As to what will happen in November of this year is anyone's guess, but Obama has set his mind to make history again by doing the best he can to keep the House and the Senate. If he loses one chamber, the next two years start looking shaky in terms of legislative work.
Passing health care reform was historic, and puts Obama in the FDR league of greatness. Work on financial sector reform also looks promising. Success on health made work on finance easy.
Obama might get tempted to make as much headway as possible on immigration as well. His commitment to the issue is beyond doubt, and the Hispanic caucus might even argue that putting immigration reform front and center will ensure crucial Hispanic turnout. And the Hispanic voters tend to cast the deciding vote.
That might as well be the case, but my instinct tells me the best strategy would be keep the immigration issue alive but saving actual work on it to begin in early 2011, hopefully to be completed by the end of that year, if not earlier. Some of the passions exhibited during the health care debate were to do with a really bad economy. People were hurting and anxious.
Health care reform, financial sector reform, comprehensive immigration reform: these are huge issues, and huge accomplishments when work is completed.
By the end of 2011 though, as Obama gears for his reelection effort, he is going to have to talk deficits and debt loud and clear. He will have to run on the platform that he will have balanced the budget early in his second term. Actually hinting towards that eventuality might be a great theme to keep echoing in the lead up to November this year itself.
A nuanced strategy would be to begin work on immigration this year but barely, so it does rouse Hispanic turnout at the polls, enough to tilt the tide in favor of Obama keeping both chambers, but to do actual work after the election is over. It is because immigration is a volatile issue. The top priority for the rest of this year for Obama has to be to keep the House and keep the Senate.
Barack Obama has momentum. The guy has wind behind his back. Having turned the Great Recession into an upswing, the guy is on his way to his original agenda. History will tell you this guy is supposed to suffer losses in November. Midterm elections are not for presidents. But this guy has a track record of defying history. Black people were not supposed to be president. He became one. Now he is on track to defy history again and do well in November. Passing health care will cement his grip on Congress so he can go on to do bigger and better things.
If this guy can cure the Great Recession, if this guy can deliver Universal Health, I am going to argue this guy could even deliver Peace In The Middle East. Is there an upper limit to how many Nobel Peace Prizes any one individual can get? I am wondering.
This guy has confounded me since I got to know of him. His successes seem so effortless. I guess he is extraordinarily charming. He keeps his cool. He stays positive. He has challenged some of my assumptions.
I was one of those who at some level thought his talk of a new kind of politics was at some level naive, but I was willing to cut him corners as long as he kept scoring political successes, and I watched him primary after primary, caucus after caucus. Finally at one point I declared myself a student of his new kind of politics.
How can you make progress on race if you don't even talk about race, I thought. This guy has done as much for race relations as anyone in history already, and he does not seem to believe in talking about race, not much.
There is tremendous power in positivity, Obama teaches by example. Stay positive, and get things done.
There is this intoxicating mix of idealism, pragmatism and ambition in his personality that really gets me. He smells of possibilities. When he does big things, instead of looking exhausted, he makes you feel like bigger still things are possible, and are in the works.
He has shifted so many major paradigms. He has redefined so many old ways of doing business.
This guy delivers health care, and then he begins his presidency. That is what I am feeling right now. I love this guy as much as ever.
If Obama keeps the House and the Senate in November, he will have defied history. I think he will. November 2010 will be a repeat of November 2008. History will be defied.
