The Power of the President is the title of a great new report by the Center for American Progress on some of the things President Obama can and should do that do not require Congressional action. It is important to keep a laser-like focus on this topic because it could not be clearer that the Republican House will not be passing anything useful in bringing our economy back to life. Whether because of not wanting to help the President improve the economy to weaken him going into 2012, having a completely screwed up economic theory, being terrified of their own off the wall base that wants no compromise on anything with Obama, or (most likely) all of the above, Republicans coming to the table to help Barack Obama improve the economy is not happening, no way no how.
Progressives and Democrats need to spend less time commiserating over all the good things that Congress should do but won’t. Another stimulus will not happen in the next two years, so we need to move on. Instead, we need to spend more time thinking about the things Obama could do if he aggressively seized the reins of government that he possesses and pushes forward.
The biggest thing that could be done to help the economy and the middle class immediately is to focus on stabilizing and revitalizing the housing market. If struggling homeowners had their mortgages written down, and mass foreclosures stopped wracking neighborhoods all over America, housing prices would finally stabilize and be poised to start going back up. If the shadow housing inventory of the homes that have already been foreclosed on were converted into rental properties, housing costs for working class younger and unmarried people who can’t afford to buy a home yet would start to go down. If families finally got their mortgages renegotiated they could get their own finances in order again, and would gain the confidence to start spending money in the economy again. All of these things would improve the economy, and all of them could happen without Congress doing anything: all that needs to happen is for Treasury, HUD, FHA, Fannie and Freddie, and DOJ to start exerting the very considerable authority they have over the banks to push them to start writing down mortgages, and for the President to start issuing the executive orders on housing and financial regulation the CAP report proposes.
Another area that the administration could move aggressively in without congressional action is in regards to manufacturing. CAP has one outstanding idea, which is an executive order related to developing a new strategy around promoting competitiveness, especially in terms of manufacturing policy. While this would help more in the long run than short term, having such policies could do things that would promote manufacturing jobs in the short run as well. Another place the federal government can move now is in instituting a stronger, more assertive Buy America policy in contracting, and making sure federal government contractors pay decent wages. This would make a big difference in promoting American jobs and improving the incomes of American workers. Finally, Treasury needs to get far more assertive with trading partners, especially China, in dealing with currency manipulation, and needs to look at their own policies that keep the dollar so high, which hurts our manufacturing base.
Another big thing this administration could do immediately with no help from Congress is to accelerate the implementation of the Small Business Jobs Act just passed by Congress right before the election. CAP has some great ideas about implementation which have the potential to really speed up job creation in the small business sector.
There are plenty of other great policy ideas I’m not even touching that the Obama administration could do to make a difference on the economy, but my central point is that the President needs to lead, and he needs to act. Republicans and corporate Democrats like Doug Schoen keep bleating about how all Obama has to do is just compromise with the Republicans the way Clinton did, but there are some big problems with that. For one thing, the Republicans have no interest in compromising, only in capitulation. For another, they have no policy ideas that would actually create any jobs. But most of all, it ignores what actually happened in 1995: what Schoen forgets is that he and Penn and Morris all were advocating giving in to the Republicans on the budget fight in 1995. Had Clinton caved without a fight, he would have been seen as weak, and his base would have demanded a primary. Instead, he painted Gingrich and Dole as extremists, stood tall on the fight, and cleaned their clocks. Clinton went from being 10 points down to Dole before the budget fight to 10 points ahead afterwards, he ended any chance of a serious primary challenge, and he never looked back.
President Obama needs to be strong in taking the action he needs to take to make the economy better, and he needs to stand up to Republicans and force them to compromise on his terms, not theirs. He needs to stop bragging about an economic recovery no one feels, show leadership on making the economy better, and show the Republicans to be the do-nothing Congress they intend to be. Obama needs to take what action can be taken, pick some important early fights with the Republicans, and show people the difference between his vision for the economy and the far right wing Republican vision.
In part 1, I looked at how Obama profundly misunderstands FDR, building on Thomas Furgeson’s explication of of the background behind his remark in a recent meeting with bloggers in which he called FDR “irresponsible”. In fact, it’s safe to say we’ve never had a Democratic President who so completely misunderstands the greatest Democratic President of all time. And it’s safe to say that that alone goes a long, long way to explaining what’s wrong with Obama. Put simply, he does not instinctively see the general welfare of the country as residing in the well-being of the common man and woman. Up until now, that would have automatically made him a Republican. Perhaps someone should have told him that a long, long time ago. But better late than never, I suppose.
But it’s not just FDR he doesn’t understand. It’s politics in general. Oh, there’s no denying he knows how to run for office. He’s clearly one of the best ever at that. But that’s only half the deal. And 50% is an “F”, no matter what the subject is. Take his monomaniacal fixation of “bipartisanship,” for example. Probably everyone in America except for him can see what a total catastrophe his obsession with “bipartisanship” has been. Even the folks who work for him who are paid not to see it must know. And here again, he is as far from FDR as one could possibly get. As it happens, there’s a new book out about FDR’s attempt to do exactly the opposite of Obama–to make the Democratic Party more ideologically coherent in the face of Congressional obstructionism: Roosevelt’s Purge: How FDR Fought To Change the Democratic Party, by Susan Dunn. There’s a review of it at American Prospect by Sam Rosenfeld, who writes:
Liberals currently experiencing an unhappy education in the frustrations of presidential leadership might take comfort in knowing that even the greatest Democratic president of all confronted the same problem and was unable to overcome it. But he tried what Obama does not dare attempt — to defeat more conservative Democrats in their home states.
Franklin D. Roosevelt began his “fireside chat” on June 24, 1938, as he had begun others, recounting New Deal battles won and lost during the most recent congressional session. But he ended the broadcast with a surprise. “And now,” the president intoned, “I want to say a few words about the coming political primaries.” In this midterm primary season, he said, “there will be many clashes between two schools of thought, generally classified as liberal and conservative.” Roosevelt insisted that, as “head of the Democratic Party,” charged with carrying out “the definitely liberal declaration of principles set forth in the 1936 Democratic platform,” he had an obligation to speak out about primary contests involving such a clash. Thus did Roosevelt announce a political gambit not attempted by any president since: active and personal intervention in key primary contests, not only to protect liberals but to replace conservatives. The press branded the effort a “purge,” and the name stuck.
