Here is something I hinted at in the previous post on Obama's soaring popularity. While Obama is personally very popular, this popularity has not, as of yet, altered the legislative outlook on some key priorities. For example, Republican resistance to the auto bailout remains strong in the Senate:
The prospects of a $14 billion government rescue of the American auto industry seemed to vaporize Thursday as the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, spoke out forcefully against the bill, effectively ending its chances despite the urgings of the White House.
Looks like we are going have to have to wait until at least January 6th, when the new Congress is sworn in, to have a shot at passing any sort of auto industry bailout. Hopefully, at that time Democrats will decide to drop all of the concessions they made to Bush on the bailout, and just present a new bill for Obama to sign on January 20th.
Even if an auto bailout bill is passed either sometime this month or next month, it still won't be very popular. While different question wording on the auto bailout has produced some wildly different results from poll to poll, not a single poll has shown the auto industry bailout reaching even 50% support. Further, the recent Pew poll shows that the opposition is non-partisan in nature. Only 45% of Democrats, 38% of Independents, and 31% of Republicans think that it is the "right thing for government to spend billions of dollars to make loans to automakers to help keep them in business."
The bottom line is this: a highly popular Obama is nice, but it is ultimately meaningless from a governing perspective if that popularity fails increase support for his planned legislation or break Republican opposition to it. In this instance, Democrats made a large number of concessions to Republicans, thus ending opposition from the White House, but public opinion remains mixed and Republican Senate opposition remains strong enough to prevent passage anyway. If Obama's popularity is to have any substantive meaning for Democrats and progressives, it needs to be translated into increased support for imperiled Democratic and progressive legislation among both the public and members of Congress. While I am fully aware that he is not yet in office, and thus his role is somewhat limited, hopefully President-elect, and President Obama will have more success in these areas in the coming weeks and months.
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