Winning By Losing

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Occasionally in the past, I've heard it said that, at times, it is possible to win by losing.

I heard that — or its equivalent — said a lot in the lead–up to today's Supreme Court ruling on the legal challenge to the so–called Obamacare legislation.

Initially, I was inclined to think it was pre–emptive spinning — to mitigate defeat, not boast of victory.

Because, you see, both sides seemed to be convinced — to some extent — that the High Court was going to rule against them. And, I suppose, in these times of incredible uncertainty, that was the prudent thing to do: Prepare for the worst.

Therefore, this was the logic — on both sides.

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If the Supreme Court rules against us, it will mobilize our people in the fall, and we will overwhelm the opposition with the backlash.

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Now, on the surface, I supposed, that is a reasonably effective case for making chicken salad out of chicken sh*t.

But it seemed to me that it perpetuated the mindset that believes in complacency politics — that success makes people complacent.

That has not been my experience.

In my experience, whether it is business or politics or whatever, success only whets one's appetite for more. I never expected the side that was perceived to be the winner today to sit back and relax.

Americans have always been competitive. Historically, success seldom makes people complacent. If anything, having acquired power, they put that power to work in an attempt to keep it.

Well, most do. Some don't, I admit. But those people don't tend to last too long.

Anyway, now that the Supreme Court has ruled the legislation to be constitutional — and in the most improbable way imaginable, by upholding the mandate as being within congressional taxation authority — I have been re–thinking my opinion on that.

And I'm beginning to think that, yes, there could be a considerable backlash on this at the polls in November.

In the first place, the introduction of that word tax is something the Democrats in Congress — and Barack Obama himself — sought to avoid when they were ramming through the health care reform act.

Legal defenders of the legislation only threw it into the mix in their Supreme Court arguments as a last–minute thing — yet that turned out to be the argument that the Supreme Court bought.

The High Court didn't go along with the commerce argument. It upheld the constitutionality of the legislation with that last–minute taxation argument — which, ironically, was never part of the original deal.

And it made things a bit sticky for the Obama campaign. Obama has repeatedly assured Americans that, during his presidency, there would be no tax increase on anyone making under $200,000/year.

Now, with the help of the Supreme Court, he has pulled off the greatest bait and switch in American taxation history.

And, if there are any folks who need a quick reminder of how the American people feel about anything that is labeled a tax, let me refer them to the election returns from 20 years ago — when President George H.W. Bush was defeated in large part for going back on his 1988 campaign pledge to resist any tax increases.

And make no mistake about it. This will amount to a massive tax increase — mostly on the middle class. Countless people will look at their annual incomes and do the math — and they will conclude that it will be cheaper for them to pay the tax than purchase the insurance.

That doesn't mean they will like it. It just means they will do it.

There's no doubt in my mind that the Supreme Court handed Obama a victory with today's ruling. It would have been indescribably embarrassing for the signature legislation under a president who was once a constitutional law professor to be declared unconstitutional.

Obama was spared that embarrassment — and, because of that, he has to be regarded as the winner of today's round. His signature legislation — virtually the only accomplishment he has to show for his 3½ years as president — survived.

Without it, he would have had no case at all for re–election.

But the Republicans have been given a huge banner to follow into battle this fall — and, with it, I think Romney may well win the war.

The New World Order

Well, it isn't a new world order, I guess. More like a new American order.

But it figures to affect what happens in next year's presidential race.

And that is as worldly as most presidential aspirants probably care to be — at least until they can rightfully claim president–elect as their title.

But that new world order — if it is to come — is still in the future. I'm thinking about something much more immediate.

The new order of which I speak is the new Congress, in which Republicans control the House (by a pretty significant margin, too) and Democrats still hold the majority in the Senate (but by a greatly reduced margin).

This week marks the beginning of the first session of the 112th Congress, and I think it is safe to say things are going to be different in Washington in the next couple of years.

Well, I guess some things haven't changed — like the emphasis. Oh, the focus will remain on domestic policy, but I would have thought that, with unemployment entrenched above 9% and frustrated voters having just taken more than 60 House seats away from the Democrats and given them to the Republicans, job creation would be the top priority for lawmakers in both parties.

There may be some lawmakers for whom job creation really is as urgent as it is for rank–and–file Americans, but, as Paul Kane writes in the Washington Post, House Republicans are already plotting a vote to repeal health care reform next week.

