Dick Morris is predicting that the GOP will take the Senate in November. If so, a whole lot's gonna change. Obamacare will certainly be repealed, we'll get major cuts in entitlement spending and the safety net (SS, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, etc), major tax cuts for the rich and corporations, total elimination of unions (whatever's left of them), massive military spending, cuts in education, basic research (unless it's for the military) and minimum wage, child labor laws, etc.
Watch his video here.
Is he predicting he'll have a new mistress by then, and be working for a new political party?
ReplyDeleteWill he be working for the Alan Greenspan Say-for-Pay consulting firm?
While it would be a disaster, it may not proceed to the level catastrophe. Romney is a guy who understands the system and he is not going to kill the goose that lays the golden egg for the wealthy. But if he selects someone that the right wants for VP, like Paul Ryan, and Ryan were to go to win the presidency at some point with a GOP to run with, then we could see a full-on catastrophe.
ReplyDeleteThe good new is that it would likely bring an end to the American Empire. The bad news is that the US would slip backward on the scale of nations, having exhausted its forward momentum, and join the other former empires like Britain, Russia, Holland, Spain, and Austria-Hungary in a new world order lead by now emerging countries.
Sure... and minorities and all LGBTers will be locked up. Millions will be starving on the street. Only the 1% will have access to healthcare and women will not be allowed to work outside the home. We've seen how those venal Republicans have slashed federal spending whenever they get a majority. I'm moving to Europe.
ReplyDeleteI'm interested to see if House Republicans can keep their majority. The Democrats need 25 seats to take back the House, a tough row to hoe but the 87-member freshman class has done their level best to throw away their seats.
ReplyDeleteHere's the thing, the single most salient issue for Republican candidates in 2010 was Medicare, GOP candidates went from +0 (tied) among seniors in 2006 to plus +23 in 2010 (and of course seniors are more likely to vote than other age groups). The GOP ads attacking Obama for cutting $500 billion from Medicare were devastating. Knowing this, why on earth were they herded off a cliff with a vote to replace Medicare with vouchers (2011 Ryan budget)? The only two Republicans who correctly called this as a bad idea were Donald Trump and Newt Gingrich (the latter of whom got hammered for his "right wing social engineering" comment).
The Senate is a tossup but I think Pelosi is going to win back the House over this, regardless of who wins the Presidency.
That's a pretty bold call!
ReplyDeleteI agree with beo about the House. I think the Republican House has been so anti- various interests, including Seniors, that there would well be a wave election replacing many Republican incumbents. If there's no wave for Romney, which I don't see happening, or an Obama victory, then I think a D victory in the House is that much more likely.
ReplyDeleteIf the Ds do win in the House and the polling shows it was due to Seniors and concern about upcoming cuts in Medicare and SS, than that could well firm up Pelosi in defending these programs. Especially if Romney wins, then all her incentives would be to oppose Republican attempts at cuts. If Obama wins then she'll be cross-pressured. But even so, she'll be hard pressed to support Obama and the Bowles-Simpson direction, because she knows the Rs will run on that in 2014 and she'll just get kicked out for that again.
Also, if the Ds don't win in the Senate and she wants them to win in 2014, she'll know that D collaboration on cutting entitlements will doom the notion of a D Senate in 2014.
In short, I see Pelosi getting stronger as a defender against cuts after the election than she is right now. Now she doesn't want to put Obama in a difficult position. So her positions are cautious. It may be that pressuring D House candidates for specific guarantees that they will never vote to cut entitlements will drive Pelosi toward that position and place Obama on the spot. As the election gets hotter, and if progressives keep bringing up the planned cuts in coming months, he may see the need to make a commitment. He may not want to. But if he's forced to, and if the Party's forced to, then memories of what happened to the first Bush when he went back on his 1988 pledge, may kill the latest austerity drive before it hits the floor of Congress after the election.
And Dick Morris has been correct about something when?
ReplyDeleteI'm moving to Europe.
ReplyDeleteExactly. If you want to pursue what used to be known as the American dream, move to Denmark.
Btw, Morris has no credibility with me. He lies all the time. On some of the specifics, I think he's wrong on Stabenow. Crazy Pete Hoekstra has too negative a record in the House to win statewide. McCaskill is likely to lose, which serves her right because she's been so neurotically centrist, supporting Obama in this, that she has nothing to run on.
ReplyDeleteIn Montana, I don't see Tester losing in that State since his opponent is pretty tea party and I don't think the tea party is really that strong there in the general electorate. In Indiana, it remains to be seen whether Mourdock will win. He has great funding. But he is far to the right; maybe too cool for school and if his D opponent starts running on SS and Medicare, I don't know how Mourdock will counter that.
In Wisconsin, I think the Ds are still coming on. Scott Walker will probably start offending people soon. The R running will be supporting the Ryan budget and the D candidate should be able to run against that and win.
I can do more state by state, but what I'm saying is that Morris can't be trusted to be telling the truth about the polling. 'trust me' doesn't work here. So, his "facts" are questionable, his bias is very plain, and he has no incentive to tell the truth, only to cheer lead for the Rs.
Looks like a pretty good chance that Florida will lose its last remaining Democrat in Senator Bill Nelson. Connie Mack has a three-point or more lead currently.
ReplyDeleteNelson is a blue-dog centrist trying to hold on in a schizophrenic state (half a million more registered Democrats than Republicans but the Republicans have a veto-proof majority in the state legislature).
The only reason Florida isn't totally bankrupt is Social Security and Medicare payments to the mass of old farts that ironically hate government spending.
