The Barack W. Backlash Begins

[Winstonm]

I must have my sights too high - the last time I was impressed by the intelligence and character of a President was John Kennedy.

[PassedOut]

When polls showed Brown likely to be elected, most traders took short positions. Looks like they were right.

[Al_U_Card]

Perhaps the financial system's woes could be helped by a stint in Gamblers anonymous? :)

[Gerben42]

There seems to be no hope that anyone ever will get a 2/3 majority and change the US constitution to disallow the "filibuster". It is strange that a 59% majority can accomplish nothing...

[Al_U_Card]

In the US, the term "Commander-in-Chief" refers to the King-like powers of the President when the country is at war.

 

As the holder of a veto, he can block a lot of legislation that requires a big vote to over turn. That 60% majority is designed to pit the two branches against one another in a delicate balance.

 

Current practice is tending to go away from that but what with lobbyists running all the shows, what difference does it make?

[PassedOut]

There seems to be no hope that anyone ever will get a 2/3 majority and change the US constitution to disallow the "filibuster". It is strange that a 59% majority can accomplish nothing...

Except for a few things (treaties, etc.), no 2/3 majority is required. But the US Constitution does allow the Senate and the House each to establish its own rules, and the Senate has used the 60 vote cloture rule in recent years and is resistant to change.

 

When the republicans were in charge during the Bush administration, they did bypass the 60 vote requirement (by using reconciliation) to reinstate fiscal irresponsibility. Fiscal responsibility had been restored under Clinton, and fiscal irresponsibility was such a key republican value that they felt it warranted bypassing the normal rules.

 

It looks like the democrats don't consider health care reform and (as a result) starting to restore fiscal responsibility as important enough to go that route.

[Al_U_Card]

Whats this I hear about Obama threatening action against the financial institutions?

 

Any credence or is it all bluff and bluster?

[Winstonm]

Whats this I hear about Obama threatening action against the financial institutions?

 

Any credence or is it all bluff and bluster?

Smoke and mirrors - an attempt at illusion of change.

[mike777]

Ya in Europe or a Parliamentary country, one side wins and can just about push through any laws for next 5 years.

 

Here in the USA we have set up competing branches of government which can block most anything.

 

Despite this our government/public sector somehow continues go grow and grow fast. I grant in Europe your public sector does grow faster than ours(see health care).

[mike777]

Whats this I hear about Obama threatening action against the financial institutions?

 

Any credence or is it all bluff and bluster?

Smoke and mirrors - an attempt at illusion of change.

Action against financial institutions? Sort of sounds like a war against some hated evil enemy. What action does he want to take against them?

 

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/john...ugene-fama.html

 

btw here is part of a wonderful New Yorker article with the economics school out of Chicago. This is the part with FAMA but if you get a chance read all the other views.

[Lobowolf]

http://www.thestreet.com/story/10664562/1/...e-of-banks.html

 

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Stocks-slide...126c34c&ccode=1

[mike777]

http://www.thestreet.com/story/10664562/1/...e-of-banks.html

 

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Stocks-slide...126c34c&ccode=1

Ya both articles pretty short in details of what sort of rules to reform.

 

I mean who is against reform.

 

Fama basically says that a recession caused the credit crises. Economics does not know what causes recessions, economic swings.

 

Companies are very good at finding ways around regulations when there is money to be made.

 

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/john...ugene-fama.html

[kenberg]

Here is my take on what happened in Massachusetts:

 

The Healthcare issue has two horns, individual and national.

 

Individual: There are many people with inadequate access to health care.

National: The costs of health care are potentially ruinous to the economy.

 

These two horns are potentially in conflict. At the least, they require different approaches. As time passed, and the health care bills took many twists and turns, there seemed to be far less attention paid to the second issue than to the first. This is, perhaps, inevitable. It will always be easier for politicians to talk about promised benefits than about how to deal with costs. Here, though, this was really a political problem. Many of us see little individual benefit going directly to ourselves. Sure, I would like my health insurance to be cheaper, but I don't think that this would happen under the bill. My health care would not get better under the bill. So at the individual level, the argument has to be that it is a good thing to do for others, rather than that it would benefit me.

 

I am open to arguments based on doing good for others. But it all got pretty tacky. In order to do good for others it became necessary to pay off a lot of people. Unions want a payoff. Senators want a payoff. Insurance companies want a payoff. You can only pay off so many people before you completely lose control of the second objective, keeping rising health care costs from wrecking the economy.