Don't worry, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson counsels supporters of health care reform. Repeal ain't gonna happen, he says — to be precise, he writes, "Just to be clear, there's no earthly chance that a bill repealing the landmark health–care overhaul could make it through Congress and be signed into law" — and he makes that assessment based on two factors, one of which seems far more likely (to me) than the other.

The first premise is that the Democrat–controlled Senate would reject it, but I am skeptical of that. It presumes that Democrats will stand resolutely against any efforts to repeal health care reform — but they were seldom that united when they had the allegedly filibuster–proof majority that they openly coveted.

With the Democrats' margin in the Senate reduced to 53–47 (and two of those 53 members aren't even Democrats — technically), all the Republicans need to do is persuade four members to vote with them (fewer if any of the Democrats are absent due to illness or injury).

Why would they be more resistant to Republican pressure than they were when the numbers were more favorable to them?

There are, as I observed in November, a dozen Democratic senators from states that voted for Republicans in the 2010 midterms who must face those voters in 2012. Some probably will be re–elected; others are not so certain, at least at this point.

As we get closer to the election year and opponents emerge on not only the Republican side but the Democratic side as well, some of those Democrats might look at the polls and decide that going with the prevailing wind and keeping their jobs beats tilting at windmills — or supporting a president who hasn't been particularly supportive of them.

That leads, I suppose, to Robinson's second premise, which seems far more likely to me, although it is hard to see how, if it comes to that, it can be of much benefit to the president.

That premise is that Barack Obama will veto any repeal that passes both chambers. It requires way more support to override a veto than Republicans can come up with under present circumstances. Consequently, Obama wins by default.

But he would still be put in the position of having to rally enough Democrats to his side to prevent the veto from being overridden. How hard that would be might depend upon how the Republicans package their assault — which provision(s) of the reform bill face a legislative challenge (and GOP lawmakers are already talking about challenging individual provisions) and that sort of thing.

So I suppose Robinson is right when he says "there's no earthly chance that a bill repealing the landmark health–care overhaul could make it through Congress and be signed into law."

Republicans have made repealing health care reform the centerpiece of their agenda. It is the #1 item on this generation's "Contract With America" — in no small part because it would deny Obama a signature legislative triumph when he is running for a second term.

But perhaps the symbolism of taking a principled stand against health care reform is what matters most as Republicans try to slither their way back into power. They promised to attempt to do certain things, but it doesn't take a mathematician to see that they simply don't have the numbers to insist on anything at the moment. Thus, the attempt itself may have to suffice for now.

That could change in 2012. Congressional Republicans need to conserve the mood of 2010 and prevent the pendulum from swinging back to the left as quickly as it swung to the right.

If nothing else, though, the Republicans are orderly — and patient. They have earned a reputation for giving their presidential nominations to whoever is perceived to be next in line. They seldom, if ever, proceed to item #2 until item #1 has been achieved.

One thing leads to the next in their philosophy. It was a Republican president, after all, who popularized the "domino theory" that was as responsible as anything else for America's tragic involvement in Vietnam.

As long as I can remember, Republicans have seen things in terms of keeping that first domino from falling — because, presumably, all the other dominoes are weaker. At least, they're too weak to resist when that first domino falls.

That doesn't strike me as a very promising omen of cooperation and bipartisanship.

In the next two years, I wouldn't count on making much headway in breaking the gridlock that seems to be a permanent fixture on Capitol Hill.

Each time the old pendulum swings — no matter in which direction — gridlock seems to tighten its grip. It tends to render the system less and less responsive to the people it is supposed to serve, less and less capable of meeting the needs of the citizenry.

Gridlock is a political tool, used (and nurtured) by whichever side it benefits at the moment.

That's the reality of the new world order.

Celestial Navigation

Do you remember the last year or so of George H.W. Bush's presidency?

He was like a moth on a summer night, frantically drawn to whichever light beckoned to him from the many competing beams that seemed to be shining. And, for the last painful months of the first Bush presidency, he was bouncing from one light source to another, only to discover they were never among his famous "thousand points of light."

Moths, they say, are attracted to light because they fly using a form of celestial navigation so they zero in on a light source and that keeps them flying in a reasonably straight line. It's an act of faith, I suppose ... inasmuch as moths are capable of having faith in anything.

Anyway, back in 1992, Bush was drawn to whichever light seemed to promise him guidance to victory in the election. I guess they were all dead ends or mere reflections of light (and not actual light sources) because Bush lost the presidency to Bill Clinton in a big way, and his party was reduced to a minority status that was almost identical to the one in which Republicans found themselves after the 2008 elections.

