The latest news in the on-going Soap Opera….
From Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire:
Prosecutors investigating John Edwards spent several hours re-interviewing his former aide, Andrew Young, “suggesting they are weighing the strength of their chief witness before deciding whether to indict the former candidate,” the AP reports.
“The prosecutors could be interested in taking a closer look at Young to see how he’ll hold up as a witness, since his credibility could be problematic.”
Filed under Elections, North Carolina, Politics
Interesting article from Matthew Dowd at the National Journal…
He also makes the point that only 1 Democratic president has lost his re-election campaign-Jimmy Carter.
So what combination of factors in this complex system of politics must come together to cause a catastrophe for Obama politically that would result in his defeat?
I see three, and all have to be in place and reinforce each other for Obama to lose. First, the economy in 2012 has to be either stagnant or in decline in the 10 or so key electoral states (especially the ones in the Midwest) as he heads into the election. This would mean that the economy is creating very few net jobs in 2012 and that prices (including food and gas) are still rising.
Second, no new major international crisis arises that causes people to rally behind Obama because of his competent handling of it. And I emphasize the words “new,” “major,” and “competent.” Afghanistan and Iraq devolving again into a problem will not help Obama, and actually may hurt him because our country has basically moved on from the situation in both places.
Third, a Republican nominee has to emerge who is charismatic; is a very good communicator; is in touch with the country’s economic and social needs; and is a new brand of GOP leader whom many younger voters can connect with. Think of what it took in 1980 to defeat the Democratic incumbent—Ronald Reagan and crises galore.
All three factors must converge for Obama to lose, and two of them are needed to drive his job approval down to a place, as I have written before, that makes it difficult for him to win. As one can see, these three elements don’t include how much money the Democratic National Committee and Obama have at their disposal; how much cash the Republican National Committee or the Republican nominee raises; the quality of each campaign staff; the legislative machinations of Congress; or the use of modern technology in the campaigns (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.). Those are all tactical factors that, ultimately, will have little influence on whether Obama wins or loses.
Two of these factors—the economy and an international crisis—are basically out of the GOP’s hands (in many ways, they are out of the Obama campaign’s control as well). Republicans should only be concerned with nominating the candidate who can give them a shot at winning if the two other factors are in place. And note that I didn’t add longtime political office-holding to the qualifications. Experience is nice, but it isn’t necessary in this environment.
Understanding the factors that could cost Obama the election allows us to not get distracted by the much-hashed-over details that matter little, such as money and technology. Focusing on what’s really important is a very good lesson for politics—and life.
via NationalJournal.com – Can Obama Lose? – Friday, April 1, 2011.
Some very good news from the National Journal…
Not just for President Obama’s re-election, but for all of us…
I’m tired of rich white GOP men and crazy white GOP women- with an outrageous sense of entitlement -thinking they should run everything…
It’s time for more diversity in Government – and we sure won’t get that from the GOP.
The faster our government representation becomes multi-cultural, like our society is, the better.
The next America is arriving ahead of schedule. And it could rattle assumptions about the coming presidential election.
Last week’s release of national totals from the 2010 census showed that the minority share of the population increased over the past decade in every state, reaching levels higher than demographers anticipated almost everywhere, and in the nation as a whole. If President Obama and Democrats can convert that growth into new voters in 2012, they can get a critical boost in many of the most hotly contested states and also seriously compete for some highly diverse states such as Arizona and Georgia that until now have been reliably red.
“One of the strengths of our candidacy in 2008 is, we had a broader battlefield; what these numbers suggest is that those same opportunities are there [for 2012], and there are new ones to consider,” David Axelrod, who is expected to be Obama’s senior campaign strategist, told National Journal.
via NationalJournal.com – The Next America – Friday, April 1, 2011.
Except mainly the press…
The Usual Suspects from Congress came and almost outnumbered the attendees….
Best news I’ve had all week…
This thing finally seems to be fading out- now if only the press will report that fact more…
This is a start. From the Washington Post:
A sparse crowd of tea party activists gathered beneath the U.S. Capitol on Thursday to urge Congress to cut more spending from the current federal budget and to cheer on some of their favorite politicians, including Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Mike Pence (R-Ind.) and Steve King (R-Iowa).
