Obama proves he's politically nimble

After Democrats got "shellacked" in this year's elections, many wondered how long it would take President Barack Obama to move "back to the center" in the face of an incoming Republican majority in the House and a diminished Democratic majority in the Senate.

Turns out it took about a month for Obama to get on top of the situation.

And, he didn't really have to go all that far to get "back to the center," particularly compared to the incoming class of Republicans.

Although the recent deal Obama cut with the Republicans on the Bush tax cuts was roundly denounced by liberals in and out of Congress, it seems he was fairly adept at using what Republicans wanted above all else -- a tax cut for rich folks -- to get something Democrats had no other chance at -- a second stimulus package.

Republicans, who won the election saying they cared about the deficit, quickly showed where their allegiance really was, negotiating a major increase in the deficit for a two-year extension of the George W. Bush's tax cuts for those making more than $250,000 per year.

They've also put themselves in a position where they are virtually forced to vote for an increase in the nation's debt ceiling, which will alienate their Tea Party backers, to pay for the tax cuts they asked for.

The deal includes other tax cuts, including a temporary roll back of the Social Security payroll tax, that will pump money into the economy. It also included an extension of unemployment benefits. That's something that Obama and the Demcrats wanted, but had no way to get past Republicans on their own.

Those measures can only help the economy by putting more money in the hands of people very likely to spend it. Obama hopes that it helps enough to win him re-election two years from now.

In return, the GOP really got only part of what it wanted. Republicans campaigned on and negotiated for making all of the Bush tax cuts permanent. Instead they've only been extended for two years. That includes a restoration of the Estate Tax at 35% on estates worth more than $5 million. While some Democrats think that's too much, the Republicans wanted no inheritance tax at all. The two-year extension means the GOP's insistence on cutting taxes for the wealthy and trying to ensure Paris Hilston inherits as much as possible while resisting help for working folks struggling during the recession remains a potent campaign issues for Democrats in 2012.

About the only place where Obama stumbled, and this is a mistake he's been prone to, is that he wasn't tough enough in negotiations. He underestimated how much Republicans wanted that tax break for the well off.

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Gridlock to grip America again?

So the mid-terms are over.

If you believe most of the mainstream media, Barack Obama has been rejected by the people and the new Republican majority in the House has a mandate from the Tea Party to roll back spending and repeal health care reform.

It's both more complicated and simpler than that.

Is Obama doomed to be a one-term president? Well, his approval numbers at this point in his administration are higher than those of Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton. Both of those guys managed to overcome big defeats in their first mid-term elections to win second terms by a comfortable majority.

And, in exit polls, voters Tuesday split evenly on whether health care reform should be repealed or not. In any case, Republicans don't have the votes to repeal it in the Senate or override Obama's veto if they did. They could shut down the government to leverage him, but that didn't work too well when another group of Republicans tried it against Clinton.

The simple fact is that Tuesday's results weren't about  health care reform or the deficit or foreign policy or Don't Ask, Don't Tell or even about taxes.

They were about the economy.

The unemployment rate was 9.6% on Election Day. If it had been 6%, Tuesday would not have happened. And it wouldn't have mattered what the Tea Party or mainsteam Republicans or Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck had to say about it.

If the unemployment rate is over 9% on Election Day 2012, Barack Obama will lose -- unless the GOP does something truly suicidal like nominating Sarah Palin.  If the economy has improved, as it seems to be doing, he won't.

And that brings us to what the next two years will look like.

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Political wheel to spin again Tuesday

Republicans will almost surely take control of the House of Representatives Tuesday.

They won't win the Senate, although they'll gain seats. They squandered a chance to win the Senate by choosing too many Tea Party wackos as Senate candidates.

Which is amazing when you consider that two years ago pundits were wondering if the GOP was doomed as a national party.

A combination of the Tea Party, the still dragging economy and relentless propagandizing by Fox News and right-wing talk radio has brought the party back from the brink of the abyss and has them on the brink of their biggest election victory since 1994.