New York Times As Health Vote Awaits, Future Of A Presidency Waits, Too the presidential equivalent of an all-in bet on the poker table ..... his hopes of passing other ambitious legislation like an overhaul of immigration and a market-based cap on carbon emissions to curb climate change.... the legislative procedure Democrats are using to avoid another filibuster.....Democrats have bitter memories. “A lot of them have P.T.S.D. from 1994,” said a White House official, referring to post-traumatic stress disorder. .......Mr. Clinton’s problem was not taking on health care but losing on health care. .......an opposition with its own challenges A Broader View of Health Care if at least 25,000 people die per year for lack of insurance (it may be twice that), that’s a greater toll than America suffered in World War II Access, Access, Access one-quarter of Californians are now uninsured......Republicans today are lined up overwhelmingly against a health care package that is more modest and moderate than one that Richard Nixon proposed in the early ’70s........American women are 11 times as likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth as Irish women. The average person in Honduras or Vietnam is expected to live longer than the average African-American in New Orleans.........there is one group of Americans who do fine in international comparisons — and that’s the 65-plus crowd. They have Medicare........uninsured people are significantly more likely to die than insured people. That’s because diseases are caught at later stages on uninsured people.......the best way to hold down abortion numbers is to improve access to health care Obama’s Strong First Round Fleeing A Sinking Governorship
Robert Morgenthau, Manhattan District Attorney, 1975-2009 .... he grew up knowing Roosevelt. ..... In 1961, after twelve years of practicing corporate law, Morgenthau accepted an appointment from President John F. Kennedy as United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. He was the Democratic nominee for governor of New York in 1962, but was defeated by the incumbent Nelson Rockefeller. He then was reappointed U.S. Attorney and served for the remainder of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. As a United States Attorney Morgenthau established a special unit to investigate securities fraud and prosecuted highly publicized bribery cases against city officials and IRS attorneys and accountants....... He was eventually forced out of office at the end of 1969 ...... seek the Democratic nomination for Governor in 1970 ...... Morgenthau returned to private life until 1974, when he was elected to the office of District Attorney of New York County. This was a special election caused by the death of Frank Hogan, who had served as D.A. for more than thirty years. Morgenthau defeated Hogan's interim successor, Richard Kuh. He was elected to a full term in 1977 and was re-elected seven times. He was not opposed in a general election from 1985 to 2005. ...... In the general election, he was once again the candidate for all political parties in the election, having been nominated by the Democrats, Republicans and the Working Families Party. Morgenthau won re-election with more than 99% of the vote....... On February 27, 2009 Morgenthau announced that he would not seek re-election in 2009, saying "I never expected to be here this long ... [R]ecently I figured that I’d served 25 years beyond the normal retirement age." He was replaced by Cyrus Vance, Jr., a prosecutor under Morgenthau and the son of former President Jimmy Carter's secretary of state Cyrus Vance. Morgenthau officially endorsed Vance on June 25. Vance went on to win the primary election on September 15, 2009 and the subsequent general election on November 3. On January 20, 2010, Morgenthau joined the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. ...... Notable Assistant District Attorneys under Morgenthau ...... Sonia Sotomayor (1979-1984): Current Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Andrew Cuomo (1984-1985): Current New York State Attorney General, and previously served as the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Bill Clinton. Eliot Spitzer (1986-1992): Former Governor and Attorney General of New York State. John F. Kennedy, Jr. (1989-1993): First son of President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy. Former journalist, lawyer, pilot, and socialite. .... The character of District Attorney Adam Schiff (played by actor Steven Hill), the New York district attorney in the long running TV series Law and Order, was loosely based on Morgenthau. It is reported that Morgenthau was a fan of the character.
If the FBI has a file on me, that would make the FBI people motherfuckers. My guy is in the White House. That would be your boss, assholes. I got the White House. What else do I need to get for you to stop engaging in racist demonization?
I first witnessed this tendency to demonize in Kentucky in 1997. I did not like it. I am not putting up with it. You are going to back off. Fuck 9/11. This is nothing to do with 9/11. Your racism is older than 9/11.
"The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who fears a lost decade, said in a lecture at the London School of Economics last summer that he has “no idea” how the economy could quickly return to strong, sustainable growth."
I think there are obvious parallels between the Great Depression and what we are going through right now, but it is also important to realize we are treading new territory.
(1) The Bailout
That was necessary. It is interesting that many of the banks have already paid back most of the money. I am on record at this blog saying that is what will happen, although I did not see it happening this fast. But they have not paid back all the money, so.
The bailout was putting the fire out. Without the bailout it would not have been a Great Recession but Great Depression II.
(2) The Stimulus
It was necessary but insufficient. When it was put together, I was not shocked by the size of it. What did bother me was it focused too much on the past and too little on the future. I was surprised how little was allocated to broadband, for example.
(3) Banking Regulation
Work here has not gone as well as needed. Wall Street needs a new set of pants. Take off the boxer shorts. Put on some pants.
(4) Public Works Programs
Basically I am arguing for a second stimulus package that might be similar in size to the first one. This would be one pig push to create a truly post-industrial America. The first big wave of job creation will have to be the government's work, otherwise the 10% unemployment figure is feeling pretty comfortable where it is. You did not rely on the market for the bailout, or the stimulus, you sure do not expect the market to do the regulation work. That same courtesy has to be extended to job creation.
Most of the job creation will happen in the education and health sectors. Instead of creating a Tennessee Valley Authority, you would create a program to hire a ton of mentors to kick-start the inner cities, for example.
Universal and faster broadband is fundamental to this very idea. That is the centerpiece. That basic physical infrastructure is what will take both education and health to their next levels. Obama has to build that universal, faster broadband infrastructure like Eisenhower built the interstate highway system. Without that America is not going to become a post-industrial society. People will have to be plugged in.