 

So, eventually, it came to folks thinking that just maybe they were being played, once again, by interests that tout help for others while making sure that they help themselves. Mike asks, rhetorically I expect, who can be against reform. Well, I can and often am. Reform usually means transferring some costs from somewhere to somewhere else. Well, the poor have no money to take, and the rich make sure they keep it, so guess whose money gets transferred.

 

 

Something like the above, I would guess, went through many minds as they cast their votes.

[luke warm]

add to ken's post that there was no real reform... if they wanted to actually help, they'd stop the state practice of disallowing 99% of the insurance companies into individual states... open it up, let competition work

[jdonn]

add to ken's post that there was no real reform... if they wanted to actually help, they'd stop the state practice of disallowing 99% of the insurance companies into individual states... open it up, let competition work

Totally disagree, unless the laws governing insurance will be uniform federal laws instead of 50 different sets of state laws, then I would agree.

[Winstonm]

It is difficult for me to grasp how quickly the independent vote turned from overwhelmingly in favor of Obama. I believe disillusioned is the best word to grasp what happened in Massachusetts.

 

Obama had a mandate from the people for radical change - had he held to that vision the people would have held his detractors to blame. Instead, he tried to appease everyone and ended up with nothing but the blame.

 

John Kennedy he's not.

[jdonn]

It is difficult for me to grasp how quickly the independent vote turned from overwhelmingly in favor of Obama. I believe disillusioned is the best word to grasp what happened in Massachusetts.

 

Obama had a mandate from the people for radical change - had he held to that vision the people would have held his detractors to blame. Instead, he tried to appease everyone and ended up with nothing but the blame.

 

John Kennedy he's not.

Actually I agree. I still think he is extremely smart and level headed and has been a good president and done a lot of good things. But he hasn't at all been the transformational leader I was hoping for. That being said there is still a lot of time to turn things around and there are plenty of good things I'm still hoping for, but I no longer think he is likely to be anything more than a good president.

[Lobowolf]

It is difficult for me to grasp how quickly the independent vote turned from overwhelmingly in favor of Obama.  I believe disillusioned is the best word to grasp what happened in Massachusetts.

 

Obama had a mandate from the people for radical change - had he held to that vision the people would have held his detractors to blame.  Instead, he tried to appease everyone and ended up with nothing but the blame.

 

John Kennedy he's not.

I don't think there's a one-stop-shop answer, but I think that part of it, at least, is tied to the factor that has a huge amount of sway over presidential, congressional, and local elections - If the economy (or people's perception of the economy) is good, that's good news for candidates of the same party as the president, and if the economy is going bad, that's good news for the opposition party. McCain's numbers vis a vis Obama didn't tank until the stock market did. Although early (earlier) on in Obama's presidency, ecnomic conditions were attributed to the past administration, after a year, it's generally considered Obama's country now. Notwithstanding that presidents generally get too much credit for a good economy and too much blame for a bad one, things aren't outstanding economically now. In particular, unemployment is high, and perhaps more importantly, it's significantly higher than we heard it would be almost a year ago. Rightly or wrongly, that's bad news for Democratic candidates.

[kenberg]

Presidents keep thinking that they have a mandate when they don't. After W just barely squeaked into a second term he started talking of his political capital as if he had a divine appointment. In the case of Obama, getting folks to chant Yes We Can may be a good way to rally the voters but it's a mistake to think this will translate into support for policy. Folks love a good chant. People say that Obama gives good speeches. Not so, to my mind. He is very good at being emphatic, not so good about saying things that stand up over a period of time. This comes through after a while and I think it is hurting him badly.

 

Winston, I think I can explain pretty simply the disaffection of the independents. To some extent I am one. We, or at least I, were never so taken with Obama. McCain more or less self destructed. We were left with Obama. At least we weren't stuck with John Edwards as a choice. Obama seemed, and seems, capable of bringing in good talent, he doesn't appear to be an ideological nut, so give him a shot. Let's hope he doesn't screw it up too badly.

 

Really the presidency is too tough a job for anyone. Even the best cannot really be up to the task. John Kennedy became an icon only after he was shot. Before that, everyone was sick to death of stories about cute little John-John and glamorous Jackie. But we have to choose, so we choose, and we hope for the best. I suppose some have higher aspirations, but they will be perpetually disappointed.