As Susan Dunn emphasizes in Roosevelt’s Purge, her lively narrative of that vexed campaign, FDR was motivated not merely by personal pique and short-term legislative goals but by a vision of a refashioned party system. He explained in that extraordinary fireside chat that primaries should facilitate a “healthy choice” between the two parties in November, for “an election cannot give the country a firm sense of direction if it has two or more national parties which merely have different names but are as alike in their principles and aims as peas in the same pod.” According to Dunn, Roosevelt “believed that the nation should have two effective and responsible parties, one liberal and the other conservative.” Since the president attempted to accomplish in one frenzied summer what six decades of subsequent developments only haltingly produced, it’s perhaps no surprise that the effort failed. But what an exciting failure!
I’d like to make two main points. First is that FDR knew a good deal more about politics and history than Barack Obama does, and he had a very good point about the political usefulness of giving the American people a clear choice of direction. The conventional wisdom of our time has turned against Roosevelt’s view, but given how rarely the conventional wisdom is right, that’s points in Roosevelt’s favor, not against. Any historian worth their salt would have no trouble at all ranking FDR’s accomplishments against those of the de-aligned “bipartisan” era: FDR saved the country from a devastating Depression and built it into the dominant world power. Presidents of the past 40 years have collectively frittered those accomplishments away.
The second is that the realignment since FDR’s time has only been partial and one-sided. Conservatives have engaged in long-term hegemonic warfare to advance their cause, and to take over and remake the Republican Party in their image as part of that process. Liberals have done nothing comparable, and, indeed, while the Republican Party may have the ideological coherence that FDR thought both parties should have, the Democratic Party does not, and thus FDR’s vision has not been achieved by history over time. Indeed, if anything, with Obama at the Democratic Party’s helm, the Democrats are now firmly committed to the exact opposite of FDR’s vision: they are committed to standing for nothing at all. And as a result, the party is probably as close to being destroyed as it has ever been.
If Obama is not quite Hebert Hoover, he is most definitely the anti-FDR.
Last week, I wrote a diary, “Obama and oligarchy” that was inspired by Obama’s blogger conference–particularly his statement:
This notion that somehow I could have gone and made the case around the country for a far bigger stimulus because of the magnitude of the crisis, well, we understood the magnitude of the crisis. We didn’t actually, I think, do what Franklin Delano Roosevelt did, which was basically wait for six months until the thing had gotten so bad that it became an easier sell politically because we thought that was irresponsible. We had to act quickly.
I took this to be a particular statement, given that FDR’s first “100 Days” is easily the most famous legislative period in American history. But today, Thomas Ferguson (father of the “investment theory of political parties”) has piece “The Story Behind Obama’s Remarks on FDR” cross-posted at New Deal 2.0 and Huffington Post that first explains Obama was referring to the period between the election and the inauguration–a period of four months, not six, and then discusses what actually happened during this time.
Referring to Obama’s statement, Ferguson writes:
Perhaps it was just a slip. But in 2010, even slips can be revealing — and this one comes from a definite part of the political spectrum. The president was repeating a canard that goes back to the circle of die hards around President Herbert Hoover as he exited the White House in a cloud of bitterness in 1933. In recent years, as a vast campaign against the memory of the New Deal has gathered steam, such claims have gone mainstream. For example, take the carefully hedged version recently put forward by Amity Shlaes in her study of the New Deal, “The Forgotten Man”: “But Roosevelt was not interested in cooperation. We will never know all his motives, but it was clear that a crisis now could only strengthen his mandate for action come inauguration in March.”
We are unlikely ever to know for sure. But as President Obama took office, the Council on Foreign Relations was cranking up a remarkably one-sided conference purporting to be a “Second Look at the Great Depression and the New Deal.” Ms. Shlaes was a prominent participant, as was the Council’s co-chair, one Robert Rubin, whose myriad protégés thronged the Obama Treasury and economic councils.
Whether our highly intellectual president picked up the idea by reading it or hearing somebody else say it, it was, and is, in the air. And you can be sure that his words will now be rattling around for years to come and likely cited as proof of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “irresponsibility.”
Now this strikes me as truly remarkable. It suggests that Obama has been far closer all along to his rabid rightwing critics in his mis-understanding of economics and economic history than anyone could possibly imagine–not to mention his views of FDR as a remarkably cynical political actor. (Not like him!)
Many had hoped that Obama would be like FDR, a Democratic President with a Democratic Congress, cleaning up the mess made by Republicans and ushering in a new era of Democratic dominance. This was true even of folks like me, who were not so sure about Obama himself, but felt that the sheer necessities of the time would “force greatness onto him.” Instead, what we see is almost the exact opposite. It’s far more like LBJ in Vietnam–ignoring reality, running scared of GOP attacks, splitting his own party, and ending its long period of dominance.
In Quick Hits, doubledown points to an AFP story, “Obama vows to ‘redouble’ efforts toward bipartisanship”.
A reality-based President might want to redouble efforts to solve realworld problems, such as, oh, I dunno, maybe the worst recession since the Great Depression?
A delusional President? Not so much.
Let’s review how we got here, shall we? Skip the whole part where Republicans and neo-liberal Dems destroyed the economy, and let’s concentrate on how “bipartisanship” and the often futile quest for it completely crippled any chance of a true recovery. It’s painful, I know, but a review is certainly in order to remind folks of just how much effort there was for a “bipartisan” solution, and just how much this involved ignoring both reality, and those terribly extreme economists who continued paying attention to it.
Weeks before Obama’s inauguration, on January 5, 2009, Politico reported (“Big tax cuts in the works”):
Aiming to foster bipartisan support for his record-setting economic stimulus, President-elect Barack Obama plans to propose huge tax cuts for businesses and middle-class workers that will total about 40 percent of the package, or up to $310 billion, congressional officials said.
The revelation is part of an intricately orchestrated rollout of the plan that includes an appearance by Obama on Capitol Hill on Monday and a major speech about the economy later in the week.
Obama plans to ask Congress for a stimulus package of $675 billion to $775 billion, so the planned tax cuts will total about $270 billion to $310 billion, the officials said.
Obama strategists say he wants to get 80 or more votes in the 100-member Senate, and the emphasis on tax cuts is a way to defuse conservative criticism and enlist Republican support.
But officials say the tax cuts will be based on historical and empirical evidence of what works, not ideology. Rather, the targeted tax cuts will be designed to stimulate job growth in the private sector and help middle class families, the officials said.