After Clinton took office, the hard times lingered. Despite different policies, improvements were slow. And, with the passage of time, Clinton — to use a phrase that has gained popularity in recent years — took ownership of the economy in the eyes of the voters. He insisted on reminding voters that he inherited the bad economy, but that point was irrelevant. Two years after Clinton was elected and Democrats took huge majorities in Congress, the voters handed legislative power to the Republicans.

Now, in terms of the numbers (of displaced workers, of sluggish economic performance, general severity, etc.), comparing the economy of the early '90s to the one facing this country today is like comparing tinker toys to steel girders.

But today's Democrats — and their leader, Barack Obama — have insisted on treating the steel–girder recession like it's the tinker–toy recession. Their words may have said one thing, but their actions have said something else.

Their actions — whether intended or not — have conveyed an inattentiveness to, an utter disinterest in the plight of the unemployed.

As I have mentioned on several occasions, Obama never said a word in public about unemployment on Labor Day weekend 2009 (when his approval ratings were still in the 50s), but he's been singing a much different tune in 2010, when those approval numbers have slid into the low 40s.

And, with polls showing Democrats on the brink of a hammering that may be historic in terms of its scope, he seems to be emulating "41" (as the elder Bush was affectionately known) by bouncing from one topic to another in what can only be seen as politically motivated moves.

In less than eight weeks, the American people will go to the polls. And Obama, in true George H.W. Bush style, has been indulging in his own "Message: I care" moments — i.e., this week's transparent push for new economic proposals — that are intended to mollify the voters until they've voted for the party in power.

Then the voters can be forgotten again.

I really have a hard time following the logic. A year ago, you might have been greeted with, at least, an incredulous look if you had suggested that the voters might be on the verge of giving legislative power to the party that has been in the minority since January 2007. But not so today.

Today, the conventional wisdom and the polls favor a Republican electoral wave in November that may well exceed the one that swept the Democrats from power in 1994.

The warnings seem to be everywhere — like that week in August 2005 when Hurricane Katrina was crossing the Gulf of Mexico or the post–9/11 claims from intelligence sources that the terrorists' electronic "chatter" was deafening in the summer of 2001.

The warnings have been out there for months.

Byron York writes about it in the Washington Examiner. York is a conservative, but I could hardly have expected a gentler treatment of the subject from anyone at the other end of the political spectrum.

"The American people don't expect Obama to perform miracles," York writes in describing the bewilderment of Republican strategists. "They know he inherited a mess. They don't think the unemployment rate will magically fall to 4.5 percent. But they do expect the president to devote himself completely to the economy, and they want to see signs of progress by election day. By 'progress,' they mean not just a good month but the clear sense that the economy is moving in the right direction.

"Instead, they got policy potpourri and 'Recovery Summer.' "

Conventional wisdom suggests that it is much too late for anything to happen domestically that could turn things around for the Democrats. When I was studying political science in college, we talked of how voters' attitudes tend to "harden" about five or six months before an election. In my experience, that has been true. It certainly seems to have been true in 1994.

Speaking of 1994, I learned from that experience. I've been a Democrat most of my life (until earlier this year, in fact). I've been studying voting trends most of my life, too.

I was a registered Democrat in 1994. And, frankly, the tsunami that washed over the country that year came as a shock to me, coming as it did only two years after Democrats won huge congressional majorities, as well as the presidency itself.

But, as I say, I learned from that experience. And one of the things I learned was that, when a president takes office in the midst of hard times, that president must address the issues that are of the most concern to the most people. Usually, that means encouraging job creation.

The president may not want to devote his time and energy to jobs. He may have grander ideas for his presidency. Most presidents, it seems to me, are driven by a desire to lead, but when times are hard, they must do what may be counterintuitive to them and follow — follow, for as long as it takes, the will of the people. Respond to their needs and concerns.

A president can't choose the times in which he serves, but he can choose how he handles the challenges of his times. And the nature of the times is almost always dictated by the state of the economy. Bad economies require a focus on pocketbook issues. If the voters don't get that from their leaders, they will choose new leaders.

If, in the last 20 months, the voters had gotten what York calls "the clear sense that the economy is moving in the right direction," they might have been more receptive to the things for which Obama clearly wants to be remembered. But they haven't gotten that sense.

"Wait a minute!" Obama's defenders say. "Isn't the president pressing a bold economic plan even as we speak?"

Yes. But York has a compelling response: "If these are such great ideas, why wasn't the president pushing them earlier?"