One organizer estimated that a couple of hundred protesters had gathered near the Robert A. Taft bell tower north of the Capitol at lunchtime Thursday. According to a media sign-in sheet, at least 50 of those present were journalists documenting the latest tea party rally in Washington.
via Tea party activists rally for deeper spending cuts at Capitol – The Washington Post.
Filed under Elections, Politics, Tea Party, Uncategorized
Heartless…
From ThinkProgress.com:
As Foreign Policy’s Josh Rogin notes, one moment of the hearing provided a particularly startling fact about H.R. 1, the House Republicans’ bill for continuing appropriations to fund the government. USAID administrator Rajiv Shah explained to Rep. Charlie Dent (R-PA) that the agency was committed to its mission of battling global poverty, but that H.R. 1 would severely gut its ability to battle easily preventable deaths among children — and even lead to the deaths of as many as 70,000 kids globally. Dent, apparently unmoved by Shah’s testimony, immediately asked to change the subject:
SHAH: We estimate, and I believe these are very conservative estimates, that H.R. 1 would lead to 70,000 kids dying. Of that 70,000, 30,000 would come from malarian control programs that would have to be scaled back, specifically. The other 40,000 is broken out as 24,000 who would die because of a lack of support for immunizations and other investments, and 16,000 would be because of the lack of skilled attendants at birth. […] There’s a way to do this that doesn’t have to cost lives. […]
DENT: Can I just quickly change subjects?
The GOP Presidential nominating process really is going to be a circus…
Or a freak show….
Your call…
Here is how Steve Kornacki at Salon.com calls it:
For respectable Republicans, the embarrassment potential may be at an all-time high. The party is a year away from picking its next presidential candidate and never in the modern era has it faced a vacuum like this.
Sure, the odds are still strong that the GOP will ultimately settle on a “harmless enough” general election candidate — someone sufficiently generic and inoffensive to ensure that the party doesn’t fall far below its natural level of support in the fall of 2012. But the road from here to the convention looks unusually — and, if you’re a Democrat, comically — rocky for Republicans.
The party’s base — which nominated several utterly unelectable candidates in several high-stakes Senate races last year — is in revolt, thirsting for purity and likely to accede to a Romney or Pawlenty nomination only with reluctance. Before then, it figures to be tempted by an atypically large collection of red meat-spouting long shots: Michele Bachman, Newt Gingrich, John Bolton, Rick Santorum, maybe even Sarah Palin or (why not?) Herman Cain — personally and politically polarizing extremists who validate a damaging stereotype of the Obama-era GOP. It’s not impossible that one of these ideologues will fare surprisingly well in one or more of the early nominating contests next year (most likely activist-dominated Iowa).
It is this possibility that makes 2012 potentially different from previous Republican contests, in which the party has generally — but not always — succeeded in keeping the embarrassments to a minimum. Here’s a look at the most embarrassing Republican candidates to be taken (at least somewhat) seriously by the media since 1980:
MORE: Before Bachmann: The 5 craziest GOP candidates of the modern era – 2012 Elections – Salon.com.
From Joe Klein at Time Magazine on the 2012 Republican Presidential Candidates:
This is my 10th presidential campaign, Lord help me. I have never before seen such a bunch of vile, desperate-to-please, shameless, embarrassing losers coagulated under a single party’s banner. They are the most compelling argument I’ve seen against American exceptionalism. Even Tim Pawlenty, a decent governor, can’t let a day go by without some bilious nonsense escaping his lizard brain. And, as Greg Sargent makes clear, Mitt Romney has wandered a long way from courage. There are those who say, cynically, if this is the dim-witted freak show the Republicans want to present in 2012, so be it. I disagree. One of them could get elected. You never know.
Poor guy…
Just can’t scrape by on $174,000 a year…
Like I’ve repeatedly said, these guys in Washington live in a different world…
Duffy was asked about his pay by a constituent who said he had taken a job as a bus driver when his work as a builder dried up, and that his wife – a schoolteacher – would be taking a pay cut under the state’s new budget plan.
