All around, there are Democrats telling us their prospects for November are looking up. Things aren't as bad as Republicans say! Health care is becoming more popular! The country wants financial reform! People still like Barack Obama! Isn't Joe Barton awful!
They're fooling themselves
Democrats blamed Republicans, all of whom voted against the bill, but their own caucus also stood in the way of passage as Sens. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., and Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., objected to the bill because of the deficit.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., signaled that he is moving on to different legislation and is essentially giving up on passing the aid package, at least for now.
"We have done everything we could to try to get Republican votes," Reid said following the defeat of the bill. "It's up to them."
Republicans put forward an alternative bill that would extend unemployment benefits and pay for them with unused funds from the $787 billion stimulus.
Meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, President Obama joked that their old, Cold War-era red telephones could be replaced by Twitter accounts.
It was an apt analogy as the two superpowers look to modernize their relationship, and Medvedev works to fashion a version of Silicon Valley in Russia.
Maybe a $150 billion company with 21,000 employees and 20 percent profit margins doesn't count as big business or a special interest if it talks about "changing the world from the bottom up, not from the top down," as President Obama put it.
Maybe a millionaire who spends his days leaning on policymakers to benefit his company isn't a lobbyist if he calls himself an "Internet evangelist."
Or maybe Google's cozy relationship with the White House -- exposed more clearly by e-mails recently made public through the Freedom of Information Act -- is just one more instance of the administration's actions contradicting Obama's reformer rhetoric about battling the special interests and freeing Washington from lobbyist influence.
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