Lost in the 21st Century

The chatter is already starting about 2012….

For as poorly as President Obama’s Democrats performed on Nov. 2, you can find several assessments of his re-election chances that seem doggone optimistic.

The Washington Examiner’s Michael Barone, in a careful analysis, suggests that Mr. Obama won’t be easy to defeat. Karl Rove, meanwhile, recently made comments to Fox News about Hillary Rodham Clinton’s electoral future, which seemed to imply that he expected Mr. Obama would still be president in 2016.

There are a lot of things that casual attempts at political science tend to get wrong, but one thing that observers seem to understand relatively well is that a poor performance by the president’s party at his first midterm election hardly dooms him. That is no doubt because of the recent experience with Bill Clinton as well as Ronald Reagan, both of whom witnessed their parties lose badly at the midterms and both of whom eventually won re-election by wide margins. Mr. Obama’s Democrats lost a few more seats in Congress than Mr. Clinton’s Democrats did — and more than twice as many as Mr. Reagan’s Republicans. On the other hand, Mr. Obama’s approval ratings are slightly better than Mr. Clinton’s or Mr. Reagan’s were at a comparable point in time, being in the mid-to-high 40s rather than in the low 40s.

MORE:   Optimism for Obama Should Come With Caution – NYTimes.com.

Now, if they’ll just stick to their guns…

Not something Dems are known for….

All Senate Democrats returning to Congress next year have signed a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid asking him to take up filibuster reform first thing in the new year.

It’s a sign that the Republicans’ use of the filibuster at historically high rates to block Democratic legislation may have backfired, and coalesced the political capital needed to change Senate rules.

The letter, delivered this week, “expresses general frustration with what Democrats consider unprecedented obstruction and asks Reid to take steps to end those abuses,” the National Journal reports.

Among the chief revisions that Democrats say will likely be offered: Senators could not initiate a filibuster of a bill before it reaches the floor unless they first muster 40 votes for it, and they would have to remain on the floor to sustain it. That is a change from current rules, which require the majority leader to file a cloture motion to overcome an anonymous objection to a motion to proceed, and then wait 30 hours for a vote on it.

“There have been more filibusters since 2006 than the total between 1920 and 1980,” Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM) says.

via Senate Dems unanimous: Time for filibuster reform | Raw Story.