It's a fair question. And today, I can see no circumstances — other than an international incident — that can save Democratic lawmakers in November. Perhaps — by the sheer grace of God — they may be able to salvage either the House or the Senate.

I don't think they will be able to save both. I think they're more likely to lose both.

But unless they can save both, I expect a fight in Congress next year over the repeal of the health care reform package upon which Obama gambled his presidency. And a prolonged fight over health care reform is going to delay any efforts to encourage job creation.

Sure, you can find the Pollyannas of the Democratic Party, like Susan Estrich, who wrote, in a recent column for Creators Syndicate, that, no matter how grim things may seem, the Democrats do have a thing or two on their side.

Nevertheless, Estrich did feel compelled to give a disclaimer, "What all this means is not that Democrats will hold on to the House come next fall, but that they can."

Her experience as Michael Dukakis' campaign manager 22 years ago must have taught her the value of spin because she quickly added that "even if they don't, it hardly spells doom for the president. The one area where the gap between the parties is clearest is that of enthusiasm. Enthusiasm comes from activists and ideologues. Instead of attacking them, this president and his team have to remember to spend some time wooing them."

Is it just me, or does that sound reminiscent of Obama's attempts last year to appease the Republicans in Congress? Well, we all know how well that worked, don't we?

So, logically, it will work even better, now that it's the Democrats, and not the Republicans, who are on the ropes. Right?

That kind of logic reminds me of a monologue I saw David Letterman give on The Tonight Show before he became a late–night host.

In the monologue, Letterman observed that, if a patron complained about the quality of the food, the approach at many restaurants at that time was to bring that patron more of that item.

"If there's anything better than bad food, it's lots of it," Letterman said.

I guess, if you're going to apply that line to current political tactics, you could say that "if there's anything better than bad legislative strategy, it's lots of it."

Well, I guess you could say that if you're a Republican. Not if you're a Democrat.

If health care reform is repealed, the centerpiece of Obama's presidency will be gone with no chance to get it back before Obama himself must face the voters. Without health care reform, what will be the basis for his argument to be given another four years?

And if voters continue to get the sense that the economy is not moving in the right direction in 2011, as they almost surely will not if the administration must constantly engage in skirmishes on Capitol Hill over health care reform — the issue that won't go away and can't be resolved — Obama can forget about a second term.

It didn't have to be this way.

I've seen this coming. I've been warning about it on this blog since before Obama took office. I've seen other people warning about it, too.

But I've been increasingly frustrated by the dawning knowledge that today's Democrats are intent upon forgetting (or ignoring) the recent past.

I could understand their hesitance to take decisive steps that could at least mitigate the damage in a midterm election — which almost always goes against the party in power, anyway, but not always decisively, as seems likely this year — if they were farther removed from the last time the opposing party took control of Congress. In 1994, it had been 40 years since the last time Republicans were in the majority in both chambers.

Most, if not all, of the Democrats who lived through the flip in the 1950s were gone by 1994. They couldn't warn the new generation of Democrats.

But, in 2010, the Democrats are only 16 years removed from the last time that happened. Joe Biden was a senator for more than 30 years. He's seen presidents from both parties wrestle with hard times. He lived through the 1994 midterms. And, when he was in the Senate, he tended to be blunt about what was needed to reverse the tide. But he's been the enabler–in–chief as vice president.

They couldn't have forgotten so quickly, could they?

Apparently, the answer to that is a resounding "yes they could."

And, in 55 days, we will find out exactly how much they have forgotten.

The 'Bounce' From Health Care Reform

I know some people who are truly baffled.

Barack Obama's triumph in the health care reform battle is an historic achievement, they say. I've heard some people say that, in terms of domestic policy, it elevates him past Lyndon Johnson and the civil rights/voting rights legislation of LBJ's Great Society — and it may lift him above Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal.

Well, when the chapters on this period in American history are written, perhaps Obama's position among the presidents will be secured. If that's all Obama wanted to do as president, then mission accomplished — probably.

But he's got nearly three years left in his term, and that reverence that the Democrats seem to think Obama deserves ain't showing up in the public opinion polls.

The USA Today/Gallup Poll, conducted March 26–28, reports that 47% approve of the job Obama is doing and 50% disapprove. What gives?

I think it's the ongoing problem of unemployment and the perception — if not the actual fact — that Obama and the Democrats have done little, if anything, to alleviate the suffering. And I still think that they're going to pay a price for it in November.

