×
- I would definitely categorize behind-the-scenes efforts by congressional Democrats to have a jobs package ready to go as soon as health-care reform is signed into law by President Obama as too little, too late, but at least by agreeing to the details in advance we won't have to spend months upon months watching the process unfold committee by committee, vote by agonizing vote. Perhaps there's a lesson here for majority rule in the U.S. Senate ...
- Perhaps because Obama's motivations are so opaque, or because Washington can't resist the "liberals divided" storyline, the notion that the president is losing support among liberals has become a dominant story in light of the year-long struggle -- still formally unfinished -- to enact health-care reform. But if you look at Obama's support among liberal Democrats, as pollster Mark Blumenthal did, you'll find that it remains as high as ever for the president, despite high-profile criticism from prominent liberals in the netroots and beyond.
- We know one salient fact about midterm elections: The president's party tends to lose seats. But what has fascinated me since last year has been the odd dynamic of having an extremely unpopular opposition party that could still theoretically win at the polls in November. Add to this the uphill battle House Republicans face in fundraising parity, being shut out by the tea partiers and the conservative base, and having to cope with a slew of retirements and suddenly the 2010 midterms look less than predictable.
- When Ron Paul goes on TV to bash Dick Cheney's hopelessly mendacious and offensive views on foreign policy, what you're seeing is the source of Paul's brief rise to prominence during the presidential primaries over two years ago. Paul wasn't a hero because of his libertarian views in toto -- he was a hero because he was an anti-war Republican. Such a specimen is all but extinct, and his supporters tended to tune out his tendencies towards LaRoucheism in domestic policy.
- Remainders: The reason Mark Halperin is a relevant figure in the political media utterly eludes me; appointing Hilda Solis secretary of labor should be considered one of the president's first-year successes; Americans continue, bafflingly, to be misinformed about taxing the inheritance passed down from multimillionaires; Politico offers a weak defense for running uncritical interviews with discredited former vice presidents; and does the country that controls thorium control the world?
--Mori Dinauer
