1. The Lamest Duck?
2. The Race
3. An Earmark Solution to Nowhere
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1. The Lamest Duck?
What will happen to Barack Obama’s presidency if his tax compromise is shot down with the help of his own party? The House Democratic caucus just voted against it, which puts the deal on life support, at best. Can Obama recover from that?
One of the great questions of the past two years, ever since it became obvious that Democrats would suffer significant setbacks in the 2010 elections, was how President Obama would respond to life with a Republican Congress (or, as it turns out, a Republican House and a weakened Democratic majority in the Senate). On the one hand, you have the fact that Bill Clinton managed to use the “triangulation” strategy to win re-election in 1996, and surely Obama is capable of being equally cold-bloodedly dismissive of his now-depleted Congressional troops. On the other hand, Obama is naturally much more ideological than Clinton and doesn’t have Clinton’s deft political touch, his decade-long track record as an executive or his experience winning multiple elections outside deep-blue territory, all of which suggests that even if the spirit is willing, Obama may not be competent at executing the same strategy.
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2. The Race
Barack Obama is likely to face a primary challenge in 2012, but the question of the day is whether it will be some minor fringe-like protest candidate like Dennis Kucinich or Mike Gravel or a more serious challenger like Howard Dean or Russ Feingold. Jamelle Bouie, an African-American columnist for the liberal magazine The American Prospect, says what other Democrats may be thinking but afraid to vocalize: Obama’s race is the biggest obstacle to a serious primary challenge to the president in 2012 because black voters would look at such a challenge through the lens of race. The Politico flags the issue.
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3. An Earmark Solution to Nowhere
It’s time to nip something right in the bud. Some Republican members of Congress have been complaining about how the House earmark is too restrictive because it will not allow for Members to get federal funding for their roads and bridges. They want them exempted from the moratorium.
The members of Congress pushing this are essentially calling for an earmark moratorium that still allows for the infamous Bridge to Nowhere and exempts all earmarks in the highway bill. That would completely vitiate the House earmark ban, and all talk of it needs to be dropped immediately.
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