But it seems to me that the big mistake that Obama's supporters make is in seeing these disapproval numbers as proof that Americans aren't appropriately grateful for health care reform legislation. And, from that faulty conclusion, they jump to yet another faulty conclusion — that this is all the result of racism. I've heard it argued that if a white man had done what Obama did, he would have been praised endlessly. But Obama has been criticized because he is black.

That's an easy scapegoat. Too easy. Sure, there are probably some respondents to these polls who don't like Obama because he is black, but most of those negative responses are coming from people who question Obama's judgment, not his bloodlines. They think he is doing things in the wrong order.

And so, apparently, does Bob Herbert of the New York Times, who writes, "[I]t is time for the Obama administration to move quickly and powerfully to the monumental task of putting Americans back to work. ...

"[T]he United States is in real danger of sinking into a long–term economic funk. The recession is not over for the nearly 15 million people who are unemployed. Many of them have been out of work for longer than six months, a seeming eternity. Widespread joblessness and underemployment are threatening to become permanent features of the American landscape, corroding not just our standards of living but the very vibrancy of the American way of life."

Herbert does give the Democrats credit for proposing jobs bills, "but they are small–bore initiatives that will accomplish little." He observes, as I have, that what is needed is a commitment to rebuilding America's infrastructure, something the pending legislation doesn't address.

A good example of the administration's failure to connect the dots is Education Secretary Arne Duncan's assertion that "we have to educate our way to a better economy."

I agree that education is important. I agreed that health care was important, too. But I've been saying all along that joblessness was the most urgent issue facing the administration. And infrastructure is the key to long–lasting, high–paying jobs. Any other approach is like treating a broken arm with a band–aid.

Herbert suggests that Obama and the Democrats should follow FDR's lead and approach the current situation with "the emergency of a war."

Mark my words. It is a war that cannot be fought with slingshots.

Blow by Blow

Charles Blow writes an interesting column in today's New York Times about the anger of the far right that has been visible for all to see in the aftermath of the passage of the health care reform legislation.

"Whose country is it?" the headline on his column asks, and Blow proceeds to make the case that, in the words of the old Bob Dylan song, the times they are a–changing. And they can't be stopped.

Blow sees this as the general ranting of extremists against the perceived takeover of America by the non–white, non–male, non–straight, non–Christian, non–European elements of the population, resulting in the loss of control of their country.

"It's an extension of a now–familiar theme," Blow writes, "some version of 'take our country back.' "

But they can't have it, Blow says. "The problem is that the country romanticized by the far right hasn't existed for some time, and its ability to deny that fact grows more dim every day. President Obama and what he represents has jolted extremists into the present and forced them to confront the future. And it scares them."

Blow may be right when he refers indirectly to the inevitability of what is happening — the black man in the Oval Office, the woman wielding the gavel in the House, the Jew and the gay man who were the "most visible and vocal proponents" of health care reform.

And change — any change, really, but especially change on that scale — is unsettling. Blow is right when he observes that it frightens many on the right.

When people are frightened, they can be defensive. They can be irrational. They are seldom logical.

But Blow makes the mistake that many on the left make. He tries to apply logic to the situation.

Those on the right are outnumbered, Blow implies. Their numbers are dwindling. He concedes the possibility that the Republican Party may enjoy "a short–term benefit" from not taking a stand against "the radical language, rabid bigotry and rising violence" while profiting politically from expressing concern about legitimate issues of taxation and government's role, "but it's a long–term loser."

It's probably admirable that Blow thinks of things in the long term. But if the right wing really is as concerned about the societal shifts as he suggests — and, to be sure, some of the members of that faction are primarily concerned about that — I doubt that they have analyzed the long–term implications. Blow writes about the wave of the future, but those about whom he writes are thinking about the past and the present. Blow might find them shortsighted and intractable. But, to use the familiar movie line, what we've got here is a failure to communicate. The two sides might as well be speaking languages the other does not understand.

What is really called for, it seems to me, is an understanding of the fear that is at the bottom of all this rage; then, appropriate steps can be taken. We've all been scared at one time or another, right? Think about the last time something really terrified you. Were you inclined to analyze the long–term implications? You may have felt a profound sense of loss or you may have been angry about the fact that something dear to you was being taken from you. You may have said and/or done things that you later regretted, things you wouldn't necessarily have said and/or done if you had allowed a cooler head to prevail. But I would be willing to bet that you never gave any thought to the long–term consequences.