So three things: (1) Obama wanted to gain broad bipartisan support, (2) So he included massive tax cuts–40% of his proposed stimulus package, (3) which he claimed would be based on what works.
How’d that work out?
He did include massive tax cuts. But they weren’t based on what works, because tax cuts don’t work (they average about 2/3rds the effectiveness of government spending). And he didn’t get broad bipartisan support, he had to grovel and sell out school kids just to get a measly three GOP votes in the Senate (and none in the House.)
None of this was really a surprise. Paul Krugman, for one, immediately pointed out the inadequacy of the plan (more on this below), while it only took a couple of days after the inauguration for senators to unveil their opposition. From the very beginning Republicans were hostile, as were Blue Dog Dems like Evan Bayh. As Time reported on January 22, 2009 (“Economic Stimulus Plan Hits Bipartisan Obstacles”:
If Barack gets past the primary, he might have to publicly distance himself from me. I said it to Barack personally, and he said yeah, that might have to happen.
– Jeremiah Wright, April 2007
Today, former Reverend Jeremiah Wright is nationally infamous as the controversial former head of President Barack Obama’s former church. During the primary campaign, tapes of Mr. Wright’s sermons did deep damage to Mr. Obama’s candidacy, to which Mr. Obama later responded with a unique and heartfelt speech about race. To this day the Wright affair remains the most damaging scandal the president has encountered.
ABC’s news report, however, was not the first time that a news organization reported about Mr. Wright’s controversial statements. Take, for instance, this fascinating New York Times story – a report written a full year before the Jeremiah Wright scandal exploded.
I mean, if folks think that we could have gotten Ben Nelson, Arlen Specter and Susan Collins to vote for additional stimulus beyond the $700 billion that we got, then I would just suggest you weren’t in the meetings.
This notion that somehow I could have gone and made the case around the country for a far bigger stimulus because of the magnitude of the crisis, well, we understood the magnitude of the crisis. We didn’t actually, I think, do what Franklin Delano Roosevelt did, which was basically wait for six months until the thing had gotten so bad that it became an easier sell politically because we thought that was irresponsible. We had to act quickly.
There are so many things wrong with this–as well as so many things wrong with that surrounds it. For one thing, as Ron Thompson added:
It’s Not True It’s not only narcissism gone mad, it’s historically inaccurate on any number of points. FDR took office on Saturday, March 4, 1933, and called Congress into special session to meet five days later on March 9th. That was unusual at that time: the pattern up until then was that Congress didn’t meet until thirteen months after the election: the first sessions of the preceding five Congresses met on December 3, 1923, December 7, 1925, December 5, 1927, April 15, 1929, and December 7, 1931.
By June 15, 1933, at the end of the “Hundred Days” almost all of the early New Deal financial legislation had been passed.
It’s increasingly a mystery how people can view Obama as an intelligent man. He’s articulate, and a good schmoozer, but it’s plain that he has no depth of understanding, and doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.
Indeed, FDR’s “100 Days” is the most famous period of legislative activity in American history. We might take for granted that George W. Bush would be totally ignorant of it, but a Democratic President? It blows the mind. Such staggering ignorance cannot be simply explained. It reflects membership in an alien culture with an alternative history, and that’s just what it is: America’s oligarchy. Indeed, Obama’s naive, unquestioning embeddedness in the oligrachy explains virtually every kooky thing in quote above: Obama’s insistence that all truth resides inside the meeting rooms he was in, for example. (Did Martin Luther King know that? If he had, would Obama be washing dishes somewhere? Or shining shoes?)
But simply evoking the oligarchy is not enough of an explanation. One needs to understand it, and why and how it shapes things as it does. One of the best relatively short explanations is last year’s Atlantic magazine article, “The Quiet Coup” by former IMF Chief Economist Simon Johnson, who I’ll be quoting from in just a minute. But first, I want to note that this article was linked to in a passage of a Sunday DKos diary, “An unlearned lesson about neoliberalism “, in which Laurence Lewis talks about this period in Obama’s Presidency from a decidedly different perspective. This quote picks up just after Lewis has quoted Stiglitz talking about the dismal record of neo-liberal policies in developing nations, which is the “phenomenon” referred to in the first sentence:
If you have ever spent any time watching Fox News Network’s cable news programming, and especially Bill O’Reilly, you would know just how much the network relies on Rasmussen Reports. Why political commentator Dick Morris is practically a shill for Rasmussen. In fact, during the 2010 election cycle, Fox News commissioned Rasmussen via one of its subsidiaries, Pulse Opinion Research, to conduct polling for the Murdoch owned network. The great irony of all this is, that like Fox News, Rasmussen is also anything but “fair and balanced.” In fact a study of more than 100 polls conducted by Rasmussen revealed a pattern of bias towards the Republican Party and a level of accuracy far below that of the competition.
Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight concluded:” The 105 polls released in Senate and gubernatorial races by Rasmussen Reports and its subsidiary, Pulse Opinion Research, missed the final margin between the candidates by 5.8 points, a considerably higher figure than that achieved by most other pollsters. Moreover, Rasmussen’s polls were quite biased, overestimating the standing of the Republican candidate by almost 4 points on average. In just 12 cases, Rasmussen’s polls overestimated the margin for the Democrat by 3 or more points. But it did so for the Republican candidate in 55 cases – that is, in more than half of the polls that it issued.”
Silver went on to further point out: “Rasmussen’s polls have come under heavy criticism throughout this election cycle, including from FiveThirtyEight. We have critiqued the firm for its cavalier attitude toward polling convention. Rasmussen, for instance, generally conducts all of its interviews during a single, 4-hour window; speaks with the first person it reaches on the phone rather than using a random selection process; does not call cell phones; does not call back respondents whom it misses initially; and uses a computer script rather than live interviewers to conduct its surveys. These are cost-saving measures that contribute to very low response rates and may lead to biased samples. Rasmussen also weights their surveys based on preordained assumptions about the party identification of voters in each state, a relatively unusual practice that many polling firms consider dubious since party identification (unlike characteristics like age and gender) is often quite fluid.” Moreover further analysis by FiveThirtyEight revealed discrepancies in Rasmussen Poll results on the subject of the president’s favorability ratings which go all the way back to the beginning of the Obama Administration. Rasmussen’s byline is “The Most Comprehensive Public Opinion Data Anywhere”. Surely that claim is a bit of a stretch even when viewed in the most generous light.
