The Winter of Our Discontent

If you listen to pundits on the left and right, Barack Obama and the Democrats are going straight into the toilet for 2010. The only staunch supporters of the President I can determine are former neo-con Andrew Sullivan, former religious right guru and now progressive blogger Francis Schaeffer and me, a recovering Republican but with deep social democratic tendencies. I happen to agree with Andrew Sullivan that the health reform bill represents a landmark legislative triumph for President Obama on the order of Ronald Reagan's tax cuts. Francis Schaeffer slapped down progressives as too impatient and not aware of the political reality of this country. Frankly, in terms of 2010, I couldn't tell you but the long-term trajectory both for health care reform and the economy I believe are good.

If you are tallying up Obama and the Democrats' achievements of the past year, they are impressive. The stimulus bill, which included the largest middle class tax cut in history and the largest allotment to scientific research in the history of man as well as a vast expansion of health care for children, is a net plus. Will it produce the number of jobs promised by the administration, I have no clue. The efforts in the House at reform of our financial system so far are decent and much needed. The program to assist people underwater with their mortgages has fizzled so far but someone tried. For me, the Obama administration has fulfilled every promise made to the native American community and a hats off to Justice and Interior for finally after nearly a generation settling the Indian Trust Law suit. More reforms need to come to reign in Wall Street.

President Obama made the best out of a bad situation with his decision to escalte the war in Afghanistan and is on his way out of Iraq as promised. Despite the hype, the agreement in Copenhagen on Climate Change was a first step but clearly a disappointment. While lagging behind on closing Gitmo, the adminsitration has managed to reduce its population to below 200 and the remainders look destined for a prison in Illinois. For security freaks such as myself, the pending agreement over nuclear weapons with Russia is truly significant in reducing nuclear stockpiles on both sides. And, Oh, I forgot, the Administration stopped the global economy from walking straight off a cliff into a deep Depression.If you add all the goodies like extending unemployment and COBRA benefits, keeping teachers employed and the sundry infrastructure projects, that's not a bad year. It just feels that way because of how low we have fallen.

The problem for 2010 is the framing of these achievements. The Republicans are campaigning against the stimulus. But what if Democrats made it clear that Republicans voted against virtually everything that was achieved above? What if the Democrats ran on their middle class tax cuts and the pork contained in the various bills? The Republicans to a man and woman voted against health care reform. What if Democrats break down the bill and make it specific when campaigning? What will rural voters think about the billions allocated to rural health care clinics? In my book, this is one of the most significant pieces of the health care bill which was proposed by Senator Bernie Saunders of Vermont. What if Democrats in the Midwest ran on saving the American auto industry? Every Republican voted against saving 16% of the American economy.

2010 is all going to be about optics. By now everyone knows that our media is simply an outlet of corporate interests "balancing" the outrageous with reality. Will the conservative echo-chamber produce the great Republican comeback promised? There really is no need if Democrats actually grew a spine and ran straight at the Republicans. Or is the outrage in the country really all against Washington and the Government in general and the Democrats simply can't do anything about it.

While picking up my son from college in the Midwest, I watched C-Span and noted the intense discussion in the Senate on creating a panel of experts on the deficit. Expect to see more discussion from the Administration on the deficit in the coming year. Also expect to see an intense and ugly debate on immigration reform. Here the Republicans have backed themselves in a corner, which will doom them long-term but may help in the 2010 elections. Also watch for an intensive Senate debate on bank reform. Here Barack Obama has himself submitted legislation on creating a new Consumer Protection Agency.

The Republicans will enter the year believing the slow recovery of the economy favors them. After all they told American corporations, who are flush with $7 trillion to invest, to wait up until the 2010 elections. Banks, also, have more cash on hand above the reserves required by the FDIC than at any time in 50 years. Personally, I can not see them able to hold off for a year until they dump their money. By the fall of next year, alot of the stimulus money will be seen as working and the results will come clearer. What we can't anticipate is some foreign crisis that would turn the tide.

Can Republicans really believe they can be the party of no for the second consecutive year? I believe they think they can but it will be grueling. What I have said in many postings, the Republicans are counting on the outraged white voter in 2010. Election turnouts in by-elections show that roughly 62-65% of those 60 or over vote, while minorities drop to the mid-thirties and the younger voter into the 20s. If you combine the enthusiasm factor, which right now favors the Republicans, with these demographics ,which are the only sector of the society that tilts Republican anymore, you would expect a blowout.

