq
- A very unpopular incumbent President
- An economic downturn
- that included an economic implosion just a month before the election
I don’t want to take anything away from Obama’s candidacy, it was extremely well organised, eloquent and struck exactly the right note to get him elected at a particular moment in time. However, the fact that the stars were so aligned in his favour can’t really be denied.
But now it seems that a perfect storm is conspiring against him. Obama’s agenda requires an expansion of the governments role in daily life an an expansion of government spending. But he economic circumstances are becoming increasingly prohibitive to such an agenda. Increasing unemployment and increasing deficits have now been matched by a sharp decrease of tax revenues, on pace for their largest single year decline since the Depression:
The recession is starving the government of tax revenue, just as the president and Congress are piling a major expansion of health care and other programs on the nation’s plate and struggling to find money to pay the tab.
The numbers could hardly be more stark: Tax receipts are on pace to drop 18 percent this year, the biggest single-year decline since the Great Depression, while the federal deficit balloons to a record $1.8 trillion.
Other figures in an Associated Press analysis underscore the recession’s impact: Individual income tax receipts are down 22 percent from a year ago. Corporate income taxes are down 57 percent. Social Security tax receipts could drop for only the second time since 1940, and Medicare taxes are on pace to drop for only the third time ever.
Obama has a transformative agenda in mind, backed by a liberal grass-roots movement whose support in the primaries won him the election. Their support is not going to unconditional. They will be expecting to see movement on issues like gays in the military, Guantanamo, climate change and healthcare. But all these issues will either be costly or distracting, and now is not the moment for taking one’s eye of the economy. Obama is trying to combine the two, making economic arguments on both healthcare and Cap and Trade. The public aren’t buying it as his plummeting poll numbers prove.
There is one final element that will create the perfect storm. Taxing of the middle classes. Increasing deficits and falling tax revenues either mean a dramatic reduction in expenditures (and those probably aren’t there right now) or an increase in taxes for everyone. Obama made a promise not to raise taxes on Americans earning less than $250,ooo and has been demagoguing on taxing the wealthy. But America already has the third most progressive tax system in the world, the richest 30% are already paying 65% of tax revenues. There isn’t the flexibility available to impose an increased tax burden on the wealthy. Obama is going to have to break his promise, and raise taxes on all Americans. And broken promises on taxation did not go well for George Bush Snr.
Barack Obama faces damnation which ever way he turns. Promote a transformative liberal agenda as he and his liberal minions would like and he faces virtually bankrupting America. Target a path of economic sensibility and recovery and he likely loses the support of the very base who put him where he is. A perfect storm and a catch-22. Ouch!
And all this despite relying on a Speaker of The House, who makes Sarah Palin look as popular as water salesman in the desert, for his legislative agenda.
May
16
The Nancy Pelosi Quick(side)step
Filed Under American Politics | 2 Comments
Further to Ronnie’s post on Nancy Pelosi, The Speaker is sidestepping like Walter Payton.
In a press conference on Wednesday, Pelosi categorically accused the C.I.A. of lying to her:
Q: Madame Speaker, just to be clear, you are accusing the CIA of lying to you in September 2002?
A: Yes, of misleading the Congress of the United States. Misleading the Congress of the United States.
Video of the press conference is below for those who can stomach nineteen minutes of Nancy Pelosi.
This bought a swift and firm rebuttal from CIA Director Leon Panetta:
“CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah…It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress. That is against our laws and our values”
A serious problem for Pelosi, does she continue to say that the CIA lied to her and go up against an Obama appointee or does she try to walk it back?
She went for the second option in a big way. Now it seems that it wasn’t the CIA who lied to her at all, it was…The Bush administration.
UPDATE: Pelosi’s office has responded with a gentle statement supporting the work of the intelligence community, saying she was criticizing the Bush administration, not the bureaucrats at the CIA:
“We all share great respect for the dedicated men and women of the intelligence community who are deeply committed to the safety and security of the American people. My criticism of the manner in which the Bush Administration did not appropriately inform Congress is separate from my respect for those in the intelligence community who work to keep our country safe. What is important now is to be united in our commitment to ensuring the security of our country; that, and how Congress exercises its oversight responsibilities, will continue to be my focus as we move forward.”
She has about as much integrity as a British M.P. Is her position as Speaker at risk here? I suspect not. As Ronnie pointed out, President Obama is getting a lapdog even more loyal than “Bo”.
May
15
The Knives Are Always Out!
Filed Under American Politics | 5 Comments
By Ronnie
One of the eternal fascinations of observing politics, no matter where, is the drama of betrayal as the shifting fortunes of the major characters are played out.
Not Long ago Nancy Pelosi was the darling of the US Democrats as she led the party to glory in Congress even BEFORE Dubbya had been expelled. Now she is being put in her place by the Obama administration as it threatens exposure of her earlier impure behaviour on such high-profile topics as waterboarding and torture.
‘What did she know and when did she know it?’
Make no mistake, she is being severely pressured and warned to behave and keep her party in line for the battles to come on the President’s legislative agenda. In fact she may even be being punished for some, as yet, undisclosed act of disloyalty.
It’s a tough old world and it seems that the new guy isn’t as soft and naive as some people wished he was.
Ronnie