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- It's not surprising to see that a big chunk of opposition to health-care reform is coming from the left, given that a portion of the activist left has all but given up on Barack Obama and Democrats as agents of progressive reform. Yet there is nothing to be gained for progressives in the defeat of health-care reform, no matter how imperfect, incomplete, and watered-down it is. Politics isn't about sheer willpower. It's about the constraints of the institutions which shape law, and those institutions are constrained indeed.
- I suppose some people take comfort in the idea that Obama's falling poll numbers are based on the president taking on too many things at once, but come on. The president makes decisions. He doesn't run around gathering data and filing reports and doing all the behind-the-scenes work that is running a presidential administration. His staff does that. And at any rate, it's a bit annoying to hear people criticize the president for doing exactly what he said he would do as president. Disagree with policy choices -- I certainly do -- but don't pretend that this impostor is not the man who was elected.
- On the one hand, discovering that there is a large bloc of people out there who would vote for a hypothetical Tea (political) Party is a reflection of the schisms the GOP has faced since losing power. On the other hand, we don't know precisely what this theoretical Tea Party's platform is other than blanket opposition to taxation, which has flourished amidst a recession and the backlash against policies designed to ease that recession. Replicating nationwide what happened in NY-23 without a built-in, registered, third party is going to be a major organizational hurdle no matter how many people sympathize with this vaguely defined "movement."
- Weekend Remainders: Going green gets us nowhere; TARP wasn't a (huge) waste of money after all, will go to jobs creation; data mining and surveillance are something every American should be proud of; Obama could have a clean slate by 2012; let's pray voters have a better memory of Republican rule than Orin Hatch does; a strange tale of fabricated Islamic hijacking where someone is lying; and the G-30 conspiracy is chilling indeed.
--Mori Dinauer