Historically, the President's party loses about 20 seats in the House and about 3-5 in the Senate. That is without any major tilts like in the 1994 elections, which swept Newt Gingrich to power. Republicans I know believe they face another such situation. Then add to the dismay of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, who feel let down on a number of issues by the Obama Administration. That could work to dampen the base of the Democratic Party.

But as my blog has pointed out, the left these days seems primarily concerned with policy debates and outputs and not in the type of fear mongering of their rightwing counterparts. Will enough of the President's initiatives produce the type of results they like and lead to a healing of the wounds? Here I think the behavior of the Republicans will drive the progressives back to the polls for Democrats. If Republicans don't change their tune, it is no longer the case of a "lesser of two evils" but a clear distinction in terms of the direction of the country. Democrats long remember many of the lost opportunities during the Clinton years when the Republicans sought to impeach the President and prior to that Clinton was forced to "triangulate" his policies basically neutering his domestic agenda. I don't think Democrats will allow that again.

I expect this coming year we will see immigration reform pass. If you add the number of Hispanics appointed by Barack Obama and the hysterical opposition by Republicans to a moderate Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, there will be virtually no reason for Hispanics to vote Republican in the presidential election. Teabaggers and conservatives are urging Republicans to boycott the census on paranoid fears the Obama Administration will use the information to launch IRS audits on conservatives. But meanwhile, a broad coalition of African American groups have met with the Commerce Secretary to produce a census that corrects the 3% undercount of African Americans in the census. They are taking a pro-active stance in trying to get the African American community to participate in a process that too foten is fraight with mistrust of the government. By 2012, we should know the results of these efforts and they will not be nice for Republicans.

I have always believed that President Obama would have been an excellent President with one part of Congress being in the hands of the Republicans. But that was a different party than the one emerging now. I still feel that Americans do want to live in a modern economy and believe we should be part of the world. However, there is a growing and strident force in the country now that really wants to pull us back before the days of FDR, where just raw economic power dominate society. Today's Republicans make Herbert Hoover look like a radical and Theodore Roosevelt a Communist. The question is whether our political culture has become so degraded that this point of view might triumph. I'm betting not but I've been too optimistic before.

To give you a recent example of what I am talking about, CPAC, the largest conservative political action group, has announced its annual meeting and among its sponsors is the John Birch Society. The John Birch Society was considered for almost a half a century as toxic to conservatives. With the connivance of Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater, Bill Buckley, Jr. drummed them out of the movement with a long attack which was read verbatim on the Senate floor. Glimmers of this comeback could be seen when photographs were taken during the last campaign of Sarah Palin reading American Opinion, their magazine which she duly noted was one of her favorites. The John Birch Society was noted in my youth for their attacks on Dwight David Eisenhower as being a Communist stooge and fostering the billboard campaign to impeach Earl Warren because of the ruling in favor of civil rights.

A more troubling phenomenon is the apparent lack of party leadership or the desire of the party to shut down the hate rhetoric aimed at both President Obama and the Democrats. Senator Coburn, who is alleged to be a personal friend of President Obama ( a mystery that both men should explain), called to prayers that Senator Byrd would not make the health care debates. The teabaggers took this so seriously that the prayed and actually wept when the only Senator who failed to appear was Jim Inhofe from Oklahoma, who they thought had died because of them. Instead , Inhofe simply had been absent since his vote wasn't needed. Newt Gingrich, who should know better, told David Horowitz's Restoration Weekend in November that the administration was secular (aren't all American administrations supposed to be secular?), radical and leftist. He vowed victory or death,reminding me of all those Latin American slogans "Patria o Muerte".

A part of me always fears that somehow over time the filters on the American brain will disintegrate or disappear and that this type of rhetoric will really be believed. Look how far the lies about death panels got during the health care debate. As any progressive can tell you, the Obama Administration is anything but leftist. Instead, they claim he's a sell-out to corporate interests. Even such darlings of the old/new left as Fidel Castro and Huge Chavez accuse him of being an imperialist who lies. But this isn't reported by the conservative leaning blogs or the Echo Chamber.

Obama's current problems lie with the working class. He has to produce for them in the next year. Even during the campaign, the working class was highly skeptical that any candidate could produce change that would benefit them. He needs some solid hits in the next year on this front--more jobs being produced by small businesses, more mortgage relief for struggling families and tangible benefits of the health care bill before the larger parts of it take place. Otherwise, we have seen that the hate orchestra can produce songs that prey on the working class's deepest fears.