Virginia, were the polls close early, may give an early signal on how the night is going to go.

Expectations have been that Republicans would take out at least two of Virginia's six Democratic congressmen -- freshmen representatives Glen Nye in the 2nd District and Tom Perriello in the 5th. Both have trailed their Republican challengers throughout the race, although the polls in both races have closed over the last week. Still, incumbents polling less than 45% a week before Election Day are probably doomed. In both races the presence of a Tea Party-affiliated independent candidate raises the possiblity that the seat could be won with as little as 45% of the vote. That's probably the best shot Nye and Perriello have.

I either Nye or Perriello survives, the GOP wave may be smaller than predicted.

On the other hand, two races Democrats felt confident about -- long-time incumbent Rick Boucher in the 9th District and freshman Gerry Connolly in the 11th District, have begun to look shaky in recent days. Although he's held a comfortable lead over Morgan Griffith, the majority leader of Virginia's House of Delegates who actually lives in the 6th District,  througout the summer, the most recent poll in Boucher's race showed it deadlocked. Tuesday will show if that poll was an outlier or caught late movement. In the 11th, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has committed $1 million for a last minute TV ad blitz. With the number of incumbents they have in jeopardy around the country, it's unlikely they'd do that if Connolly was safe.

If either Boucher or Connolly go down, the GOP is likely in for even a better night than has been predicted.

The Democrats' problem is the stubbornly high unemployement rate and, let's face it, discomfort in the country that there's a black man in the White House.

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A RINO at a Tea Party

Like a bull in a china shop, a RINO at a Tea Party has the potential to be a messy situation.

That's why Rep. Rob Wittman's decision to bring in Sen. Scott Brown (R-Ma.) to headline a fundraiser July 30 is interesting.

Brown was briefly the darling of the Tea Party when, with considerable out-of -state financial assistance from Tea Party activists, he beat the odds to win the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by the death of former Sen. Edward Kennedy. The had been in Kennedy hands for more than 50 years and a Republican victory in one of the nation's bluest states was seen as a personal rebuke to President Barack Obama.

Brown was important to the Tea Party because he was seen as the Republicans' 41st vote to filibuster health care reform. However, Democrats skillfully found a way around the supposed 60 votes required to get anything done in the Senate -- which, strict constructionists that they are, the Tea Party activists might note was never part of the founders' intentions -- and passed the bill anyway.

After that, Brown quickly began losing his Tea Party fans as he started voting like the moderate, Northeast Republican he always had been. That, of course, was the only kind of Republican who was going to win in "The People's Republic of Massachusetts." Which means he occasionally votes with the Democrats, just like Republican senators Snow and Dukakis from Maine. Which leads the Tea Party crowd to fill his Facebook page with accusations of "betrayal" and that he's a "liar" and, even worse, a "RINO." The most recent instance was when he voted to allow financial reform legislation to move forward, so hopefully the greed heads who wrecked the economy two years ago will have a slightly harder task the next time.

Wittman voted against that bill.

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Hey Buddy, Can You Spare 5 to 10 in the Federal Pen?

The next big battle in Washington in heating up.

And, as they have since January, Republicans are ready to "just say no." They should probably re-think that plan.

 Because this fight won't be over providing access to health insurance, which could be characterized as "helping poor people," although it actually benefits everyone. You can always drum up some opposition to helping the poor in America.

The coming battle will be over punishing the bankers, traders and Wall Street fat cats whose greed and dishonesty almost threw us into a second Great Depression. And, so far, the GOP has come down firmly on the side of the bad guys. In a letter to President Barack Obama, every Republican member of the House and Senate declined to support financial reform legislation backed by the president.

You'd think Republicans would have learned something from the first Great Depression, when Herbert Hoover sided with the folks who'd caused the crash and handed Washington over to the Democrats for a generation.

The Great Depression also created a long-standing distrust of Wall Street and the financial system among working class and middle class Americans.