In contrast to Rasmussen that had the highest combined error and bias scores, the top tier firms surveying voter sentiment in this election had error scores below 4 points and most had bias ratings below 1.0. These results were obtained even though Rasmussen conducted far more polls than any of its competition. The methodology employed by FiveThirtyEight was to analyze all the polls for average accuracy in predicting the margin of victory for the top two vote recipients and then to see to what extent the polling consistently missed the trends. Thus a very fundamental question comes to the fore. To what extent are the folks who rely primarily on Fox News for their political views being led astray by consistently faulty information? Or to put it another way, how can anyone who is interested in forming an unbiased conservative political opinion do so if Fox News is his or her primary information source? Don’t these findings call into question the very integrity of Fox’s political and news presentation? How can the Fox News Network continue to display its “fair and balanced” byline given its heavy reliance, if not its incestuous relationship with Rasmussen Reports? Based on the evidence produced by FiveThirtyEight, there is little reason to believe that the conservative audience is being well served if it is spending its evenings watching Fox News in search of fair and balanced programming upon which to shape its opinions. In fact one could conclude that America’s conservatives are being deliberately led astray.
Steven J. Gulitti
11/8/10
Sources:
Rasmussen Polls Were Biased and Inaccurate; Quinnipiac, SurveyUSA PerformedStrongly;
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.n… emc=eta1
Last night, Rachel Maddow had a segment on the crazy world of imaginary rightwing facts, such as the recent furor over Obama’s trip to India supposedly costing $200 million a day, and involving 10% of the US Navy fleet. Of course it didn’t… but all manner of wingnuts, up to and including Michelle Bachmann were utterly convinced it was true. Maddow touched on a number of other examples, including the infamous “death panels”, which should be enough to tip folks off that this is not merely a matter of whacky annecdotal excesses. Here’s the first 8 1/2 minutes of the full almost 19 minute segment:
This phenomena of a separate reality sustained by a self-contained conservative media universe has serious policy consequences. And the fact that Obama and the rest of the Democratic establishment doesn’t realize this—they’re in yet another anti-reality bubble of their own—also has serious policy consequences.
In the that spirit, I thought of two recent examples that show how conservative media fantasy bubbles impact our politics in ways that are central to our politics, although both these examples have roots going back decades, and have been significantly enabled by the M$M for years. Still, in both cases–as in the cases Maddow cites–there’s a core of crazy kept alive by the conservative media bubble that’s utterly immune to outside debunking.
The first involves taxes and the size of government. The second has to do with the fact that illegal immigrants have been leaving a number of states since 2005. I’ll deal with that in a separate diary later on. For now, to preserve some semblance of focus, let’s just focus on taxes. A recent post by Brad DeLong dredges up something I remember commenting on, but can’t find a link to, from relatively-not-insane conservative Bruce Bartlet, “Ignorance Is Bliss for the Tea Party Crowd”. It’s about their wildly inaccurate sense of taxation levels, from a survey of folks at a Tea Party rally done by interns working for David Frum, another non-fringey conservative. A relevant passage:
Tea partiers were asked how much the federal government gets in taxes as a percentage of the gross domestic product. According to Congressional Budget Office data, acceptable answers would be 6.4%, which is the percentage for federal income taxes; 12.7%, which would be for both income taxes and Social Security payroll taxes; or 14.8%, which would represent all federal taxes as a share of GDP in 2009.
Not everyone follows these numbers closely and tea partiers may have been thinking of figures from a few years ago, before the recession when taxes were higher. According to the CBO, the highest figure for all federal taxes since 1970 came in the year 2000, when they reached 20.6% of GDP. As we know, after that George W. Bush and Republicans in Congress cut federal taxes and they fell to 18.5% of GDP in 2007, before the recession hit, and 17.5% in 2008.
Tuesday’s tea party crowd, however, thought that federal taxes were almost three times higher than they actually are. The average response was 42% of GDP and the median was 40%. The highest figure recorded in all of American history was half those figures: 20.9% at the peak of World War II in 1944.
So, in short, if one were to offer those Tea Baggers to cut federal taxes by 40% from what they thought taxes were, that would be a pretty dramatic offer that should make them all really happy, no? Well, Obama could do that very easily—and thereby raise taxes to 24%, an almost 7% increase. In which case, why should he ever think of actually cutting taxes? Especially since by “cutting” them 40% he could easily manage the budget deficit as well.
The questioning moved on to individual levels of taxation, and the Tea Baggers wildly over-estimated these as well. Then they moved on to the direction of change in recent tax levels:
The on-message line from the Obama administration is that every policy change must put the national deficit on a path to sustainability–no policy changes that do not include within themselves provisions to shrink the national debt relative to baseline ten years hence and thereafter.
That is not what we are getting:
Gibbs Says Obama ‘Open’ to Extending Upper-Income Tax Cuts By Roger Runningen
Nov. 4 (Bloomberg) — The Obama administration is “open” to extending tax cuts for upper-income individuals in order to win extensions for middle-income families, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said.
Gibbs reinforced remarks by President Barack Obama yesterday that he is ready to negotiate with Republicans who are pushing to extend Bush-era tax cuts that are set to expire at the end of the year…
Republicans have not even popped the corks of their celebratory champagne bottles yet and already there is a anti-Tea Party coup in the works the goal of which is to torpedo the presidential aspirations of Sarah Palin before her campaign even gets underway. A damming article from Politico which broke just yesterday revealed a concerted if uncoordinated effort taking shape among Republican leaders to see that Palin does not secure the 2012 Republican nomination for president. Quoting Politico:”Interviews with advisers to the main 2012 presidential contenders and with other veteran Republican operatives make clear they see themselves on a common, if uncoordinated, mission of halting the momentum and credibility Palin gained with conservative activists by plunging so aggressively into this year’s midterm campaigns…There is rising expectation among GOP elites that Palin will probably run for president in 2012 and could win the Republican nomination, a prospect many of them regard as a disaster in waiting…”There is a determined, focused establishment effort … to find a candidate we can coalesce around who can beat Sarah Palin,” said one prominent and longtime Washington Republican. “We believe she could get the nomination, but Barack Obama would crush her.” Thus it would appear that the trains are already on the track for what will be the first train wreck between the G.O.P. esthablishment and the Tea Party Movement.You can add to this developing drama the existing controversy between Ms. Palin and Tea Party star Joe Miller, the current Alaska Senatorial contender whom Palin backed against Lisa Murkowski only to have Miller short change Palin when it came time to endorse her presidential aspirations. This G.O.P. esthablishment – Tea Party friction has been below the surface since the movement gained traction during the 2009 health care reform debates. Appearing on Fox News with Greta Van Sustern in the summer of 2009, Rush Limbaugh was nothing if not emphatic in his denunciation of the Republican leadership and the veiled contempt that they have for the Tea Party Movement generally and Sarah Palin in particular. Tensions only grew more intense as the Tea Party Movement knocked off several Republican veterans and hand picked contenders during primary season. Thereafter the movement went on to put a number of Republicans not currently running for re-election on notice that they too were in the movement’s cross hairs.
