[ Posted Wednesday, September 8th, 2010 – 17:06 UTC ]
President Barack Obama gave a wowser of a speech today. In it, he signaled that he's completely over his obsession with chasing the non-existent pipe dream of bipartisanship from Republicans. Obama dove into the 2010 election season fray with this speech, and appeared much more like the "Candidate Obama" that so many of his supporters have been missing for so long. In a speech that was touted as an announcement of a legislative package to get the economy moving faster, Obama not only rolled out his economic ideas, but also did a better job of defining the Democratic narrative than he's done in quite a while.
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[ Posted Tuesday, September 7th, 2010 – 17:07 UTC ]
So I'd like to send a plea to Rahm Emanuel: Please, please run for mayor of Chicago, Rahm. Please.
I don't think it'd be an exaggeration to say that many Democrats across this great land (although perhaps not those in Chicago) would support your run for the mayor's office one-hundred-and-ten percent. We'd be behind your run, Rahm. We'd be delighted to see you run for mayor of Chicago. We really, really would.
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[ Posted Friday, September 3rd, 2010 – 16:24 UTC ]
Jollification aside, though, we're still one week away from Congress returning to briefly do their job (or at least give the appearance of doing so), before they award themselves another month or so off, in order to campaign. Labor Day is right around the corner (or perhaps blowing past the corner at 75 miles per hour, if you live in the hurricane zone -- which contains, my television assures me, everything east of about Denver).
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[ Posted Thursday, September 2nd, 2010 – 16:57 UTC ]
But politics isn't social science, where causality must be rigorously proven. Politics is, to be blunt, whatever you can get away with saying to the voters. Think not B.F. Skinner, but rather P.T. Barnum, in other words. "Event X happened because party Y passed legislation Z" is an expected statement from a politician, on any subject under the sun. Call it "spin" if you will, but a large part of it lies in convincing the American public that you have a right to claim credit because of your policies.
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[ Posted Wednesday, September 1st, 2010 – 13:25 UTC ]
Augusts, to be frank, are not President Obama's friend. The past month was no different, at least as measured by public opinion polling. Obama was on a downswing heading into the month, and his numbers reflect this in a stark way. In other words, it was a bad month for Obama.
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[ Posted Tuesday, August 31st, 2010 – 18:53 UTC ]
Obama struck a rather humble tone in his remarks, which seemed just about right for the situation. He didn't go out of his way to either claim personal credit, or point the finger of blame. He even included President Bush, by name, in his remarks, after phoning him earlier today.
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[ Posted Friday, August 27th, 2010 – 16:36 UTC ]
The big fight this election season hasn't really dawned yet. And all the issues in the past will likely pale in comparison to the big fight that's just ahead of us. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (to his credit) set up this fight, right before the midterm election's homestretch. The big fight this year is going to be over extending the Bush tax cuts to the wealthiest two percent of American workers, and to the top three percent of American small businesses. On the other side are, respectively, ninety-eight percent of American workers, and ninety-seven percent of American small businesses. Not bad odds, even for Democrats.
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[ Posted Wednesday, August 25th, 2010 – 17:03 UTC ]
The answer, as with all things Tea Party, is (once again): "it's hard to be sure." We won't really know until after the midterm elections, and at that point so much "spin" will be on the airwaves one might (if one grew up in Kansas, for the sake of argument) be excused the immediate impulse to run for the tornado shelter in the backyard. In other words, even after the elections, the answer is going to depend on who is doing the answering.
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[ Posted Friday, August 20th, 2010 – 17:08 UTC ]
The media, quite obviously, has lost any capacity it once may have had for self-examination, to say nothing of its sense of irony. Every so often, this is proven beyond doubt by a single story. This, sadly, is one of those times.
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[ Posted Wednesday, August 18th, 2010 – 17:04 UTC ]
I should say, up front, that I think Democrats are going to lose a few seats in the Senate, but that they will regain control of the chamber after the votes are counted. But while the House remains volatile in this respect, the landscape for the Senate has noticeably improved for the Democrats. So there's a little good news and a little bad news for everyone.
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