Ezra Klein writes:

Candidate Obama’s pledge to change Washington, echoing reform-minded predecessors like Gary Hart and Bill Bradley, won applause from affluent Democrats and independents in the primaries," writes John Harwood in today's New York Times. But, uh, huh? I know the initial line on Obama's candidacy was that he appealed to "wine-track" voters rather than "beer-track" voters, but that didn't show up in his results. Look at Iowa or Indiana or South Carolina or Arkansas.

Um, Ezra, you gotta be kidding me. Take Arkansas for instance:

Discussing Mitch McConnell's hypocritical (he was a strong advocate for it not long ago) vote against the Conrad-Gregg deficit commission (a terrible idea BTW), Ezra Klein writes:

McConnell's actions cannot be explained by beliefs, which is something that makes people very uncomfortable. But they can be explained by party incentives, which is something that makes people even more uncomfortable. We're very familiar with a model of Congress in which legislators disagree over policy and that causes them to vote against one another. We're much more concerned by the idea that they don't disagree at all, but are simply trying to win the next election. But the latter does a much better job explaining how congresspeople actually vote.

No kidding? Who'da thunk it? At some point these sob stories have to stop. McConnell, like all of them, is a pol. They do what they do. The most important thing in their lives ALWAYS is the next election. The key for citizens and activists is to pressure them to pander towards you. Enough with the Pollyanna acts. Ezra's post is a good one, but my gawd, where was he for the past year? Sobbing about pols being pols.

Speaking for me only

Many months ago, I was discussing the Florida Republican Senate primary with Markos and I told him I thought there was no way Florida governor Charlie Crist would lose that race. According to Ras, I could not have been more wrong:

Former state House Speaker Marco Rubio has now jumped to a 12-point lead over Governor Charlie Crist in Florida’s Republican Primary race for the U.S. Senate. A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely GOP Primary voters in the state finds Rubio leading Crist 49% to 37%. Three percent (3%) prefer another candidate, and 11% are undecided.

Incredible. The bad thing for Dems is I do not think Kendall Meek can take advantage of this (RCP says Ras' GE polling has Meek down 17 to Rubio.) An interesting question is if Crist wanted to switch parties, would that even work for him and would Dems clear the field for him?

Yglesias writes:

[T]he US House of Representative is a fairly well-functioning legislative body. It’s a body organized around two major political parties that outline competing, somewhat coherent agendas that command large-scale support from their own members and little support from the opposition. [. . .] There are biannual elections at which the American people put either one party or the other in charge, and having won an election the winning party attempts to govern in a way that maintains the confidence of the voters.

It’s a perfectly good system. [. . . John] Boehner’s ideas are different from Nancy Pelosi’s ideas, and if he wants his ideas to prevail he needs to assemble a majority prepared to support him. That’s his responsibility as an opposition leader, whereas Pelosi’s responsibility is to frame a successful governing agenda that maintain’s the public’s faith in her co-partisans. It’s a system where power aligns with responsibility, and where those with power are held accountable for their use of it. The Senate, by contrast, is a mess.

(Emphasis supplied.) This is obviously true. And the Presidency, especially since the Imperial Presidency, SHOULD work in the same way. That's why Obama's post partisan unity schtick is so annoying. It is ridiculous and wrong.

Speaking for me only

Via DougJ, Norm Ornstein touts the accomplishments of 2009:

There seems to be little to endear citizens to their legislature or to the president trying to influence it. It's too bad because [. . .] this Democratic Congress is on a path to become one of the most productive since the Great Society 89th Congress in 1965-66, and Obama already has the most legislative success of any modern president -- and that includes Ronald Reagan and Lyndon Johnson. [. . .]

Ornstein's idea is that passing legislation, ANY legislation, is accomplishment. The trouble with that perspective is the country does not look at "passing legislation" as accomplishment. They look at effects on their everyday lives as accomplishment. Ornstein is a smart guy, but he is of the Village, where "accomplishments" are measured differently than in the country. More . . .

Jon Chait writes:

The biggest change in American politics over the past three decades is that the Republican Party has embraced, with the fervor of religion, the conviction that that tax rates need only be high enough to fund their desired level of government spending, rather than the actual level of spending. (How this came to be is the subject of my book.) There really no solution to the problem of American fiscal policy until the GOP can reform itself.

