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I have to admit that I still have no answer to the question last week's article asked in its title. At this point, nothing more than sheer speculation can answer how President Obama and the White House would react to Proposition 19 passing.
Democrats, and President Obama in particular, have two opportunities to show some leadership right now, which come conveniently right before an election. The first of these opportunities is on the growing foreclosure crisis. The second is on the recent federal judge's ruling that will end the military's ability to enforce the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT) policy of excluding openly gay people from serving in the military. Democrats should use both of these opportunities as a chance to show some real leadership, and President Obama should be out in front leading this effort.
Frank Zappa was recently honored by the city of Baltimore (where he spent the first years of his life) by the erection of a bust in front of a public library. And, yes, I like to think Frank is up there somewhere smiling down on my usage of the words "erection" and "bust" in that sentence. More on that in a bit.
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.
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.
Since it's Monday, meaning this column will appear in Huffington Post as well as on my own website, I thought I'd do the courtesy of actually asking a fairly large, fairly Lefty audience what they thought, instead of just offering up my own explanations for the phenomenon. So, what do you think? I promise I'll tally everyone's comments in an effort to try to qualify what the Left (or at least, the portion of it reading this) really thinks about their disappointment with the president.
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.
President Barack Obama, in a White House Ramadan address last Friday, expressed his thoughts on the "Ground Zero mosque" debate, and in doing so not only got it exactly right, but also managed to change the debate in a considerable way which few have noticed yet. Because in his comments Friday (and in his off-the-cuff comment the next day), the president refocused the debate from the notion of "should be allowed" to the question of "should." In doing so, Obama elevated the level of the debate for both him and the project's detractors.
Last week, a federal judge handed down his decision in the case Perry v. Schwarzenegger, which said (in no uncertain terms) that gay marriage was a civil right, and should be guaranteed to all -- no matter what voters thought about it -- in much the same way that interracial marriage is a constitutional right guaranteed to all (which happened via a similarly-contentious federal court ruling in the 1960s). While this ruling was rightfully hailed by gay rights supporters, everyone knows that there is still a long road ahead until it reaches the Supreme Court, where the matter may be fundamentally decided.
August in Washington means the beginning of the official "silly season" of politics. This is because Congress takes the whole month off, and political news stories become rather thin on the ground. Intrepid political reporters, wishing to be on vacation themselves, get lazy and start going crazy over non-stories hyped into political wildfires seemingly overnight -- over the silliest of subjects. But these fun and games have not quite yet begun, because the Senate wrapped up work this week, and a few legal decisions of great moment were in the news.