Republicans working hard to get Obama re-elected

All the hard work by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to sabotage the Obama administration — as well as the American public, American business and the American economy — may be undone by the buffoons running for president.

Amen to that.

For their part, congressional Republicans may be helping out by overplaying their hand. It remains to be seen how boneheaded Cantor and House Speaker John Boehner will be about deficit cutting as the super-committee deadline approaches. Whether they realize it or not, Obama has made a successful end run on the tax issue, and the Republicans can only lose ground with their insistence that there will be no new taxes. A new poll by Politico shows that Americans — we, the voters — support increasing taxes on the wealthy and corporations 66% to 31%, with a majority, 52%, strongly supporting increases. That same poll shows that Americans — yes, the people for whom this government is supposed to be working — oppose cuts to Medicare 76% to 19%, again with 52% strongly opposing such cuts. If the congressional Republicans persist with their blinkered ideology, then the Democrats truly will have a chance to win back many of the House seats they lost in 2010 and retain control of the Senate. 

Maybe, maybe not. One can only hope.

Stop the bickering

On Tuesday, Starbucks Corporation CEO Howard Schultz called on business leaders to stop funding political campaigns until Congress stops the partisan bickering. A CNBC poll on political donations in light of the debt debate fiasco last month showed that 89% of respondents agreed with Schultz. Shortly after, CNBC showed a comment by political commentator Robert Reich saying that the reason companies contribute to U.S. politicians is because they see it as an investment. With that in mind, will Schultz’s view prevail? Unlikely.

It is heartening, and discouraging, that it has gotten to the level of a CEO to voice this complaint. Witness the 89% who agree. Despite these voices, politicians continue to rail that they represent the voice of the American people and that it is for them that they are fighting. Nonsense. The vaunted American people for whom they claim to be fighting are sick of their posturing and ineffectiveness, of their bromides anc clichés. Yet things continue the same as always. Why? The answer is simple: money.

Here is the “best way” to understand U.S. politics in four bullet points.

• Republicans and Democrats both play to the rich 1% and to the following industries: big oil, big pharma, defense contractors, and banking and insurance. Add the NRA.

• Republicans take their talking points from Fox News, but are really laser focused on bullet no. 1. Fox talking heads berate the Democrats and the President, both of whom take money from the same donors as the Republicans, but who argue a different ideology.

• No matter who is elected, it is never as good, or as bad, as voters expect it to be. President Bush never banned abortion and we didn’t get Martial Law. President Obama failed to save the economy and we didn’t go socialist (or soshilist; same thing). Well, for the most part that might be true, but many people have suffered, and continue to suffer under a Democratic president, as badly, if not worse, than under a Republican president.

• The vote that matters is the vote that’s local, like a town hall vote for the school budget or a zoning law. As a result, voting for selectmen, city council and maybe the mayor and governor, matters and voting actually changes things. For Congress and the Senate, see bullet points 1 and 2. Well, abdicating national politics to the rich and powerful only confirms their domination and power.

CNBC “Squawk on the Street” hosts asked why Schultz was making these statements and not bigger name CEOs. In particular, they asked why executives like Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan Chase CEO, are not coming forward to complain about Washington, too. After all, lack of confidence in Congress has been something nearly every average trader and money manager in the market has been talking about all summer long, including in interviews here at Forbes. For that answer, see bullet point No. 1.

Dimon wants less regulation, even after the financial crisis. That lack of confidence is a smoke screen.

“I’m not a politician and I’m not here to prescribe policy. But as a business man who employs over 100 thousand people…I want to see congressional leadership,” Schultz told CNBC Tuesday morning. “We have a profound crisis of confidence in America and that problem stems from Washington,” he said. Stems? I doubt it. Washington excacerbates the problem, but the fault is not in our politicians, but in ourselves.

Don't Worry, Be Happy!

Not every observer is repeating the same mantra; this one actually seems to have original thoughts. How interesting. Lawrence D. Bobo is W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard.

There are good reasons to be hopeful after the midterm elections. Just look at what happened in 1994. For Democrats, this election is worse than the 1994 midterm with regard to losses in the House; Obama's losses are worse than Bill Clinton's. Obama, however, has presided over a far deeper recession. At the time of the 1994 midterm elections, the national unemployment rate was around 6 percent. Today unemployment is closer to 10 percent, indicative of much more widespread economic uncertainty and hardship. And this is almost certainly the principal reason that Obama's midterm setback in the House involves nine more seats than Clinton lost.

I'd like to see what the numbers were for total voters. Plus, Harry Reid won, the not-witch and Angle lost.


The difference here is the state of economy. To wit, this election is not a repudiation of a liberal agenda run amok or of an Obama administration out of touch with the American people. It is a loud declaration of deep disappointment with the weak and uneven pace of the economic recovery after a catastrophic economic downturn.

How interesting, that he sees the same evidence others see, and interprets it rather differently.


So the 2010 midterms were a setback for Democrats. Let's remember that this outcome was completely foreseeable in light of the economy. Republicans will celebrate with some measure of justification. But the presumption that Americans have repudiated Democrats and endorsed Republican ideology, or that Obama's electoral fate is now sealed, is just plain wrong. Assuming the economy continues to improve and the Democrats, including Obama, heed the lessons of Massachusetts, I'm feeling pretty good about 2012.

Ditto, I guess.