It’s funny to me that people are speaking about the 2010 mid-terms as if the result wasn’t already baked in:
“I think that there is a real shot we are going to get slaughtered in elections this fall if we aren’t leading the efforts to reform Washington. We campaigned in ‘06 and ‘08, and if voters [...]
Obama’s liberal base ‘disengaged’ – USAToday (3/10/10):
“The energized base which transformed the nation and elected our first black president (is) now disengaged,” Democratic political strategist Donna Brazile says. “If this was September, I would hit the panic button.”
[...]
Still, signs of trouble for the Democratic majority in Congress are springing up in:
Virginia, where a host of [...]
Obama may compromise on consumer agency to pass financial regulation – WaPo (2/25/10):
The Obama administration is no longer insisting on the creation of a stand-alone consumer protection agency as a central element of the plan to remake regulation of the financial system.
In hopes of quick congressional approval of a reform bill, White House officials are [...]
It’s almost as if President Summer’s Eve hadn’t already wasted nine months trying to compromise:
President Obama said Tuesday that he will consider any Republican health care ideas, as long as the ideas address the goals contained in the Democratic plans already passed by the House and Senate.
Just fucking shoot me.
Obama: Seat Scott Brown and Health Care Next Steps – ABC News (1/20/10):
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: So how do you do it now? This strategy that a lot of people have talked about getting the House to pass the Senate bill. Speaker Pelosi yesterday seemed to say that this was kind of a non-starter.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: [...]
In a post about the spending freeze passages in Obama’s SOTU Paul Krugman compares Obama’s own words to those of House Minority Leader John Boehner and says:
But it’s a spectacular demonstration of Obama’s failure to change the narrative. Not only is he accepting the general Republican world view, he’s parroting their dumb attacks on his [...]
As in “what really happened”.
In June 2006, the Bush military announced that three Guantánamo detainees had committed suicide by hanging themselves in their cells.
In November 2009, a team of students and faculty at the Seton Hall University law school analyzed a heavily redacted NCIS report of the alleged suicides, and found the official government account [...]
E.J. Dionne – “Mass. Senate race’s lesson for Obama” (1/17/10):
Yet the truth that liberals and Obama must grapple with is that they have failed so far to dent the right’s narrative, especially among those moderates and independents with no strong commitments to either side in this fight.
The president’s supporters comfort themselves that Obama’s numbers will [...]
There’s a special election next week to fill the Senate seat of the dearly departed Ted Kennedy. The race, due to the possibility of a flip that would give Republicans 41 seats and the ability to filibuster anything, has been somewhat nationalized, with all kinds of interesting ads from both sides. This one [...]
I’m not a great one for year-end lists, and Looking Back (sagely or otherwise) at The Year That Was. But I thought I’d share this reflection.
The biggest political story of the year, I think, should have been the huge gulf between the Obama we were sold (Obama-who-walks-on-water) and the Obama we find we actually [...]
