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December 31, 2009
While much of the focus these past few months has been on Obama's drop in the polls, a far more critical problem for the president is the erosion in enthusiasm among his liberal base of support.
Presidents routinely bounce back from early bad polling to win reelection. Ronald Reagan lost a lot of popularity during the recession of the early 1980s, only to surge anew by 1984 to defeat Walter Mondale. And Bill Clinton looked like a sure loser in 1996 as Republicans marched to victory in the 1994 midterm elections.
Obama's polls are not too bad. His approval rating is just below 50 percent, and by the time he's up again in 2012 the economy will likely be looking better.
But an African American with the unlikely name of Barack Obama and the most liberal voting record in the Senate was elected in no small part because of the passionate following among his base of liberal voters. And because or the president's own actions this year, this group is growing frustrated. The fear among Obama advisers is not that liberals will suddenly start voting for Republicans, but that they will fail to show up in force on Election Day.
The president's abandonment of the public option for health care is seen by many liberals as an unacceptable surrender. Many of his most fervent supporters at the grass roots had spent months helping him sell the idea, only to see him drop it a little too easily to get a deal with moderate Democrats.
Meanwhile, his move to increase troops in Afghanistan by 30,000 troops is viewed as a sudden conversion to Bush-style militarism. And his failure to secure a tough minded world climate change agreement in Copenhagen adds to the disappointment.
The president has three years to repair all this. But the depth of the scars and their ability to heal will determine as much as anything whether he gets another four years in office.
- Bailey Kotyonok
November 18, 2009
Obama's health reform bill will not be voted on until January at the earliest, and his energy proposals will not get to the floor of the Senate until the spring of 2010. That spells trouble for the former, and death to the latter.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid recently did something mostly illegal in Washington: He spoke the inconvenient truth.
Reid ever so gently mentioned that health reform might have to wait until 2010. The White House went nuts, and Reid was soon backpedaling into 2009.
The White House had good reason. The closer the vote is to Election Day 2010, the more likely nervous Democrats are to oppose it. And once it gets past Christmas, there is no natural deadline to finish things up, and the debate could go into February or worse.
And the energy bill, Reid said yesterday, will not be considered until the spring. That is way to close too November. You can forget about cap and trade until at least after the 2010 elections. And perhaps forever.
Everyone is pretending the health bill will get voted on this year, but the calendar makes clear that this won't happen.
A vote on just to begin considering the bill is expected this week. If it fails, of course, that's the end of major reform. But even if Reid succeeds in getting the 60 votes he needs - he'll have to hold all his Democrats - the Senate will then go home for Thanksgiving. Then there will be at least a few weeks of debate, which eats up December, before a vote.
If the legislation passes, the House and Senate must then negotiate a compromise bill. This normally takes weeks or months on major legislation. Then, more weeks of debate in the Senate before final passage. So you can see, there will be no health care reform this year.
Bailey Kotyonok
November 8, 2009
One thing to remember about the 2009 election results is that may mean something important, they may not mean too much, or they may not mean anything at all. In fact, they can mean whatever you want them to!
Forget all the polls which showed that people were concerned with the economy and that Obama was not a factor in their votes. He was. There was an overwhelming shift to the Republicans in both Virginia and New Jersey, and it is certain that the Democratic president was lurking somewhere in these voter's minds.
And the victory dance Democrats are doing over their win in New York's 23rd district is either an attempt to delude or a self-delusion. The victory of the Democratic candidate came over an uncharismatic Conservative Party nominee. How may third party members are there in Congress? None. And the GOP candidate, who had withdrawn, threw her support to the Democrat, probably confusing enough voters to provide the margin of victory.
But before Republicans begin talking about a seismic shift in the politics of the land, they need to remember that New Jersey and Virginia are notoriously poor bellwethers for the rest of the country. New Jerseyites were finished with the deeply unpopular Corzine. And the economy does indeed play a strong role in generating sentiment to boot the ruling party, which voters did in NJ and Virginia.
In 2001, George W. Bush's first year in office, Democrats supplanted Republican gubernatorial rule in both Virginia and New Jersey. The result? Republicans picked up seats in the House and Senate in 2002 and George W. Bush won reelection in 2004.
So go ahead an attach a strong meaning to the 2009 elections. It may say more about you then the elections themselves.
Copyright 2009 by Bailey Kotyonok
October 27, 2009
Health Reform: Thanks for the Memories
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has decided that the Senate health bill will include a government insurance option. President Obama had made it clear that he didn't have to have it, and no wonder. It is very hard to see how a bill including the a public option can get the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster.