My Dad, a Depression baby, used to tell me that the stock market was just a scam to fleece the little guy for the profit of the big guys.

Turns out he was right.

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A Civil War over health care?

President Obama signed the health care legislation he’d fought so hard for into law last week.

It was a bit of a disappointment if you believe, as I do, that affordable health care is a basic right that should be available to everyone, as it is in the rest of the civilized world.

Because this bill doesn’t really do it.

It does make some advances over our present system. It limits insurance companies’ ability to deny coverage base on a prior existing condition or cancel people’s coverage when they get sick. It extends insurance coverage to the majority of the nation’s currently uninsured through public insurance exchanges with subsidies for those who can’t afford coverage.

It also requires that everyone have health insurance, either through their employers, from a private company or through the exchanges.

Mandatory coverage was initially a Republican idea. The plan Mitt Romney oversaw as governor of Massachusetts has coverage mandates. It was trade off with the insurance industry, for losing their ability to refuse to insure those with pre-existing conditions.

But now the mandates have whipped up a frenzy among Republicans who – a few years too late to keep George W. Bush from wiretapping Americans and reading their e-mail without a warrant and suspending habeas corpus – have discovered that they love the Constitution.

And, they claim, that nothing in the Constitution gives the government the right to make you buy a product, like health insurance.

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Can this country be governed?

We the people have lost another one.

The big money boys have scuttled health care reform. The citizens of the United States will not have the same access to health care enjoyed by the citizens of every other civilized country in the world. We’re the richest, most powerful nation on earth. We can accomplish anything we set our minds to, yet we can’t do this simple thing for our people.

Why?

Because the lobbyists who keep Washington, D.C.’s money wheel turning don’t want it. So they killed it.

And they killed it in exactly the same way that they did in 1993, the malicious stirred up the ignorant with a pack of well-funded lies.

So “Obamacare” meets the same fate as “Hillarycare.”

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Okay, now what?

As a result of this month’s elections, Virginians now have split government.

At the state level The Party That Has No Intention of Governing represents us and at the national level The Party That Is Afraid to Govern represents us.

At the state level, that might work out okay over the next four years.

Based on the most recent reports of tax revenue collected, the Fiscal Year 2010 budget is going to be at least $1.6 billion out of balance when the General Assembly convenes in January. Once that problem is fixed, we can look forward to continuing budget gaps in the FY 2011-12 budget, which will be passed this year. The shortfalls in that budget could reach $3 billion by the end of the biennium, unless the economy turns around more forcefully than anyone is now predicting.

In that climate, there’s not going to be much governing done. So voters may have put the right party in charge by electing Bob McDonnell governor and leaving a Republican majority in control of the House of Delegates.

The next governor and General Assembly are going to have to go at the budget with a hatchet. Both the previous Democratic governor’s Mark Warner and Tim Kaine had to go through rounds of budget cuts – but at least Republicans should enjoy it.

Because, according to their political rhetoric, they are the party that wants a smaller government that does less.

Now is their chance.

Those nagging problems that the state has faced for a decade, like transportation funding, teacher salaries, mental health funding, low unemployment compensation?

Forget about them.

At least for the next four years.

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Obama outfoxes Fox

From the outpouring of criticism in the media over the Obama White House’s decision to treat Fox News as what it is – the propaganda arm of the Republican Party – instead of as a legitimate news source, it appears that the presidents has hit a nerve.

It may be that we in the legitimate media are sensitive because the president has had the courage to do what we should have done a decade ago, calls things what they are and out Fox.

The news media are not in the habit of turning their guns on other media outlets.

And because of that, we’ve allowed the Fox masquerade to go on for years, poisoning our political culture and debasing journalism.

And let’s be clear about this, what Fox does isn’t what we in America call journalism. Rupert Murdoch, the Australian, who owns Fox News, has brought the partisan approach to news that’s found in the rest of the world to America. Given that Fox News has the highest rating of any of the cable news networks, apparently there was a ready market in the U.S. for news that only reinforces people’s prejudice and ignorance.

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