“I have six children and I’ve gone for roughly seven months with six kids and no paycheck,” Duffy replied, referring to the period when he left his job as Ashland County district attorney during the 2010 election campaign. “It was worth it for me to do that. I believed in what I was doing.”
Duffy told listeners he had cut his congressional office budget and didn’t vote on his own salary — “I got there on Jan. 5” — and that his federal health care and pension benefits are not nearly as good as they were when he worked for the state of Wisconsin. He described state benefits as “gold-plated.”
“The benefits that were offered to me as a congressman don’t even compare to the benefits that you get as a state employee. I just experienced that myself. They’re not nearly as good,” said Duffy.
“But $174,000 — that’s … three times what I make,” said the constituent. Someone else at the listening session asked if Duffy would vote to cut his salary, according to a recording of the event.
“I have no problem (with that). Let’s have a movement afoot. I walked into the job six weeks ago … And I can guarantee you, or most of you — I guarantee that I have more debt than all of you. With six kids. I still pay off my student loans. I still pay my mortgage. I generally use a minivan … I’ve got one paycheck. So I struggle to meet my bills right now. Would it be easier for me if I get more paychecks? Maybe, but at this point I’m not living high on the hog,” said Duffy. “Can everyone do more with less? Absolutely.”
Democrats accused Duffy of griping about his salary. State Democratic chair Mike Tate said in a statement, “Poor Hollywood Sean Duffy. He only makes four times the median family income in Wisconsin.”
This is the most succinct summary of what’s going on regarding the budget I’ve seen…
The question is: Is the Republican Leadership ready to act like adults and make a deal or are they going to play to their loud, angry and ignorant base…
I still fear most of these cuts are going to hurt the economy in the long run.
It can’t be said often enough: You do not drastically cut the budget when the recovery is this fragile. You need to focus on growing jobs…
Ask Herbert Hoover’s ghost- or FDR’s….
From DailyKos:
To recap, the issue here is that tea party Republicans in the House have made it clear they will not support any funding bill that does not include provisions such as a repeal of the health care reform law and a ban on family planning funding. Obviously, those are poison pill provisions; the Senate wouldn’t pass them, and even if it did, President Obama wouldn’t sign them into law.
Because the most recent stop-gap funding measure, which will keep government open until April 8, did not include those provisions, 54 tea-party Republicans voted against it in the House, forcing the GOP to rely on Democratic votes to prevent a government shutdown. (They needed 32, but got 85.)
Unless tea-party Republicans flip-flop, John Boehner is going to need Democratic votes to pass a funding bill that can pass the Senate and get President Obama’s signature, and Hoyer’s comments were designed to make it clear to Boehner that Democrats are ready and willing to achieve a bipartisan compromise to keep the country moving forward.
Boehner is facing enormous pressure from his party’s right-flank to refuse the Democratic offer for cooperation, even though that would force a government shutdown. Polls show that tea-party supporters are losing confidence in Congressional Republicans on budget issues and by significant margins favor a government shutdown. But while a majority of Boehner’s political base says they favor shutting down government for several weeks, nearly three-quarters of Americans say such a shutdown would be a bad thing.
So John Boehner needs to choose between satisfying his the extreme right of his party, or forging a compromise with Democrats to move forward. The choice is his. Whether or not we have a government shutdown is entirely up to him.
via Daily Kos: Democrats offer Boehner a lifeline to avoid tea party-forced shutdown.
Filed under Elections, Politics, The Economy
Lost in the 21st Century 
Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%
This is one of the clearest explanations of the income and wealth disparity in American I have read.
It’s written by Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize Winner in Economics and former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors for Bill Clinton…
There is so much here I want to share that I think the best I can do is ask you to click the link at the bottom of this post and read it for yourself.
It’s really worth your time to read this entire article from Vanity Fair. It’s not too long….
via Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% | Society | Vanity Fair.
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Filed under Elections, Social Commentary, The Economy
Tagged as Income, politics, Social Commentary, Tea Party, The Economy, Wealth