Democrats have 60 votes, of course, if you include Independent Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut. But he is already making noises that he can't support the public option. Republican Olympia Snowe of Maine, the only Republican in the whole entire Congress who seemed inclined to side with the Democrats, won't support the version Reid is touting.
Other Democrats from conservative or moderate states like Nebraska, North Dakota, Missouri, Virginia, Louisiana and Arkansas will back the idea mainly if they're ready to end their political careers. Whether it's good policy or not is besides the point. The politics don't seem to add up.
Why has Reid done this? Who knows. Maybe he will pull it back at the last minute somehow - perhaps by allowing an amendment to strip it from the bill - and then he can at least claim to his liberal caucus members that he gave it a shot.
Or perhaps it's just that some form of a government insurance program has been the Holy Grail of Democrats for so long. This is the last time Congress will consider major health reform for at least a decade or two. The president and both Houses of Congress are Democratic. It's now or never for government insurance. It just may be that Reid and the other Democratic leaders can't resist trying, even if it means blowing the whole thing up.
Copyright 2009 by Bailey Kotyonok
October 20, 2009
President Barack Obama's health care overhaul initiative, now in the endgame on Capitol Hill, may imperil his reelection effort and Democratic control of Congress if it passes. Health reform, in the way it's being done, is a big, bad turnoff to large swaths of voters he and the Democrats need.
Lets start with seniors. To pay for its proposal, the most moderate of the bills - that of the Senate Finance Committee - slashes billions from Medicare. The administration calls this wasteful Medicare spending. Of course, not everyone agrees. Some seniors will not like the cuts, and Republicans will be there to tell them why they shouldn't.
But even if Obama is right about the programs he is reducing, Medicare is going broke. If "wasteful" cuts are used to help pay for health reform, there's fewer spending reductions left to help save the program. And that means benefit cuts and tax increases are all that's left to save Medicare. Seniors will understand this, or will be told it loud and clear by Republicans.
And the thing about seniors is, they vote. And there's a lot of them in Florida, a state Obama needs to win in 2012. And there's plenty everywhere else too. And they don't like people messing with Medicare.
Similarly, a health reform plan that is likely to cost close to $1 trillion is going to make everyone very uncomfortable as deficits skyrocket. The Democrats will say that it is "fully paid for" with spending cuts and new "fees" and tax increases. But Republicans will question whether the cuts are "real" at every turn. And everyone will wonder how, having already raised taxes and moved to cut spending, Obama is going to trim rising deficits.
The problem for Democrats is that their takeover of the House of Representatives was fueled by the election of Blue Dogs -lawmakers from moderate to conservative districts whose big issue is deficit reduction and fiscal restraint - and by Democrats in conservative or moderate states like Nebraska, Indiana, Montana and Virginia. By passing health reform, Democrats are risking large losses in the House and causing problems for moderate senators.
Coming up for Democrats - tough votes on energy legislation that Republicans say is little more than a massive tax increase, and on immigration reform that will legalize millions of undocumented workers. If Democrats hope to hold moderate districts and states they snatched from Republican, and Obama wants to keep his swing voters, victory on the floor of the House and Senate could plant the seeds of defeat at the ballot box.
Copyright 2009 by Bailey Kotyonok
September 14, 2009
The Difficulty of Negotiating With a Twit
It is afternoon at the presidential palace in Pyongyang, North Korea. Kang Kwan-yong, Chief of Staff to President Kim Jong-Il, has a proposal for the Dear Leader to try to help him get his message out and improve his image throughout the world.
Kang: “Dear Leader, sweetness of the mountain stream, I wish to present to you a new idea that will magnify your wisdom and reflect it throughout the world.”
Kim: “Oh that sounds good. Go ahead. What is it?”
Kang: “Dear Leader, I wish to introduce you to a new technology that will allow you to reach millions more people with your message of peace and enlightenment.”
Kim: “I love technology! I have Play Station 3. Tell me what this new thing is.”
Kang: “Thank you, Dear Leader. The technology is a website called Twitter. All you do is send out little pearls of wisdom and bit by bit you acquire new followers.”
Kim: “What are you talking about? Everybody is my follower!”
Kang: “I mean in other lands, Dear Leader.”
Kim: “I see. OK.”
Kang: “Now please look at the magic screen. You type in any message you want of 140 characters or less.”
Kim: “What is a character?”
Kang: “Well, it’s a letter, a space or some punctuation, like a period or a question mark.”
Kim: “An ampersand?”
Kang: “Well, yes, an ampersand too. Now let’s sign you up. First, Dear Leader, you need a User Name. How about - ”
Kim: “Hot Momma.”
Kang: “Hot Momma?”
Kim: “Hot Momma. I saw it in a movie. An American movie. It’s very funny. Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha.”
