The Obama Heyday Is Over

The Obama Heyday Is Over
With so many Democrats running against the president's agenda in the midterm, change will come in the next Congress, regardless of which party is in control.
SEPTEMBER 10, 2010

Barack Obama hit the campaign trail this week to resurrect some of that hopey-changey stuff and to complain that his critics talk about him "like a dog." Turns out the president wasn't, in fact, referring to his own party.

Voters might be forgiven the confusion. It isn't as if Democrats have been showing Mr. Obama much love. Quite the opposite. Seven weeks from Election Day, the vulnerable wing of the majority has finally found itself a campaign issue: blunt opposition to Mr. Obama and his agenda.

Has it only been 20 months? Candidate Obama swelled into office with an ambitiously liberal plan. He promised his party that his legislative items would be more than policy triumphs; they'd be political triumphs. Stick with me, he said, and we'll get credit for leadership. Voters will come to love this stuff. Polls will improve. I'll campaign in your district.

It was bunk, as many Democrats knew even back then. Witness the threats and bribes necessary to coax a bare majority for every vote. But enough went along. And now that the ambitious Obama experiment in liberal governance is going kaboom, his members—even those who voted with him—are running for cover.

Health care? A total of 279 House and Senate Democrats voted for ObamaCare. Not one is running an ad touting that vote. How can they, given headlines about Medicare cuts and premium hikes? You will, however, find a growing catalogue of ads such as this one from Maryland Rep. Frank Kratovil: "As a career prosecutor, I made decisions on facts, not politics," and that's why "I voted against . . . the health-care bill."

Not to be outdone, Alabama Rep. Bobby Bright's ad explains he voted against "massive government health care." South Dakota's Stephanie Herseth Sandlin boasts she voted against the "trillion-dollar health-care plan." But the prize goes to former Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes, vying to get his old job back: Not only is ObamaCare "financially devastating," it is "the greatest failure, modern failure, of political leadership in my lifetime."

Stimulus? Only a handful of Democrats can be found who will even utter the dreaded "s" word—and those are the ones bragging they voted against it. The rest have developed a curious code involving brief references to "roads" and "bridges." Even the White House is running from the White House. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs crankily lectured the press corps this week that the latest $50 billion Mr. Obama wants to "spur" the economy is absolutely not a "stimulus."

Cap and trade? "I voted against Nancy Pelosi's energy tax on Hoosier families," explains Indiana Rep. Joe Donnelly in an ad, echoed by North Carolina Rep. Mike McIntyre and Pennsylvania Rep. Jason Altmire. And the yes votes are rushing to argue that all they were really voting for was "renewable energy."

Financial regulation? What's that? Most of the country doesn't know, and few Democrats are bothering to explain. They see more mileage in ads putting distance between themselves and the auto bailouts, the president's budget, or the party's cultural reputation. Roy Herron, running in Tennessee, ran an ad describing himself as a "truck-driving, shotgun-shooting, Bible-reading, crime-fighting, family loving country boy." This is not a joke.

As for campaigning, Mr. Obama failed to warn Democrats that—thanks to the agenda he was asking them to pass—by September he'd be upside-down in his approval on most issues, and not much help. Instead of a president to help them, Democrats have found a president to run against. And it isn't George W. Bush.

The White House is now letting it be known that it is miffed that more Democrats aren't running to embrace its new "economic" plan. But as parents are fond of telling their five-year-olds, choices have consequences. This White House could have pivoted to the economy at any point—as many Democrats were begging it to do—but instead doggedly pushed ahead with an unpopular agenda. Many Democrats are no longer listening.

Will the anti-Obama strategy work? In this environment, running away from Mr. Obama certainly beats running to him. Then again, midterms are referendums on a president's agenda, and the country is in a mood to punish Democrats en masse. For those anti-Obama Democrats who do survive, the political lesson will be that there is mileage in telling Mr. Obama no.

