These are turbulent times. But right now it is looking to me like this will not be like 1994, but rather like 1982, if that. The president will keep the Senate, and will keep the House, but he will end up with a thinner margin in the House.
This Is Not 1994
Or Maybe Bill Clinton Is Running On Empty
The Hammer Effect, The Butterfly Effect
Obama Needs To Ride The Reshma Insurgency Wave To November Victory
A President Is Like A Political Billionaire
Credit For Credit Card Bill Goes To Barack Obama
How My Grandfather Became Mayor The First Time
The First Time I Heard The Obama Name
Obama, Reshma
Keeping The House And The Senate
Course deviation will not work.
These are not Clinton or Reagan times. These are FDR times. Parallels with 1994 and 1982 are out of place. America has been going through the birth pangs. Either it will emerge a stronger country than ever, a post-industrial society, a knowledge economy, in tune with the environment, or it will emerge as yesterday's power. We already live in a multi-polar world, but America is capable of having its best days lie ahead. That is where leadership comes in. Shanghai might have the tall buildings, and the shiny streets and the fast trains, but it does not have New York City's diversity. America is going to save itself when it finally does comprehensive immigration reform next year.
America's 13 trillion dollar debt is like the bulging waistlines of Americans. If America can lose weight, American can reign in the debt. The leader has to know and stand by what the right thing to do is. Polls and sometimes even election results don't give you the best message.
I want the president to be able to keep the House and the Senate.
When the American people stop thinking they vote Republican. The trick is to keep them thinking. The president needs to get very active in these final weeks. He has to explain. He has to become the professor again that he once was in Chicago.
The Republicans have not offered any new ideas. Their plank is that they are the party of no. Their message is, this guy Obama wants to take away your French fries. And some Americans are like, I am not sure I like the guy who will take away my French fries. Obama's tough job is to explain why French fries are making you fat. Fat is unhealthy.
Obama was not handed a normal, cyclical recession like Clinton and Reagan were. Obama was handed a generational recession, and that gives him the opportunity to be a transformational president. These bad times are an opportunity for greatness. And these November elections are important. He has to communicate directly with the American people.
Time
How Twitter Helped Resurrect Kanye West:the VMAs incident solidified a long-held suspicion: Kanye West was unlikable. Even President Obama called him a "jackass." .... "redeeming yourself through arrogance is like smoking with cancer" ..... the secret to Kanye's appeal is his ability to balance his egotism with humor, and in his fallow period he rediscovered that equilibrium through Twitter. ..... He drinks wine out of gold goblets and eats cereal out of a turquoise chalice...... He has now written more than 300 tweets, ranging from the insightful ("Don't you hate it when you say bye to someone then yall get on the elevator together and it's like, now what?? Awkwaaard") ...... he mused on Twitter, "Fur pillows are hard to actually sleep on."
How Barack Obama Became Mr. Unpopular:When Obama arrived in office in January '09, his Gallup approval rating stood at 68%, a high for a newly elected leader not seen since John Kennedy in 1961. Today Obama's job approval has been hovering in the mid-40s ..... the President's party teeters on the brink of a broad setback in November, including the possible loss of both houses of Congress...... By a 10-point margin, people say they will vote for Republicans over Democrats in Congress, the largest such gap ever recorded by Gallup ..... Midterms are almost always bad for first-term Presidents, and worse in hard times...... In 2008, Newport notes, trust in the federal government was at a historic low, dropping to around 25%, where it still remains. Yet Obama has offered government as the primary solution to most of the nation's woes ..... roughly 1 in 3 of the President's 2008 supporters had serious questions about government spending solutions for the economy....... "We have a lot of government activism at a time when skepticism of government efficiency is at an all-time high." ....... For someone who so carefully read the political mood as a candidate, Obama has been unexpectedly passive at moments as President...... His appeals to the grass-roots army that he started, through online videos for Organizing for America, took on a formal, emotionless tone. He acted less like an action-oriented President than a Prime Minister overseeing some vast but balky legislative machinery. When challenged about his declining popularity, the President tended to deflect the blame — to the state of the economy, the ferocity of the news cycle and right-wing misinformation campaigns........ By the end of the summer, the disconnect had grown so severe that only 1 in 3 Americans in a Pew poll accurately identified him as a Christian, down from 51% in October 2008. At the same time, the base voters Obama had energized so well in '08 went back into hibernation. ....... many of the same groups Obama turned out for the first time in record numbers had suffered the most from the recession ..... at this point in their presidencies, both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton scored slightly lower approval ratings than Obama...... at this point in their presidencies, both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton scored slightly lower approval ratings than Obama. ...... Reagan was facing rising discontent at the midterm, driven by huge unemployment numbers that peaked at 10.8% at year's end. ..... won re-election by an enormous margin. ...... it is clear that Obama's brief window of one-party rule has closed...... "I think the next couple of years, we've got to focus on debt and deficits," Obama told NBC News after his summer vacation
Is Wisconsin's Paul Ryan Too Bold for the GOP?: At a time when most of his Republican colleagues are content to posture as the Party of No, Ryan is virtually alone in his determination to detail exactly what the U.S. must do to cut federal spending and make a dent in the nation's $13 trillion debt. In a very short time, he has become a hero to deficit hawks. Ryan, says former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, is "one of three, maybe four, young Republicans who are going to change the face of the party." ...... In 2006 he wrote legislation that would give the President line-item veto power--a move lawmakers on both sides have long resisted. In 2007 he called for earmark transparency ...... Paul Krugman took a whack at Ryan's plan and declared it as hollow as a piñata. "Mr. Ryan isn't offering fresh food for thought," he wrote in the New York Times. "He's serving up leftovers from the 1990s drenched in flimflam sauce.".... Ryan is the most intellectually serious Republican at the moment ...... "The appetite is much stronger outside the Beltway than inside," he says. "The political class up here is in the old thinking, which is, This is such a political weapon, don't touch it, don't touch it, don't touch it, you'll die. Because they listen to the pollsters." ....... runs a grueling daily exercise class in Washington for members of Congress--think 200 push-ups.
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