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.

New sheriff is town

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) pledged on Wednesday to investigate both Barack Obama and George W. Bush with his newfound subpoena power when he takes over as chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. “I’m going to be investigating a president of my own party, because many of the issues we’re working on began [with] President Bush or even before, and haven’t been solved,” Issa said during an interview on MSNBC’s “The Daily Rundown.”

How long before he gets muzzled? Let the civil war begin.

Team Obama Blaming Rahm

his old colleagues in Washington aren’t too happy about it. Some of them shake their heads in disbelief that Emanuel would bolt at precisely the juncture when the Democrats needed to shape their strategy and message during the homestretch of what everyone knew would be the toughest election cycle in years.

They're simply in denial.  It wasn't his absence for a few weeks that cooked 'em. As an article in today's NY Times points out (Democrats Outrun by a 2-Year G.O.P. Comeback Plan ), it has been a long time coming. If they need to blame Rahm, they're missing the point: it is they themselves that are to blame, all of them.

Let 'em do the math

Let the spending cuts begin.

I am looking forward to seeing what the Republicans propose, other than repealing the health care law.

That was, after all, what Republicans campaigned on. Ohio's John Boehner, soon to be House speaker, promised "a new approach that hasn't been tried before in Washington—by either party. It starts with cutting spending instead of increasing it." Retiring Sen. Evan Bayh (D., Ind.) says Democrats should back a freeze on federal hiring and pay. Sen. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) says, "We're going to be giving on spending."

Now he says that?

But as Republican spending cutters move from wooing voters to legislating, they confront two realities: Cutting government spending in general is popular; specific, substantial spending cuts are not. And bringing down the deficit by spending cuts alone, particularly cuts in annually appropriated domestic spending, is, well, arithmetically challenging.

Election campaign is on

In a Stratfor article on 26 October 2010, George Freidman wrote:

Reversals in the first midterm election after a presidential election happened to Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. It does not mean that Obama is guaranteed to lose a re-election bid, although it does mean that, in order to win that election, he will have to operate in a very different way. It also means that the 2012 presidential campaign will begin next Wednesday on Nov. 3. Given his low approval ratings, Obama appears vulnerable and the Republican nomination has become extremely valuable. For his part, Obama does not have much time to lose in reshaping his presidency. With the Iowa caucuses about 15 months away and the Republicans holding momentum, the president will have to begin his campaign. U.S. Midterm Elections, Obama and Iran | STRATFOR

Nice: two years of campaigning have just ended, two more years of campaigning have just begun.

Obama now has two options in terms of domestic strategy. The first is to continue to press his agenda, knowing that it will be voted down. If the domestic situation improves, he takes credit for it. If it doesn’t, he runs against Republican partisanship. The second option is to abandon his agenda, cooperate with the Republicans and re-establish his image as a centrist. Both have political advantages and disadvantages and present an important strategic decision for Obama to make.

If he moves to the center more, his liberal base will howl and largely abandon him, and the right wing will chew him up: they don't want him as an ally; they want to defeat him.

I'd like to see it, too

In Market Watch (a Wall Street Journal sibling, thus, also, a Murdoch property), a columnist puts it bluntly: You win, Rand Paul; now balance the budget. If it were so easy as they said on the campaign trail it could be.

The only realistic way to balance the budget is to grow the economy. So maybe all those angry tea partiers will be pacified and start buying things again. And then all those companies that belong to the Chamber of Commerce, comfortable that the Republicans have their backs on taxes and regulation, will start investing again. Then the economy will boom, tax revenues will rise and, before you know it, we’ll be back in surplus again. But I don’t think so.

Nor do I. The anger won't end simply because the election is over: they still socialism to defeat, fully. O, and that communist in the the White House, too.

So Senator-elect Paul might go to Plan B. He and fellow travelers like Mike Lee, Utah’s freshly minted senator-elect, would filibuster the move sometime next year to raise the federal debt ceiling from its current $14.3 trillion to accommodate rising entitlements and interest payments. This, according to a current of thought circulating inside the Beltway, would lead to a default by the U.S. government — a wonderful way to balance the budget overnight.

Imagine what the markets would do: fall, and fall precipituously.

It can’t happen here, you think. But if I were a foreign investor, I’d start pricing a little default premium into Treasurys, because the level of economic ignorance and political irresponsibility in some of the lawmakers elected Tuesday is hard to overestimate.

 Perhaps impossible to overestimate.



What will happen now? More posturing, more hot air. The Bush tax cuts will be extended in a lame-duck session. But then McConnell and Boehner will try to ride herd on their new caucus members, and Obama will try to grow a backbone so he can start vetoing any bills attempting to roll back his signature legislation. 

And then Rand Paul will balance the budget. Or not.

We'll see.

Can they hear him? DO they care?

Obama Vows to Work With G.O.P. After ‘Humbling’ Losses


G.O.P. Leaders Vow to Repeal Health Law

When is he simply going to throw down the gauntlet and dare them to make his day?