This is where today's exodus will really be felt—after the election. The president still has a to-do list. Yet the more this election becomes about the toxicity of his "accomplishments," the less ability Mr. Obama has to command a caucus. Republicans will be hunting for votes to block and reverse, and some liberated Democrats may feel happy to help.

Bill Clinton dealt with the 1994 massacre by moving right and triangulating. It is unclear whether the ideological Mr. Obama has the ability to follow suit. What is clear is that some big changes are now necessary. The Obama heyday is officially over.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...5482122517174884.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

 

Let's hope Americans have learned, "a vote for free ice-cream" has consequences.

He's been in office only 20 months, but he's done a LOT of damage... much of which will never be undone.

 

HILLARY'S FIRST SHOT
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN

"Has the Democratic Presidential Primary of 2012 started already? Is Hillary Clinton beginning to position herself for a challenge to her boss? Yesterday, Hillary fired what may have been the first shot:

She said:

"I think that our rising debt level poses a national security threat and it poses a national security threat in two ways: it undermines our capacity to act in our own interests and it does constrain us where constraint may be undesirable. And it also sends a message of weakness, internationally."

The contrast with her husband's presidency is implicit: He balanced the budget and reduced the debt to the point where Wall Street fretted that there would be no more federal debt instruments to buy, leaving them without a safe place of park their money.

Hillary does nothing -- nothing -- without forethought. She plans every word, particularly when the words are critical of her president. By framing the "debt level" as a "national security threat," she gives herself jurisdiction over budget policy and makes her comments about it appropriate for a Secretary of State. And by criticizing the debt level which her president has amassed, she sets up the basis for a fiscal/economic critique of his presidency.

Remember that between the time George Washington took the oath of office and the day that Obama took the same oath, the federal government amassed $9 trillion of debt. And, in the nineteen months since then, it has piled up $3.5 trillion more! Debt is Obama's big negative, the concomitant of his big spending stimulus package. Now he has Hillary Clinton criticizing it and, by implication, him.

Will Hillary run? She might. The scenario would go like this:

Step One: Obama loses both houses of Congress by record margins, throwing the Democratic Party into shock. Disbelief yields to recrimination and the party leaders begin to turn on their president.

Step Two: The popular repudiation of their president leads Democrats to question Obama's leadership and his ratings plunge. Without a base of Democratic approval, President Obama's ratings sink below 40% down into the low 30s.

Step Three: As it becomes clear that the Democrats will lose the election of 2012, more and more party leaders and the rank and file demand new leadership and look to Hillary to turn things around.

Who knows if she will really run. She doesn't know. She can't know until she sees how low Obama falls. But remember this: If she does run, her candidacy started yesterday."

 

A day without Dick Morris is like a day without Yannis.

 

I just do not understand why everyone is in such shock. When I watched Obama while he was running for office, he promised to pursue all these policies and more. Why is everyone so surprised? Did they think that he was just kidding?

At this point in the nations financial crisis, drastic and unpopular steps must be taken...those democrats running on their votes against Obama's policies and the republican party as a whole had better remember this. If these anti-Obama candidates win office they will have to do some very unpopular things...cutting the size of govt and govt programs, if they ever want to get the national debt under control. This will be very, very unpopular in some circles and the protesters will come out of the wood work. They all laugh at OBamas tanking poll numbers, but if they do the required actions, theirs will probably end up being much worse.

 

And he still has 95% of the black population as a captive voting block. But that's about all he's got at this point.

 

Likely true. 2 years of attempted cost-cutting, accompanied by street riots, and the Dems will get to run for office in 2012 on the platform of "giving back your money and restoring your benefits".

If it works out any other way, I'll be shocked.

The social "aspect" of the economy and culture has a "critical mass". After which, it becomes impossible to dislodge or turn back. I think that point has already been reached.... hope I'm wrong.

It's why America is doomed. Just a matter of how long it takes before they system collapses in a storm of inflation and currency debasement... followed by a "new system"... undoubtedly run by some dictator.

People in general are too naive and greedy to do other...

 

Right, republicans will probably cut Wal Mart greeters' pay in half.