Kang: “OK, Dear Leader, I’ll just type it in . . .”
Kim: “Call me Hot Momma now.”
Kang: “Excuse me, sir?”
Kim: “Call me Hot Momma."
Kang: “Really? Um, OK, Hot Momma -”
Kim: “WHAT DID YOU CALL ME??”
Kang: “I'm sorry, Dear Leader – “
Kim: “Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha. Look how scared you are! I’m just joking with you. That’s OK. Call me Hot Momma.”
Kang: “Yes, well, OK, you’re all set up. You can write your first message.”
Kim: “I want to write 141 characters.”
Kang: “Well, sir, the people at Twitter only allow 140 charact-“
Kim: “WHO IS THE DEAR LEADER? WHO IS THE HOT MOMMA? ME OR TWITTER?”
Kang: “You are.”
Kim: “OK. Now we’re getting somewhere. I’m typing in the following: ‘The nuclear bomb I’m dropping on your head is for scientific research purposes only!’ Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha! Only 84 characters. There. This is fun. Do I have any followers yet?”
Kang: “Let me see. Well, only two, but you’re just starting out. OK, there’s me, I signed up to be your follower, and then there’s someone named Bill from Langley, Virginia in the United States.”
Kim: “Oh cools! Let me think of some more messages. How about a riddle. ‘What do you get when you mix South Korea and ten plutonium bombs? . . . Five Party Talks!’ Get it? Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha! Only 90 characters. I love the Six Party talks. I miss them.”
Kang: "Dear Leader."
Kim: "Hot Momma!"
(Pause)
Kang: “Hot Momma, the hope for this is that you will attract new followers throughout the world. I really do fear you may be scaring people.”
Kim: “I have another riddle: What time is it when you do an angry walk-out from the Six Party Talks?”
Kang: “What time is it?”
Kim: “Time to make another nuclear bomb! Ah-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha. I like Twitter! I like Twitter"
Kim: “OK, let me try another Twitter. How about this: ‘President Obama, the people of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea perceive with great interest your desire for peaceful discussions.’ Ah-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha . . .”
Copyright 2009 by Bailey Katyonok
August 14, 2009
It is a lazy June afternoon in the fashionable Buenos Aires apartment of a woman named Maria, who is entertaining her boyfriend Mark. He is far from home, and in the idyll of their lovers’ nest he cannot hear the growing clamor back in the United States. There, people are beginning to realize that Mark – that is, Mark Sanford, the governor of South Carolina and a prominent Republican presidential prospect - is nowhere to be found. As he polishes off a glass of wine, a thought wholly unrelated to the business of South Carolina occurs to him. He speaks it.
“Have I told you how much I love your toes, my dear? They are your best feature.”
“Thank you, my love. More paella?”
“No. Another glass of Malbec, though. You are the peachiest peach in my orchard. I want to shout my love for you from the roof of the governor’s mansion!”
“Well don’t do that. Not yet. What are all these silly ropes and hooks you brought? And why were you wearing those leather boots?”
“I was planning to climb to your window and leap into your bed, my love.”
“That’s ridiculous. You fell off the stepladder last time you were here.”
“I told my wife and my chief of staff I was going hiking.”
“Hiking? Okay, good. They will believe it?”
“They might.”
“What do you mean, ‘They might?’ Listen, would you please feed the piranhas?”
“You mean issue a press release? Announcing our love?”
“No, I mean if you’re not going to finish the dish I made you then feed the chicken and the chorizo to my fish. So who is in charge of South Carolina when you are not there?”
“Well . . . nobody my dear. But it’s OK. The state runs itself. The worst that could happen is that we’re attacked by North Carolina!”
“These North Carolinians, are they dangerous?”
“No, my passion fruit. It was just a joke. States don’t attack each other.”
“So you left your state alone to deal with hurricanes or a terrorist attack and you didn’t put anyone in charge? What will everyone think? They will call you irresponsible. How are you going to get to the White House?”
“What is the difference when we have each other? Your lovely earlobes are –“
“Excuse me. You promised me you are going to be president and then you are going to divorce the bitch and make me first lady and we’re going to host a tango competition in the East Room! And you think you can just disappear for a few days while North Carolina is preparing to attack and it’s going to be fine with everyone?”
“Oh, my fiery Latina. I feel like a teenager again beholding my tigress of Buenos Aires.”
“Are you stupid?”
The governor’s cell phone rings. We hear Elvis singing “Love Me Tender.” He looks at the phone.
“It’s my chief of staff.”
“Why don’t you get it and tell him you’ll be home tomorrow.”
“Hello?”
“Uh, governor, how are you? We’ve been trying to reach you.”