The idea has to be for the government to hire five million people. If you are going to do it anyway, it makes no sense to do it later, or do it in small steps. Creating new jobs has to be the centerpiece of the second stimulus bill.
Education and health will have to be reimagined. That is why getting health care right is so key. It can't just be about adding entitlement programs for people who are known will not pay in, although everyone has to be covered. It also has to be about bringing the costs down across the board. You inject technology and the market forces into the sector.
On Deficits And Debts
The time to reign in the deficit and the debt will come, but that time is not now. Once the recovery is full, the political wind will blow in that direction.
Anthony Weiner has really picked up the cudgels on behalf of the public option, which seems to be the American phrase for the single payer system.
I was glad I showed up for this event on the Upper West Side.
Weiner is also talked of as a potential Mayor candidate, if only because he has run a few times before. Four years are a long time in politics. If I had to guess I would say Weiner will be better off seeking seniority in Congress. He is a good legislator. In the executive branch he is not proven material.
My question to Weiner was, Obama could easily have said we just had the toughest economic crisis in 70 years, we are not doing health care this year, but he did not go that route, he stuck to his promise to work on health care during his first year in office, and that is the reason you and others are getting to talk about health care this year rather than next year, or two or more years from now, do you think the president deserves credit for the fact that you are talking health care today?
(1) Obama did not run for president to fix the biggest economic crisis in 70 years. But he responded well to it. And now we have an economic recovery.
(2) He could easily have used the crisis as an excuse to postpone work on health care. He did not. He is the reason we are talking health care right now. Health care is the domestic version of Mideast peace. Mind you, presidents have been trying to do this for the past half century, this dude just might deliver. This is a highly emotionally charged issue. Chances are that one thing you want is not what everyone else wants and, in a democracy, everyone counts.
(3) His first call as president was to Abbas. This dude is serious about Mideast peace. And he might even deliver. That is like handling the toughest domestic issue, and the toughest global issue. I would give him an A for trying and an A+ for achievement, once we have the fruits.
(4) He won the Nobel Peace Prize for work already done. He has done the political equivalent of curing global warming. The dude has fundamentally changed the global political climate. Yo Americanos, your standing is up in the world, thanks to Obama.
(5) He is on schedule to tackle immigration reform, another emotionally charged issue.
This guy symbolizes a new kind of politics. Governing is different from campaigning, in many ways harder. Can you support the guy in office? You supported him when he ran.
Barack Obama, this past year, has done the political equivalent of curing global warming. That is what he got the Nobel Prize for. It has been well deserved. It has been for work already done. His election has rectified 500 years of world history, or at least has put us on the path to that rectification. His style has been is stark contrast to that of Bush. Bush was a major league polarizing agent. Obama has approached the global stage with humility, and a sense of hope and optimism. It is amazing to me how cool he has been while the biggest economic crisis in 70 years smacked him in his face even before he got elected, long before he took office. It has been gutsy of him to not postpone health care reform. He could easily have postponed that work citing the bad economy. But he stuck to it.
Health care reform is a tough one. All presidents for the past half century have tried and failed the effort. This one just might do it.
Staying true to his agenda in the face of the tough economic turn of things I have found rather impressive.
A lot of his supporters have not learned the difference between an election campaign and governing. How do you support a candidate once he is in office? That is different from when your candidate is running for the office? You have to educate yourself on how the political process works. You have to be respectful of what might be possible.
Middle East peace is the global version of health care reform. Those two are the knotty issues. Obama seems to be making headway on both. I am impressed. He is making progress because his approach is different. Remember when he talked of a new kind of politics? When he talked of bringing people together? Guess what, the guy meant it.
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gave us 
is going to give 
and what we are going through right now, but it is also important to realize we are treading new territory.
but Great Depression II. 
needs a new set of pants. Take off the boxer shorts. Put on some pants.
that might be similar in size to the first one. This would be one pig push to create a truly 
America. The first big wave of job creation will have to be the government's work, otherwise the 10% 
figure is feeling pretty comfortable where it is. You did not rely on the 
for the bailout, or the stimulus, you sure do not expect the 
will happen in the 
and 
is fundamental to this very idea. That is the centerpiece. That basic physical infrastructure is what will take both 
and 
to their next levels. 
has to build that universal, faster broadband infrastructure like 
built the interstate highway system. Without that America is not going to become a 
and the 
into the sector. 
and the 
will come, but that time is not now. Once the recovery is full, the political wind will blow in that direction. ![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=1e93b194-aa4f-4674-b1a3-f24a9002ff74)
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