[PassedOut]

Presidents keep thinking that they have a mandate when they don't. After W just barely squeaked into a second term he started talking of his political capital as if he had a divine appointment. In the case of Obama, getting folks to chant Yes We Can may be a good way to rally the voters but it's a mistake to think this will translate into support for policy. Folks love a good chant. People say that Obama gives good speeches. Not so, to my mind. He is very good at being emphatic, not so good about saying things that stand up over a period of time. This comes through after a while and I think it is hurting him badly.

 

Winston, I think I can explain pretty simply the disaffection of the independents. To some extent I am one. We, or at least I, were never so taken with Obama. McCain more or less self destructed. We were left with Obama. At least we weren't stuck with John Edwards as a choice. Obama seemed, and seems, capable of bringing in good talent, he doesn't appear to be an ideological nut, so give him a shot. Let's hope he doesn't screw it up too badly.

 

Really the presidency is too tough a job for anyone. Even the best cannot really be up to the task. John Kennedy became an icon only after he was shot. Before that, everyone was sick to death of stories about cute little John-John and glamorous Jackie.  But we have to choose, so we choose, and we hope for the best. I suppose some have higher aspirations, but they will be perpetually disappointed.

My thoughts are similar. I never expect to see a transformational president, and Obama is governing pretty much as I expected he would. I knew he would make mistakes, and he even cautioned that he could not be a perfect president. He should definitely have emphasized how the senate health bill controls costs (compared with doing nothing). But I'm still pleased to see Obama in place of the guy we had before.

 

I'm a lot less pleased with the people in congress, the whole lot of them.

 

I did not expect the democrats in congress to be as useless as they turned out to be. They had the chance to fix some things that obviously, desperately, need fixing and they have pretty much blown it.

 

And I did not expect every last republican to refuse to work together with the majority and Obama in a bipartisan way. Part of Obama's appeal during the election was, in my view, his stated intention to work with the other side. It seems that the political goal of undermining Obama trumps working for the public good, so far as the congressional republicans are concerned.

 

The whole crew makes me sick.

[hrothgar]

FWIW, here's my take on matters:

 

I think that Obama made the correct decision to focus on Health Care Reform (HRC) early in his first term. I think that this topic is critical to address. I think that the best time to have addressed this was directly after a mandate type election. [hrC is an enormous issue which has been plaguing President's since Teddy Roosevelt].

 

I think that the administration's tactics were flawed. In particular, I think that Rahm Emmanuel over-reacted to the Clinton's failures and ceded way too much responsibility to congress. They also wasted far too much time trying to find a token Republican willing to cross the aisle. We should have have used the 60 seat super majority while we still had it and rammed HRC down the Republicans throats.

 

The Republicans have made it clear that they are going to act in lockstep opposition to whatever the Democrats propose. They've made their bed... Now they can lie in it.

 

At this point in time, I'd like to see the Democrats step up to the plate, abandon all pretenses of cooperation, and do what needs to get done. To start with, they should ram through a real reform package using reconciliation.

[Gerben42]

Here's my take on the Mass. election. Massachusetts is a rather rich state, ranking quite close to the top on average household income (ranked 6th of 50 according to wikipedia). This means that perhaps they are not the largest interest group for Obama's healthcare plan, as this would mean that they would on average pay for the reform rather than be on the receiving side.

 

So from this point of view, it makes kinda sense. I mean, being without a job and without healthcare only happens to someone else, right?

[hrothgar]

Here's my take on the Mass. election. Massachusetts is a rather rich state, ranking quite close to the top on average household income (ranked 6th of 50 according to wikipedia). This means that perhaps they are not the largest interest group for Obama's healthcare plan, as this would mean that they would on average pay for the reform rather than be on the receiving side.

 

So from this point of view, it makes kinda sense. I mean, being without a job and without healthcare only happens to someone else, right?

Income levels have relatively little to do with voting patterns in the US.

 

The two best predictors of voting behaviour are religious intensity and population density. In the MA election, urban centers went overwhelming for Coakley. The boonies went for Brown. (Coakley also very well in her home territory in Western MA)

 

Its incredibly annoying the Health Care Reform is going to get derailed because Coakley ran such a piss poor campaign. (I'm not disputing that there is some real backlash going on. Even so that election was easily winnable)

 

The one bright spot in this all is that Brown gave a real classy victory speech...

[PassedOut]

The one bright spot in this all is that Brown gave a real classy victory speech...

Yes, a real classic...

[luke warm]

I think that the administration's tactics were flawed.  In particular, I think that Rahm Emmanuel over-reacted to the Clinton's failures and ceded way too much responsibility to congress.

for a start they could really look at the past