We're doomed here unless grampa and grandma die quickly. Alan Grayson was right but it sould have been seen as a feature not a bug. America needs the old farts to die quickly.
The old farts seem to be doing everything they can to make sure it happens so there's that.
I predicted in the spring the election would end up with an Obama victory coupled with very narrow GOP majorities in the House and Senate. Republicans should make 2-3 gains in the Senate. Maybe a dozen or so of the fluky Tea Party types who rode the wave in 2010 will get booted out, but they will still hold the House as well. Another two years of stalemate.
ReplyDeleteIn retrospect, do ya'll think Obama's decision to do healthcare 2008-2010, was the undoing of progressive power in the past few years?
ReplyDeleteIt seems like had he gone 'all in' on economic recovery, there never would have been a Rise of the Tea Party. Going into the 2010 elections, assuming the stimulus had been well targets, unemployment would be much lower, and Obama would have looked like a genius. Riding that wave of support, the Democrats probably would have maintained control of the Senate, and been able to push a much more progressive healthcare legislation… AND Obama would be cruising toward a second term.
Then again, maybe Obama isn't really all that progressive. He seems like an opportunist mixed with cowardice. If he believes in truely progressive ideas, he doesn't fight for them. If he doesn't, he talks like he does but acts differently… deception.
Obamacare is not the debacle it is make out to be. What it does is solidify health care as human right, or as the GOP would say, "an entitlement." This is a huge step forward and no president was able to advance the ball after Truman. It is a tremendous accomplishment, regardless of how crappy the deal that the president was able to is. As Howard Dean is fond of saying, once the right is established, then the plan can be upgraded. This was a victory for Obama and regardless of whether he wins or losses, his presidency will go down in history as a landmark solely because of it. The is the first really significant liberal victory in a long time.
ReplyDeleteSorry, edit: meant to say maintain control of the HOUSE above
ReplyDeletePrediction markets are generally calling the presidency for Obama and the Congress for the GOP.
ReplyDeleteStalemate and gridlock for us, bipartisan bailouts and lightning speed rainbows for them.
ReplyDeleteMy view is that here is the order of things O should have done:
ReplyDelete1. Gotten Harry Reid to get rid of the filibuster on January 3, 2009
2. Oppose the changing of the mark-to-market allowing the zombie banks to claim solvency. The rule was only changed because Congress and the Administration pressured FASB.
3. Take the big banks into resolution, taking them out of the political picture and ensuring that loan funds would flow to small business
4. Gotten Pelosi and Reid to pass a $2T stimulus bill by early March 2009 with no tax cuts except payroll tax cuts. This would have been possible with the filibuster and the banks out of the picture.
5. Passed a Dodd-Frank Bill with teeth limiting CC interest rates to 5 points over prime by April 2009, providing three months for unresolved banks to adjust to change, and prohibiting further trading in derivatives by banks and tight regulation of trading in them by other organizations
6. Bailout of the auto industry pretty much as he did
7. Passage of HR 676 Conyers-Kucinich medicare for All Bill by July 2009. It would have passed if the filibuster hadn't been there and there were only a greatly weakened Wall Street to oppose it.
8. Investigation and prosecution of mortgage control frauds discovered in the process of resolving the banks.
9. Passage of a debt jubilee program for victims of mortgage fraud by September of 2009
Had he done these things Obama would have been free to move on to education reform, addressing new energy foundations, infrastructure reinvention, and climate change control legislation. There would have been victory for Democrats in 2010, and Obama and the Democrats would be heroes going into this election, provided they had legislated a fairer tax structure in the current Congress, and passed constitutional amendment to get rid of Citizens United.
Legislating and changing politics is about getting power, consolidating it, increasing it, and keeping it. Obama knew how to win an election; but he and his team didn't know how to consolidate and increase his political power, or perhaps they just didn't want to do so!
Joe, I think that Obama saw that he had a reasonable shot at enacting a health care bill. I also think that he got bad economic advice about the seriousness of the economic problems that the US was facing. I think that if his senior advisors had correctly evaluated the situation they would have advised the president differently and he would have acted on their advice. Obama's big mistake was selecting Geithner and Summers, as well as Rahm Emmanuel. But he had decided to be a Third Way New Democrat. That cooked him, and he will only win in November because the GOP has such a shallow field that they nominated an unlikable and arrogant rich guy who is clearly out of touch.
ReplyDeleteTom, 1) I was answering JK's question, and 2) How does what you said conflict with what I said?
ReplyDeleteJoe, How does what you said conflict with what I said?
ReplyDeleteJust pointing out that I don't think that Obama's decision was a consciously bad. I don't think he grasped the depth of the crisis due to bad advice. The people at the top not only missed the crisis coming but also its seriousness and tenacity. They just didn't get the difference between an economic crisis and a financial one. They thought that they were throwing plenty at it, the banks would start lending and "the American consumer" would continue doing his/her thing. They really misjudge it and completely blew.
BTW, Mervyn King thinks we have not hit the halfway point yet. I would agree.
Tom, I agree on halfway too. And I'm sure Obama got bad advice. But 1) he's responsible since he appointed the bad advisers. Also, 2) he knew very well that his bad advisers were closely associated with the big banks including Bob Rubin and Citigroup. And 3) he must also have known that he would get biased advice favoring the banks. I think that's the advice he wanted, and that he is very much responsible for our bad outcomes. In Rahm's terms, he let a crisis go to waste because he is a man of neither courage, nor vision, nor principle.
ReplyDeleteThe buck stops at the top.
ReplyDeleteIn the military a commander is accountable for whatever happens under their command — and commanders have to take the troops they are sent.
The president get to pick is own people. If they screw up, the president is accountable.