Francis Schaeffer believes President Obama and the Democrats will triumph over this hatefest from the right. I wish to believe him. President Obama's eloquence, which for me is a breath of fresh air, doesn't track with those suffering in the land. He is best when he goes out to Town Hall meetings and addresses the concerns of average citizens. The photo ops at places like the Hardware Store near my office where President Obama announced that "insulation was sexy" are venues he should exploit more. He has to be perceived as more in touch with the average guy than others need to be. He has been cast as the "other", the "Muslim", the "terrorist" or the "racist" by the Right and only by being himself will he erode this mistrust.

Every opportunity to criticize him will be used--whether justified or not. In recent days, No Drama Obama has shown his frustration by blasting House Republicans in a meeting saying they didn't want the recovery plan to succeed. Yes, Mr. President, they really don't. They don't want America to succeed. If you want a taste of cynicism, look at the recent debate on the Defense Appropriations Bill in the Senate, where the Republicans in an attempt to delay the health care bill, sought to filibuster it, knowing the funds had to be appropriated within 24 hours to keep the Pentagon going. Only when it was clear, the Democrats had all 60 votes did 3 Republicans meekly change sides.

For next year, President Obama has to abandon the overt habit of appearing to be hands off on legislation--even though his hands have been in everything so far. Independents are looking for crisp leadership and not the endless massaging that has been going on. While his technique has worked very successfully so far in getting sweeping changes out of House, in particular, he needs to set down the markers on a few major legislative goals this year--particularly to establish the obstructionism of the Republicans. Even if he gets brushed back, he can keep on fighting while showing the rest of the country what forces he is against.

In a strange way, President Obama has not established the framework where you root for him to succeed. When the conservative critics start their hue and cry about how Obama will fail, there is an expectation among those who support him that he will not. If you tracked the campaign of 2008, remember everyone believed he would blow all his international meetings, his speech in Germany and even his acceptance speech. Most recently, the media expected him to fail at the G-8 summit, blow the Nobel speech and get nothing from his Asian trip. The only time he failed was in trying to get the Olympics for the United States--a failure the conservatives cheered. But on things like the Consumer Protection Agency and the Immigration Reform Bill, he should come straight out and challenge his critics to defeat him.

Another mysterious thing we should expect this coming year is more voodoo from the pollsters. Rasmussen is now so thoroughly in the tank for the Republicans it's a shame. Once a reputable pollster, he's gone the way of Zogby. We can expect Rasmussen to project plummeting poll numbers for Obama and the Democrats throughout the whole year. Obama's real approval rating is now around 52-54% and that's without any of his initiatives really taking effect. Ronald Reagan fell to 35% when the recession of the 1980s hit bottom and then as everyone knows he won his patented Reagan landslide. But the war of the polls will continue throughout the year more to dampen Democrats' chances in 2010 than for any real reason. For example, watch the right direction-wrong direction polling. It's now about 35% say the US is headed in the right direction---that's double the number when the Bush Administration left office. Expect this to be used as a weapon against the Administration.

And if one favors Republicans as a check on the Administration, what is it Republicans actually propose--about anything? I have heard reduction in marginal tax rates for businesses and tax cuts for small businesses, which Obama already has in the works. Re-instate the estate tax cuts that expired in 2010? Will Republicans really defend Medicare--which they discovered this year? Will we have another increase in the defense appropriations like this year--which was characterized as a cut by conservatives? Even the deficit debate--not the Republicans strongest suit historically--is all being conducted on the Democrat's side. Are we going to have another blitz at Social Security--when the country is experiencing a severe recession? Will we actually see any Republican actually propose a cut in entitlement programs? Not likely because it will cost them. Remember Americans lost $14 trillion in private assets under the Bush Administration and any attack by the Republicans on this social welfare net will provoke a counter attack on this very issue.

I don't know what's going to happen with the Republicans. What is small Government? It's still government--it still must be administer competently. Does small government mean we can start cutting the defense budget--since we send 45% of the world's defense expenditures? Does small government mean we can cut down on the $500 billion in contracts to the private sector? In Michael Steele's purity test, what was the Party for. As for as I can see, nothing except more tax breaks, even though Barack Obama took that issue away from them for the middle class. I don't see the Republicans coming out of their nihilistic stage until after the 2012 elections. Unfortunately, that means the policy debate will remains between Democrats.

For 2010, look to the governors' races for indications about the future. I actually think the Democrats have a chance to pick up both Texas and Florida this year. The Republicans have blown a stunning chance in New York and I believe Jerry Brown will win in California. To be competitive for 2012, Republicans will have to win the state houses of some large states. Right now, they are aiming at Michigan and Pennsylvania. But if they fail, the landscape will look grim for 2012.