In an interview with the National Journal, Senate Republican Leader, Mitch McConnell said: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president,” Is McConnell’s rhetoric aimed at placating the Tea Party or does he actually believe that in the depths of the Great Recession, this is the single most important goal for a victorious Republican Party? What happened to the never-ending Republican cry: “Where are the jobs?” What became of all of the talk of reducing the size of government, of tax policy and talk about how to “grow the economy.”? Now on the brink of victory the Republican elites have shown their hand and it consists first and foremost of political priorities aimed at winning the 2012 presidential election and making sure that Sarah Palin isn’t around to screw things up. What happened to the G.O.P’s big effort to “listen to the American people” this past summer? Thus we see just how important the dire state of the economy is to the elites who fashion Republican political strategy. Have McConnell and his lieutenants already misread the election’s outcome, taking it to mean that they have a mandate in spite of the fact that they are polling at lower favorability ratings then the Democrats that are about to be turned out of office? Have they misread a vote of protest for an endorsement of the Republican Party line which it can’t possibly be given the G.O.P.s historically low standing among voters? That said, how long would it be before the voters come down with that old sinking feeling of buyer’s remorse? Surely if the immediate follow on to the midterm elections is the out break of an intra-party civil war within the G.O.P. what else could a weary and disgruntled electorate feel but buyer’s remorse, dismay and disgust. The election’s outcome will certainly cause the Democrats to circle the wagons and try to regroup for 2012. But it already seems like the G.O.P. and the Tea Party are in the process of circling the rifles into a circular firing squad and that can’t be good at a time like this when the country is desperately in need of solutions to deep seated problems of long standing. The final question from all of this is: Has the Republican Party gotten more than it bargained for in its marriage of convenience with the Tea Party and is it too late to unwind the relationship before it tears the G.O.P. to shreds in an intraparty conflict that could end the Republican Party as we presently know it?
In the event of a Republican takeover of one or both houses of Congress on November 2nd, it won’t be long before the Tea Party Movement and the G.O.P. will be involved in one or more train wrecks, some of which could be pretty dramatic. These train wrecks will arise from fundamental differences in philosophy and will occur over a period of time that could begin sooner rather than later. Upending Republican establishmentarians during primaries was relatively easy; winning general elections where competitive ideas are at issue could be a bit harder. Governing will be much harder still, particularly when you take into account the differences between Tea Party rhetoric and American political reality.
The first obstacle newly elected members of the movement will face is the institutional nature of Congress. Tea Party freshmen in both the House and Senate will be at the bottom of Congressional seniority lists and thus not immediately in line for leadership roles as committee chairpersons. Thus they will be in the position of having to sell their policy proposals to the existing leadership. That leadership may be more amenable to the ideas of the newcomers given the fact that several veteran Republican lawmakers are no longer around thanks to the Tea Party. Conversely the G.O.P. leaders may let Congress work the way it always has thereby attenuating the influence of the Tea Party. In the Senate in particular the likely Republican winners are veteran politicians who will come to the office with considerable experience. According to political observer David Herszenhorn: “Insurgent challengers may be grabbing all the headlines in midterm elections this year, but most of the Republicans who are best positioned to snap up Senate seats currently held by Democrats are veteran politicians – and most of them have already served in Congress. Based on their experience, the 2010 class of Senate Republican freshman could well prove to be relatively pragmatic and wise to the ways of legislative deal making – almost certainly more so than the Tea Party-backed firebrands like Sharron Angle in Nevada and Rand Paul in Kentucky, who have built their campaigns around ideological demands and an end to business as usual.” In all of the discussions surrounding this election, few have pointed out the difference between those candidates who come out of, or are closely aligned with the Tea Party Movement and those who have received the movement’s support solely because of their Republican affiliation. This second group will not necessarily move in lock step with the hard-core ideologues of the Tea Party seeing as they are not beholden to the movement in any meaningful way. Therein lay the seeds of intra-party conflict and controversy.
The next challenge facing newly elected members of the Tea Party Movement will be the reconciliation of their penchant for spending cuts and ending earmarks versus what can be achieved in the realm of the possible. These desires will butt up against the fact that cutting government spending during a severe economic downturn could only make things worse and many Republicans favor an ending of the G.O.P.’s moratorium on the use of earmarks. There’s a reason that the G.O.P’s leadership has been mum on the political talk show circuit when it comes to detailing the particulars of spending cuts and the reason is that they don’t have a viable plan. Even as late in the game as this morning, Haley Barbour, appearing on “Meet the Press” was unable or unwilling to fill in the blanks when asked how a Republican controlled Congress will reduce the size of government. Tom Brokaw, appearing on this same show pointed out that many Republican candidates have made rash promises on the campaign trail that can’t be kept or will be nearly impossible to keep given the current political situation. Again we see the future of conflict as already being baked into the cake, so to speak.
I read “A Pledge to America” and it is full of general statements regarding spending cuts, but for the scope of its discussion, it lays out few policy specifics. The “Pledge” is equal parts indictment, rallying cry and Act of Contrition, but what it isn’t is a blueprint for reducing government. I can’t help but wonder why the G.O.P. trotted out the “Pledge” when they have Congressman Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) “A Roadmap For America’s Future” which is a well reasoned analysis full of specific proposed cuts. Again to Herszenhorn: “while polls show that the Republicans’ message is succeeding politically, Republican candidates and party leaders are offering few specifics about how they would tackle the nation’s $13.7 trillion debt, and budget analysts said the party was glossing over the difficulty of carrying out its ideas, especially when sharp spending cuts could impede an already weak economic recovery…(both) parties share blame for the current fiscal situation, but federal budget statistics show that Republican policies over the last decade, and the cost of the two wars, added far more to the deficit than initiatives approved by the Democratic Congress since 2006…Calculations by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and other independent fiscal experts show that the $1.1 trillion cost over the next 10 years of the Medicare prescription drug program, which the Republican-controlled Congress adopted in 2003, by itself would add more to the deficit than the combined costs of the bailout, the stimulus and the health care law.” Moreover, most Republicans are calling for the permanent extension of all Bush-era tax cuts and that would add $700 billion more to the deficit over the next 10 years.