“Yes, well, not much cell phone coverage out here on the Appalachian trail, you know. How’s everything back there?”
“OK. How’s your hike going?”
“Oh, great, lots of wildlife, just saw a bear and a tigress and a beaver and . . .”
“Sir, did you just say you saw a tiger?”
“No, of course not. A jaguar – I mean a mountain lion, what do you call those things?”
“Sir, why is your car parked at Atlanta International Airport?”
“My car’s at the airport?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t believe my car has been stolen!!”
“Governor, I think you need to get back here. People are asking a lot of questions.”
“Yes, of course. You watch the fort over there. Make sure North Carolina doesn’t try to attack us . . .”
“I knew it!”
“Sir, who was that?”
“Oh, it’s – uh – I ran into some Indians out here. Look, I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Please, governor, as soon as possible.”
“Yes. Goodbye.”
“OK, are you happy now, Mr. Big Shot? We’re finished. You think I’m going to come back to the United States with you to sit around stupid Charleston eating grits and melting in the heat? You promised me a lot. Now your career is over.”
“Nonsense. Everyone does this. Look at Bill Clinton – he’s revered around the world. How about Prince Charles – finally got the woman he loves. He’s still on track to be king if his momma ever gets out of the way. Look at Kennedy, all the girlfriends he had, swimming around the White House pool. I can do what I want. I’m going back to South Carolina to tell the world I love you! Yes, I love you! . . . Hey, now look at that . . . You can see a perfect image of me reflecting off the water in your fish tank.”
“Darling, the next flight out is in three hours. You need to get to the airport now!”
“It’s a perfect, perfect reflection. What do you say I just stay here a while and look at it?”
Copyright 2009 by Bailey Kotyonok
July 27, 2009
The Stimulus is Sinking Health Overhaul
President Barack Obama is blaming Republicans, Washington inertia, fear of change, the insurance industry, and assorted other enemies for the stalling of his health care initiative.
And while his plans certainly do have real enemies, the stimulus bill that he helped craft - and that he could have shaped to a greater degree than he did - is an important part of the reason he's in the fix he's in today.
All agreed at the time it was approved early this year that some form of a federal stimulus to the economy was necessary. But with a price tag of $789 billion, the public expected a lot of bang for the significant buck.
Instead, the Obama administration and its Democratic allies loaded on a lot of programs that they wanted anyway and that wouldn't get ginned up for months at best. While his White House sold the stimulus as an immediate necessity, the president today describes the measure as a "two-year" plan that was never intended to work right away.
Which begs the question: Why not? With unemployment rising above where the White House promised it would go and prevailing uncertainty about when the economy will improve, Republicans are attacking the stimulus as a waste of money. Their subtext is clear: do you want to allow Obama to spend more of your money for questionable purposes?
Obama could have solved this problem, at least partially, by adding to legislation more in the way tax cuts that could be taken immediately. This might have induced at least some Republicans to support the plan and gotten a little more money out the door more quickly.
And the Democrats should have resisted Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's call to "never waste a crisis" and spend all that money on a Democratic wish list of long term projects.
The GOP would be less able to criticize the stimulus, and the economy would have gotten more of an immediate jolt.
And the public would feel more comfortable doling out additional money for health care.
Bailey Kotyonok
June 1, 2000
As you watch events in Washington unfold this summer, remember that everything you see must be reflected through the prism of Obama's top priority for the year and for his presidency, health care system overhaul.
As you probably know, Obama wants to provide universal coverage - likely with a strong federal role - and introduce some new efficiencies.
One thing you will see is a gradual clearing of the decks so that the president can focus on passing his priority, which he must do this year, before the 2010 election year begins in January. Congress will continue hashing out bills this summer, and the pivotal battles will be fought this fall.
So when you hear Obama say he wants Sotomayor confirmed before the end of July because he wants her to participate in the Supreme Court's choosing of its caseload in September, this may be true. But what he especially wants is to not have to deal with a battle over his Supreme Court nominee while he's trying to complete the health care bill.
If you see Democrats in Congress start to slow-walk the energy bill - with the carbon cap and trade program and all the fuel efficiency and renewable energy goodies in it - it's because Congress is not going to pass a major energy and health legislation in the same year, and Obama wants the health bill.
Obama has even told Israel to give diplomacy with Iran until the end of the year. Any relationship to the health bill? Depends on your level of cynicism.
Having passed the stimulus measure earlier this year, Obama's other focus this summer will be on the economy and its expected improvement. You will hear a lot about how the stimulus bill is aiding the economy. The president is counting on this and his health care bill to provide a substantial push toward his reelection.
Bailey Kotyonok