(Emphasis supplied.) This is actually wrong. Republicans desire the actual level of spending but simply never want to pay for it (and never do.) The national debt and deficit is a result almost entirely of the profligate fiscal practices of 2 Republicans - Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Only one GOP President in recent history has been serious about the budget deficit - Bush 41. He was practically thrown out of the Republican Party. It is because of this that anyone who actually cares about deficits should always support higher taxes on the wealthy and on corporations. because that is the only fiscal measure that will actually cut the deficit. More . . .

Booman writes:

The problem is that bankers and CEOs and media executives and congresspeople are not going to change unless they are forced to change. And that is where the people can try to help Obama, or where they can blame him for the situation being ungovernable. That's not to take Obama completely off the hook. He needs to bust some heads. He needs to take on his enemies rather than pleading with them to be reasonable. They're not going to be reasonable. But, the truth remains, to get something done in Congress when the Republicans are pursuing a strategy of obstruction, you need a miracle.

This is a strange argument to me. "Forcing change from the ground up" is a difficult endeavor in any circumstance. It is truly impossible when leaders are, at best, bystanders, at worst, impediments. I would say most people Booman aims his criticism at are more than willing to help Obama fight for change, if Obama is willing to actually, you know, fight for change. The problem has always been the Post Partisan Unity Schtick. As Kevin Drum writes:

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's answer on the the question of why AIG counterparties (most prominently Goldman Sachs) is laughably absurd:

Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, Democrat of Ohio, excoriated the New York Fed’s decision to pay 100 cents on the dollar to A.I.G.’s counterparties, including $2.5 billion to Goldman Sachs. “Isn’t it true that the New York Fed gave Goldman Sachs a better deal than it could have ever expected from A.I.G. or any other market player?” Mr. Kucinich asked.

Mr. Geithner replied: “Under the laws of the land, we did not have the ability. So we faced a very simple choice: Let A.I.G. default, or prevent it. And there was no way — financial, legal or otherwise — we could have imposed haircuts, selectively default on any of those institutions, without the risk of downgrade and default.” Mr. Geithner added that the negotiating position of A.I.G. was weak. With the ability to threaten default or allow A.I.G. to restructure in bankruptcy, negotiators were not in a position to make banks to take less on their contracts.

This is ridiculous. I'll explain why on the flip.

Steve Benen cites the new NBC/WSJ poll for this statement:

Dems'success is inextricably tied to Obama's standing. [. . .] [T]his should point Democratic lawmakers in the right direction on health care, though the message isn't getting through.

Nothing in the poll (or in any actual election results) supports this argument. Consider the NBC poll:

In case anyone was counting on Evan Bayh and Blanche Lincoln to vote for the reconciliation fix to the health bill, your faith was misplaced:

Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) rejected using the budget reconciliation process to pass health reform legislation on Tuesday.

Lincoln joined Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) to reject using the parliamentary maneuver bypassing the 60-vote majority needed in the Senate to bypass a filibuster in order to pass Democrats' health reform bill. “I am opposed to and will fight against any attempts to push through changes to the Senate health insurance reform legislation by using budget reconciliation tactics that would allow the Senate to pass a package of changes to our original bill with 51 votes," she said in a statement.

I would not count on Ben Nelson or Joe Lieberman either. That leaves 5 Dems to spare. Who would want to wriggle out the most? Landrieu? Pryor? McCaskill? Byrd (based on his bizarre House of Lordism)? Feingold? Even if you lost all of these (which I doubt), you still have 50 votes. That gets it done.

Speaking for me only

ABC:

Sen. John McCain will support President Obama's plan to freeze much of the federal budget for the next three years, but said the president must also promise to veto any bills that are stuffed with pork barrel spending items. [. . . However,] McCain said a freeze wasn't enough and that Obama should resist a $90 billion jobs stimulus bill that is making its way through Congress.

(Emphasis supplied.)This was predictable. And, let's face it, McCain's position is the more coherent. If you believe in a "spending freeze," what's the logic for spending more money for jobs? Good work, Obama political shop.

Speaking for me only

The sequel to "Fired Up! Ready to go! Ezra Klein writes:

[T]his announcement, coming off a week when the administration pointedly refused to stand up for its health-care bill, is not the sort of thing that's going to excite the base. You can attend a lot of Democratic rallies without ever hearing the chant, "When I say 'spending,' you say 'freeze!' 'SPENDING!'"

"Punch the hippies! Punch the hippies!

Speaking for me only