The “Pledge” has come in for scathing criticism on the right as well as the left. Janet Hook and Naftali Bendavid of the Wall Street Journal made the following observations: “The new policy manifesto released by House Republicans Thursday is laced with ideas and rhetoric designed to appeal to the surging tea-party movement. But it left some conservatives disappointed with its omissions and complaining that the plan had limited sweep… Yet the new agenda was silent on some of the most sought-after goals on the tea-party wish list, such as a balanced budget constitutional amendment and a ban on special-interest appropriations called earmarks.” Many conservatives look to what is now happening in the United Kingdom as a model of inspiration for cut backs here. But that program involves a significant reduction in defense spending; something that would have to be included here as well as those outlays constitutes 58% of discretionary federal spending. With a large portion of federal spending being committed to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and paying off interest on Treasury Bonds, the amount of money subject to discretionary spending reduction is only one third of all outlays. There is a growing minority within the G.O.P. on Capitol Hill who are making the case that the projected debt is too big to handle through spending cuts alone. According to Saxby Chambliss (R-GA): “Everything has got to be on the table for discussion… “there are a lot of things people are going to have to be educated about, on the spending side as well as the revenue side. They’re thinking we can come in and eliminate earmarks and everybody’s going to be happy on the spending side. Gee, that just scratches the surface.” Is Senator Chambliss tacitly acknowledging that tax cuts will have to expire or even that tax increases may be needed to deal with the deficit? The “Pledge” is notoriously silent on the subject of earmarks and seeing as they are a major source of spending, this is sure to give rise to a rift within the new Republican caucus on Capitol Hill. It doesn’t take a soothsayer or a professional handicapper to see that the G.O.P. and the Tea Party Movement are on a collision course with regard to spending and the practical ability to reign in that spending given the current economic situation and the present composition of federal government outlays. Thus there is little reason to believe that the Republican rhetoric of the campaign trail will carryover to policies that actually achieve what that rhetoric has promised. Therein lies the root of yet another G.O.P. – Tea Party collision.
Newly elected Tea Party Movement lawmakers may find themselves running into some strong headwinds in the form of those special interests that have invested heavily in this election on behalf of conservative causes. While it is now likely that in the final analysis Democrats may end up spending more money than their opposition, there is an unprecedented amount of money flowing to the Republican side from outside sources as a result of the Citizens United ruling. According to OpenSecrets.org the 2010 midterms have seen a whooping 186.7 million dollars flowing into Republican coffers vice 88.6 million for the Democrats. Likewise an article on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and business donations shows the tide running against the Democrats among these groups at a rate of almost two to one. Ostensibly one would say what difference does it make where all this money is coming from if the Democrats are actually spending more? But within the confines of this argument, what matters is that this tidal wave of money spent by outside interests is being spent for a reason, to influence the election’s outcome and thereafter to buy influence with the winners. Washington lobbyists are already courting the potential new Congressional chairmen and in the process could effectively be
outmaneuvering the Tea Party activists in the game of power and influence. Thus the many questions that beg to be asked: Won’t all of this money muscle out the grassroots crowd and how will the Tea Party activists compete for attention with the lobbyists who are already prowling the halls of Congress and the bars and restaurants of downtown Washington? Is the movement about to get mugged on K Street? Are the rank and file Tea Party patriots in the process of “taking their country back” just to have it taken away in turn by the wealthy interests who have spent all of this money to influence the outcome of the 2010 elections? Surely this money was not spent because it was burning a hole in someone’s pocket. Does anyone believe that these special interests were in the mood to do the activists a favor on November 2nd? Will the rank and file Tea Partier unwittingly deliver “his country” as a gift to a new class of plutocrats that will have no use for him except for his vote during the next election cycle and his attendance at rallies? Don’t look now but we may be about to witness the greatest political hustle since the evangelicals came out in force for George W. Bush only to get nothing of substance in the bargain.
Finally, the Tea Party Movement will continue to run up against the fact that many of its essential beliefs are divorced from reality and therein lay the seeds of train wrecks to come. First and foremost is one of its core ideas, that Americans are over taxed. The fact is that taxes are as low as they have been in sixty years; lower than they were when Ronald Reagan was President. As Senator Chambliss implied above, increased taxes may be inevitable if people are serious about reducing the deficit. The Tea Party waxes nostalgic for the Reagan era, yet unemployment was higher when the “Gipper” went into his first midterm election than it is now and his approval rating was roughly the same as Obama’s. The movement preaches fiscal restraint while refusing to consider reductions in defense spending where wasteful spending is well documented and widespread. This will lead to calls for a reduction in social programs during the worst economic downturn since the 1930s and that will only create resistance on the left and reluctance on the part of practical Republican officeholders on the right. The Tea Partiers clamor, “keep your hands off my Medicare” but underplay how to reign in the program’s cost increases. They rail against TARP, blaming Obama for its inception all the while ignoring the fact that many of the very Republicans running for re-election are the ones who originally put the bailout in place. How will they address the fact that TARP’s costs will be less than originally anticipated? Even conservative observer Ross Douthat admits that for all its shortcomings TARP was a necessary evil at the time of its inception. On the issue of repealing health care reform there is now no clear consensus to do so, according to the latest CBS poll, yet repeal is a major Tea Party goal.
The continued Tea Party fixation with Obama as a Socialist, Fascist or both at the same time reveals a lack of understanding of what actually comprises these two somewhat similar yet fundamentally different schools of political thought. If it’s not that, then what else could it be other than a deliberate attempt to misinform the public for partisan ends. It goes without saying that this is something that can only contribute to further gridlock. This fact stands in direct contrast to what the public wants. The latest polling by both Bloomberg and the New York Times / CBS News reveals an electorate that wants compromise not confrontation. Yet with the arrival of Tea Party backed lawmakers the stage is now set for a political environment more favorable to confrontation than to compromise. Attempts to fix the blame on President Obama for the current economic situation are likely to fail as well as “nearly 60 percent of Americans were optimistic about Mr. Obama’s next two years in office and nearly 70 percent said the economic slump is temporary. Half said the economy was where they expected it would be at this point, and less than 10 percent blamed the current administration for the state of the economy, leaving the onus on former President George W. Bush and Wall Street.” In the final analysis, the 2010 election is shaping up to be something of an anomaly. On the one hand you have widespread voter dissatisfaction with the status quo while at the same time the party likely to gain seats has a favorability rating below the party that will be turned out of office. Thus for the Republicans this victory will be a political windfall rather than an endorsement of the party and its platform. The G.O.P. will find itself in an inopportune marriage of convenience with the Tea Party Movement which in the long haul may turn out to the G.O.P.’s detriment as the public grows weary of the gridlock and political train wrecks that are sure to come. Rather than being on the cusp of a Republican revival or a “return to our core values” we are more likely on the verge of an environment of political chaos which is just what we don’t need at this point in time and that chaos may well come back to haunt the Republican Party and hobble its chances in the 2012 election and beyond. Ladies and Gentlemen, fasten your seat belts.
