Sunday, March 21, 2010

Will Obama Finally Take the Gloves Off?

The big question is, if health care wins, will Obama finally take the gloves off - finally discard this mistaken attempt at "bipartisan" negotiations with a party whose only goal is to make the President fail at all costs?

The Republicans have gotten Obama to waste a year on these dalliances. But passage of health care reform may prove that such attempts can be a trap: the more aggressive Obama will seem more Presidential (and also possibly more prescient), and thus see his popularity rise, along with the popularity of his programs. That will give him the wind behind him to make the other needed and hard-fought changes, such as banking reform.

It's a paradox, isn't it? The more Obama tries to be reasonable and reach across the aisle in that negotiable, Senatorial style he has, the weaker he seems, and the more his popularity slips with moderates. In a weird way, then, the best way for Obama to bring the middle of the country along may simply be to be more definite about pushing for his ideas.

We shall see. But I have to say, this new, feisty Obama is more appealing than the one we've had to date.

Pass Healthcare for Spite?

There are all sorts of good reasons the healthcare bill should pass - but could the degeneration of the Tea Party movement into an ugly, angry mob be the final straw that kicks it over the goal line?

There are a lot of things one might criticize the bill for - though at this point, after a year of tinkering, it's hard to imagine coming up with anything else that would nearly come close to creating real health insurance while also controlling costs. If nothing else, perhaps these demonstration may open people's eyes to just how much the whole issue has become a proxy for something else: the last gasp of American know-nothingingism. And perhaps that will convince that last few wavering senators that the opposition to the bill has nothing whatsoever to do with health care at all.

Sunday, January 31, 2010

JK Lassser - Tax Tip of the Day

Here's a nifty widget giving you a new tax tip every day until April 15th.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Lessons from the Coakley Loss

Is the Dem's loss of 60 seats in the house today in the Massachusetts special election really a "wake up call" that the Obama agenda is really too far left, as even moderate Dems like Evan Bayh are suggesting?

Or is it, as I might suggest, more a sign that our country has - like California - become completely ungovernable?

The healthcare legislation - massive and weighted with legislative favors as it is - is already a massive compromise that attempts to steer through a forest of self-interested lobbyists and contingencies to make some progress addressing just one issue that threatens to collapse our continued existence as a country. Clearly no one is happy with the result - and from what I'm reading on comment boards, the discontent with it is as much from the left not getting a public plan as it is from the right having anything happen at all. But how could anyone in their right mind possibly think we could get anything better? Or that the current situation is sustainable?

I should add, the Democrats are clearly deluded if they try to rationalize this vote than anything other than a backlash. Unlike Virginia or New Jersey - two races where there were other circumstances where Democrats might rationalize the loss - this vote is a clear signal that Dems have lost the public on the issues. Unfortunately, it seems to me that the two parties are so far apart now that there's not even consensus on what our basic reality is. Independents, meanwhile, don't really want to try new ideas - they just want to punish whoever is in power.

Attempting change means pissing some people off. And voters are clearly pissed off. The message that Massachusetts voters have sent, it seems to me, is f* you, America. I'm sure it feels good to say. Too bad it just leads us all to the brink of the abyss even faster.