Promises, promises

A day after Peter Orszag's misguided column in the Times, in which he proposed a (yet another) compromise with Republicans who won't compromise, the president comes out forcefully against any such compromise.

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Wednesday will make clear that he opposes any compromise that would extend the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy beyond this year, officials said, adding a populist twist to an election-season economic package that is otherwise designed to entice support from big businesses and their Republican allies.

Mr. Obama’s opposition to allowing the high-end tax cuts to remain in place for even another year or two would be the signal many Congressional Democrats have been awaiting as they prepare for a showdown with Republicans on the issue and ends speculation that the White House might be open to an extension. Democrats say only the president can rally wavering lawmakers who, amid the party’s weakened poll numbers, feel increasingly vulnerable to Republican attacks if they let the top rates lapse at the end of this year as scheduled.

It is not clear that Mr. Obama can prevail given his own diminished popularity, the tepid economic recovery and the divisions within his party. But by proposing to extend the rates for the 98 percent of households with income below $250,000 for couples and $200,000 for individuals — and insisting that federal income tax rates in 2011 go back to their pre-2001 levels for income above those cutoffs — he intends to cast the issue as a choice between supporting the middle class or giving breaks to the wealthy.

In a speech in Cleveland on Wednesday, Mr. Obama will also make a case for the package of roughly $180 billion in expanded business tax cuts and infrastructure spending disclosed by the White House in bits and pieces over the past few days. He would offset the cost by closing other tax breaks for multinational corporations, oil and gas companies and others.

While the speech will be centrist in its policy prescriptions other than the Bush tax cuts, Mr. Obama’s language will be partisan as he seeks to sharpen the contrasts between Republicans’ record and efforts by Democrats to create more jobs, aides said.

This is yet another campaign promise the Obama administration is making good on.

And it comes only a couple of weeks after the president stated flatly that social security privatization is not happening on his watch.

Question is, will anything move the Democratic party base in this election?

Look back in anger

I know I probably don't have to point this out to most of the dearly beloved readers of this humble blog, but if you find yourself feeling less than fired up about the upcoming midterm elections, then ponder this for awhile.

Except for a climate change bill, the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats have followed through on the agenda laid out at the beginning of the 111th Congress in January 2009 despite concerted Republican opposition. The victories were wrenching, partisan and procedurally ugly, but they were victories.

“He said what he was going to do, and he did it,” the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, said about the president.

While Republicans consider much of the legislation flawed and even harmful, they grudgingly concede that Democrats compiled a record perhaps unrivaled since the Great Society programs of President Lyndon B. Johnson were passed during the 89th Congress or the New Deal programs were pushed through the 73rd Congress by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. And though they had large majorities, Democrats did not have substantial opposition help or the cushion that Roosevelt had with 313 Democrats in the House from 1933 to 1935, or the 68 Senate seats that Democrats controlled during Johnson’s tenure in 1965.

Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, said Democrats pushed through legislation that was breathtaking in size and scope, even though approval typically came on very thin margins and party-line votes in the Senate.

“This is big stuff,” Mr. Sessions said. “They would probably say it was great for America. I would say it was bad for America.”

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, is often assailed by Democrats for blocking the Democratic agenda. He said the results absolved him of that charge.

“I am amused with their comments about obstructionism,” Mr. McConnell said in an interview. “I wish we had been able to obstruct more. They were able to get the health care bill through. They were able to get the stimulus through. They were able to get the financial reform through. These were all major pieces of legislation, and if I would have had enough votes to stop them, I would have.”

Emphasis, of course, mine.

This should "fire up the base," if the base can be fired up for a midterm as they were four years ago. Translating it for those outside of that base but not part of the Republicans is proving to be very hard.

It takes a lot to win and even more to lose

Slowly, steadily, I find myself asking: how could George W. Bush and the Republican Party cause so much lasting damage to our country and the world with only bare majorities in Congress, while Obama and Democrats now seem unable to rectify that damage despite have large majorities in both houses?

I know the answer, of course, as it goes by the name of the "Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln, and Evan Bayh wing of the Democratic Party," but still, it's disturbing and no way for a nation that wants to survive the 21st Century to govern itself.

The belle of the ball!

Well, not exactly, but I was not "infuriated" by receiving an embossed "invitation" to the inauguration (and an order form for "swag"). I laughed. And Madam Cura hung it on the 'frig as a keepsake.

Get over yourselves, people. Obama ran the most inclusive presidential campaign ever. And bejeebus, isn't winning for a change sweet enough?

A Krugmaniad too far

I'm sorry, Paul, but a week after your favorite candidate referred to "economists" "elitist views" of the gas tax (and, by inference, the effete elitism of Sen. Obama), and a day after she claimed to be the preferred candidates of "working, hard-working whites," accusing Axelrod and Brazile -- not Barack Obama, by the way -- of "insult[ing] the groups that supported Mrs. Clinton" is just a wee bit hard to swallow.

More tirades from Obama supporters against Mrs. Clinton are not the answer — they will only further alienate her grass-roots supporters, many of whom feel that she received a raw deal.

Nor is it helpful to insult the groups that supported Mrs. Clinton, either by suggesting that racism was their only motivation or by minimizing their importance.

After the Pennsylvania primary, David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s campaign manager, airily dismissed concerns about working-class whites, saying that they have “gone to the Republican nominee for many elections.” On Tuesday night, Donna Brazile, the Democratic strategist, declared that “we don’t have to just rely on white blue-collar voters and Hispanics.” That sort of thing has to stop.

One thing the Democrats definitely need to do is give delegates from Florida and Michigan — representatives of citizens who voted in good faith, and whose support the party may well need this November — seats at the convention.

Emphasis mine. What "tirades" is he referring to? George McGovern's? What in Axelrod's statement even implied racism? And while the voters of Florida and Michigan may have gone to the polls in good faith, Clinton's demand that they be counted -- after she'd agreed to the rules beforehand -- is not.

That's just disingenuous, Paul. And no way to "heal" the party.

Stick to economics, dude. Starting, perhaps, with giving us your views on whether McCain's and Clinton's "gas tax holiday" is a good idea or not. After all, Krugman's one of those "elitist" economists Clinton keeps disparaging, is he not?

Justice Stevens is, like, really old

Scott Lemieux reminds those Democrats who have declared they won't vote for the icky candidate if their personal favorite loses, to shut the fuck up.

Push-polling ourselves?

A Democratic pollster conducted what I hope is nothing more than a thought-experiment to see what a push-poll Karl Rove would love might look like.

"Some people say [your Democratic incumbent] is a strong supporter of Hillary Clinton and will support her liberal agenda of big government and higher taxes if she becomes president," the poll stated, before asking respondents whether they would still vote for their incumbent or choose a Republican candidate.

Whether the question named Clinton or Obama, the Democratic incumbent's lead shrank to an average of six points: 47 percent to 41 percent with Clinton leading the ticket, 44 percent to 38 percent with Obama as the nominee.

As Ken Tremendous might say, "Fuck the heck?"

Steve Benin puts it a bit more eloquently.