Steven J. Gulitti
10/31/10
Sources:
The New Face of the G.O.P.? Grizzled Veterans, by David Herszenhorn; http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10…
Deficit Divisions Likely to Grow After Election by Jackie Clames; http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10…
Earmarks Cause GOP Rift By NEIL KING JR. ; http://online.wsj.com/article_…
Alan Fram’s AP story, “Obama Primary Challenge? Nearly Half Of Dems Want 2010 Fight” has a catchy headline, and it’s no wonder that Jeffroby88 flagged it in a quick hit. But between the content of the story and and the topline results (pdf), it turns out there’s a lot there than meets the eye for anyone pushing a “dump Obama” agenda. OTOH, there’s a lot more there for those trying to puzzle out what, if anything positive might come of the current Democratic discontent.
In the story itself, Fram writes the provocative lead:
Democratic voters are closely divided over whether President Barack Obama should be challenged within the party for a second term in 2012, an Associated Press-Knowledge Networks Poll finds.
Then later writes:
Among all 2008 voters, 51 percent say he deserves to be defeated in November 2012 while 47 percent support his re-election – essentially a tie.
Among Democrats, 47 percent say Obama should be challenged for the 2012 nomination and 51 percent say he should not be opposed. Those favoring a contest include most who backed Hillary Rodham Clinton’s unsuccessful faceoff against Obama for the 2008 nomination….
_Nearly 3 in 10, or 29 percent, of Democrats who said during the spring of 2008 that they were backing Obama for the Democratic nomination now say they want him to be challenged in 2012. Seven in 10 want him renominated.
_Sixty-one percent of Democrats who said in spring 2008 that they were backing Clinton now say Obama should face an opponent for the party’s nomination.
_More than 8 in 10 overall who on Election Day 2008 said they’d voted for Obama want to re-elect him, though 1 in 7 say he should be defeated.
So what gives? 47% of Dems say they want Obama challenged, but over 80% who voted for him want to re-elect him? Where’s that extra 27%+ come from? And, more generally, WTFs going on?
Well, it helps to take a look at the topline PDF, where we get this additional piece of information about Democrats, or Dem-leaning independents:
That 36% of Obama voters is still hard to reconcile with the “80% who voted for him want to re-elect him.” Are his GOP & independent supporters not aligned with the Dems actually more supportive of him than those in this subsample? It seems unlikely. So the data itself has not been well-explained by AP. But to the extent it has been shared, it seems that a lot of the discontent comes from folks who weren’t all that sold on Obama in the first place.
What’s more, as for the blunt “Dump Obama!” approach, the poll found that just 3% of 2008 Obama voters had a “very unfavorable” view of him, while 7% had a “somewhat unfavorable” view, compared to 39% “somewhat favorable” view, and 48% “very favorable”.
Clearly a lot of those saying they favor a primary challenge have at least a “somewhat favorable” view of him. That’s a pretty healthy sign for our democracy that so many folks can have at least a “somewhat favorable” view of a president, and yet still think that a serious primary challenge would be a good thing. But it’s not a very good sign for those pushing a hardline “Dump Obama” message.
Maybe we really could have a mostly-positive primary challenge…. If, that is, we could find a candidate. Hillary, obviously, is not exactly readily available for that slot. But I’m pleased, at least, to see the level of sophistication shown by such a significant chunk of the Democratic electorate.
It now appears that in all likelihood republicans will win a congressional majority this coming Tuesday. Nate Silver’s projections of Friday October 29…
…found Republicans gaining an average of 53 seats, which would bring them to 232 total. Democrats are given a 16 percent chance of holding the House, down slightly from 17 percent on Wednesday.
Increasingly, there seems to be something of a consensus among various forecasting methods around a projected Republican figure somewhere in the 50-60 seat range.
Several of the expert forecasters that FiveThirtyEight’s model uses, like the Cook Political Report, the Rothenberg Political Report, and Larry Sabato, have stated that they expect the Republicans’ overall total to fall roughly in this range. A straw poll of political insiders for Hotline on Call found an average expectation of a 50-seat gain. And some political science models have been forecasting gains somewhere in this range for some time.
The forecast also seems consistent with the average of generic ballot polling. Our model projects that Republicans will win the average Congressional district by between 3 and 4 points.
The modeling also suggests that there is a 90% chance that after Tuesday Democrats will control at least 50 seats in the Senate, but that there is a 0% chance that Democrats will control at least 60 seats.
It’s not looking good by any stretch of the imagination.
All hands are on deck in the progressive community working to surprise the pundits and stave off too many Republican victories on election day. And all the last minute work really does matter, as I will document in my next post about the closeness of margins in swing Congressional races even in years where one party or the other is making big gains. We all need to keep focused and keep our nose to the grindstone, because this election’s fate is not yet decided. The President is out on the campaign trail working his butt off; the Democratic leadership in Congress is raising money and helping out in every way they can; the staffers for the Democratic National Committee, Organizing for America, and other party committees are out in the field working their hearts out in races all over the country. They are joined by activists from the netroots and every kind of progressive organization knocking on doors, making calls, coming to rallies, and doing everything in their power to turn the tide. It makes me proud that so many people are working so hard even when- in fact, especially when- the going has gotten so tough.
However, I just need to stop for a moment and quickly note, because it will become hugely more important in the weeks and months following the election, that not everyone who in the administration is on the same team. All the passion so many people are showing makes it all the more galling to have certain as yet to be found out people in the Treasury Department, people who owe their jobs to all of you who worked so hard to get President Obama elected in 2008, stabbing us all in the back in the very last days of this campaign. Check out Zach Carter’s superb post this morning on the snakes in the Treasury Department who are working to undermine the President, his new appointee Elizabeth Warren, and all of us in the progressive world who are so excited about the potential of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau right before the election. Their petty leaks and nasty attacks are the worst kind of Washington BS. They made a rotten attack on Raj Date , who is a brilliant, progressive, and committed man who was a leader in making the financial reform bill stronger. As to the office paint job leak, it is just laughable: I was over at Elizabeth’s very plain office in the standard government building where she is spending 95% of her time, and she hasn’t even taken the time to put a picture on the wall. She is a frugal, modest Oklahoman who is so driven by the work that she probably wouldn’t even notice if someone repainted her office. And the media hound charge is just funny: senior White House officials told me weeks ago that they wanted Elizabeth to be as visible as possible in the final days before the election because she is a strong voice for the middle class. Literally all the media bookings for her have come at the request of the White House communications shop.
I have always told people that working in the Clinton White House, I met some of the best people I have ever known and some of the worst. There are people who are in government for all the right reasons, because they want to make the country a better place and really help improve the lives of regular people. Elizabeth Warren is one of the very best of that group. And there are people who are in government because they are looking to brownnose the industries they are supposed to be regulating so they can get a really high paying lobbyist job after a few years in government. It is very clear that some of the people in Treasury, certainly the people doing these absurd attacks, are in the latter category. They don’t care about screwing over the President and the Democratic Party in the days before the election, and they certainly don’t care about helping consumers. What they care about is sucking up to the Wall Street bankers who they hope will give them a sweet job sometime soon.
I have a message for the leakers at Treasury, though: you are playing with fire. The two people closest to the President at the White House, Pete Rouse and Valerie Jarrett, are huge fans of Warren, and I know these leaks have caught their attention. I would love to see a serious investigation into these leaks once the election is over, and it just might happen. And whatever happens on the inside, the entire progressive community- bloggers, members of Congress, labor and consumer organizations- have Elizabeth Warren’s back. Right now, unlike you leakers, we are focused on winning elections, but after the election, we will be gunning for you.
Here’s John Edwards over 3 years ago on the freedom to marry for same-sex couples:
It is [a hard issue] … because I’m 53 years old. I grew up in a small town in the rural south. I was raised in the Southern Baptist church and so I have a belief system that arises from that. It’s part of who I am. I can’t make it disappear. … I personally feel great conflict about that. I don’t know the answer. I wish I did. I think from my perspective it’s very easy for me to say, gay civil unions, yes, partnership benefits, yes, but it is something that I struggle with. Do I believe they should have the right to marry? I’m just not there yet.“
I noticed a strikingly similar response from President Obama yesterday. Here’s Joe Sudbay asking the President about his position on the same issue:
Q So I have another gay question. (Laughter.)
THE PRESIDENT: It’s okay, man. (Laughter.)
Q And this one is on the issue of marriage. Since you’ve become President, a lot has changed. More states have passed marriage equality laws. This summer a federal judge declared DOMA unconstitutional in two different cases. A judge in San Francisco declared Prop 8 was unconstitutional. And I know during the campaign you often said you thought marriage was the union between a man and a woman, and there — like I said, when you look at public opinion polling, it’s heading in the right direction. We’ve actually got Republicans like Ted Olson and even Ken Mehlman on our side now. So I just really want to know what is your position on same-sex marriage?
THE PRESIDENT: Joe, I do not intend to make big news sitting here with the five of you, as wonderful as you guys are. (Laughter.) But I’ll say this —
Q I just want to say, I would be remiss if I didn’t ask you this question.
THE PRESIDENT: Of course.
Q People in our community are really desperate to know.
THE PRESIDENT: I think it’s a fair question to ask. I think that — I am a strong supporter of civil unions. As you say, I have been to this point unwilling to sign on to same-sex marriage primarily because of my understandings of the traditional definitions of marriage.
But I also think you’re right that attitudes evolve, including mine. And I think that it is an issue that I wrestle with and think about because I have a whole host of friends who are in gay partnerships. I have staff members who are in committed, monogamous relationships, who are raising children, who are wonderful parents.
And I care about them deeply. And so while I’m not prepared to reverse myself here, sitting in the Roosevelt Room at 3:30 in the afternoon, I think it’s fair to say that it’s something that I think a lot about. That’s probably the best you’ll do out of me today. (Laughter.)
Q It is an important issue, and I think that —
THE PRESIDENT: I think it’s an entirely fair question to ask.
Q And part of it is that you can’t be equal in this country if the very core of who you are as a person and the love — the person you love is not — if that relationship isn’t the same as everybody else’s, then we’re not equal. And I think that a lot of — particularly in the wake of the California election on Prop 8, a lot of gay people realized we’re not equal. And I think that that’s — that’s been part of the change in the —
THE PRESIDENT: Prop 8, which I opposed.
Q Right. I remember you did. You sent the letter and that was great. I think that the level of intensity in the LGBT community changed after we lost rights in that election. And I think that’s a lot of where the community is right now.
THE PRESIDENT: The one thing I will say today is I think it’s pretty clear where the trendlines are going.
Q The arc of history.
THE PRESIDENT: The arc of history.
At the time when Edwards made his statement, I was disappointed and angry that a candidate for President basically admitting he may be on the wrong side of good judgment and history, blaming his religion for his feelings, and other poor reasoning.
I got some of that with the President yesterday, who’s clearly setting himself up to come out in support (a position, ahem, he was already in during his 1996 run for State Senate). On the one hand, he clearly doesn’t want to make this an issue just before the midterms, which I can appreciate. And I also appreciate the subtle hints he’s dropping. I think his heart is in the right place (and let me also say that I appreciate the White House taking the time to meet with five independent, often strongly critical, smart bloggers, and I hope they do it again).
On the other hand, I can tell him that he will find it harder and harder to ask for support from the LGBT and allied community in 2012 if he continues to be on the wrong side of this issue- whether or not Prop 8 or DOMA rulings go our way. I’ve seen candidate after candidate this cycle- Republican and Democrat- use the person who calls himself our “fierce advocate” as a shield on this issue by saying “my position on [gay] marriage is the same as President Obama’s!”, something that makes me wince every time I hear it.
So I think that for me and many of my friends and colleagues, time- and patience- is running out, Mr. President.
It now appears that in all likelihood republicans will win a congressional majority this coming Tuesday. 