Most people — but not all — feel inclined to lash out at those whom they believe (rightly or wrongly) to be their tormentors when they get backed into a corner. And extremists can be dangerous enough when they act spontaneously. We've all heard about the threats against House Democrats who supported health care reform, threats that don't appear to be coordinated or necessarily planned out. And Blow observes that gun sales have escalated since Obama took office. The ingredients for a tragedy are in place.

I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss what extremists might be capable of — especially if they take the time to think about their actions. Don't forget what Timothy McVeigh did in Oklahoma City.

I grew up in the South, where I learned early that right–wing extremism tends to go hand in hand with a belief that there is a mandate from God to do whatever may be deemed necessary to preserve the way of life that has always been. The fact that a majority of Americans accept abortion rights, for example, did not prevent an anti–abortion activist from killing an abortion provider in church last year. He was not deterred by the fact that the numbers were against him. I suspect that, if anyone asked him, he would say they merely needed to be shown the light.

Granted, that wasn't in a state that is considered part of the Deep South, but hatred isn't confined to one region. And Blow doesn't specify the South in his column — although it is the region that has produced most of the conservative lawmakers in Congress. Even so, the South has earned its reputation for intolerance over the years, and I'm a little surprised that Blow doesn't seem to understand that. I don't know where he was born and raised, but I know he went to school at Grambling in Louisiana so he lived in the South for awhile at least.

Things have changed a lot since the 1960s, but it is still necessary to exercise care when dealing with the South. And, by definition, whenever one is addressing the right wing, one is addressing the South.

Perhaps he has been away too long to remember just how virulent Southern thinking can be. Perhaps he only remembers the history book accounts, which are bad enough but still mostly focus on the headline news — the murders of three civil rights activists in Mississippi in 1964, the shooting of Martin Luther King in 1968, etc. — and not the routine acts of violence that were carried out against mostly nameless, mostly faceless, low–profile victims.

Thankfully, that part is greatly diminished from what it was, but it would not be wise to let the application of logic allow potentially tragic complacency to be in charge.

Doobie or Not Doobie?

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It may be an issue whose time has come. And, if that is the case, there may be no more appropriate place for it than California.

Voters in that state will decide in November whether to legalize and regulate marijuana use, an issue that has come before voters in other states in other election years but has always failed.

In 2010, however, there is an unusual confluence of issues, like two mighty rivers that meet and create an even greater force, that might make this vote different from the rest. Even if the eventual result is the same, the margin may be closer than it has ever been — and it may be a sign that the tide is turning.

First, there is the recession, which has produced — thus far — a 13.2% unemployment rate in California and a shortfall of the state budget that has forced Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to call for "draconian" spending cuts while warning that there is surely more/worse to come.

The folks in Washington seem to have lost sight of the fact (assuming — and that is a huge assumption — that they ever fully realized it in the first place) that this recession — and the unemployment it has spawned — is different from the others with which they have dealt. And they appear determined to fight it the same way they initially chose to fight Saddam Hussein and the Iraqis — on the cheap.

On the cheap didn't work in Iraq, and it won't work against the recession.

Policy analyst Samuel Sherraden, in an article for CNN.com, says the new jobs bill, in which the president and the members of his party seem to place so much faith, is doomed to fail because it focuses on inadequate tax credits instead of promoting infrastructure.

Of course, it is understandable — to a point — why infrastructure is not emphasized. Infrastructure costs money, lots of money, but revenue is down because fewer people are working and paying taxes — so there isn't as much money available as there once was.

"The House of Representatives passed a relatively strong bill in December, which included $48 billion in infrastructure spending," Sherraden writes. "Now the House and the Senate have adopted a bill that consists primarily of a payroll tax deduction for employers who make new hires and keep them on for a year. The original House jobs bill was $154 billion. The new bill is one–tenth the size."

I'm not an economist, but I don't think you have to be to see that Sherraden is right. The money simply isn't there, and the jobs bill doesn't provide the sources for the kind of revenue that is needed to repair the infrastructure and put millions of unemployed Americans back to work.

Legalizing, regulating and taxing marijuana has the potential to produce the kind of revenue — I've heard it estimated that legalizing marijuana in California alone can produce $1 billion annually in tax revenue for the state — that will address the infrastructure issue. And it will keep doing so beyond 2010, unlike the tax credits the Democrats have proposed.

As Sherraden observes, "It is unwise to pass a temporary hiring incentive that will expire during a year when the unemployment rate is forecast by the Congressional Budget Office to average 9.5 percent."

Yet, in addition to providing the kind of revenue that could be used to make meaningful improvements in the nation's infrastructure, legalizing marijuana could create, virtually overnight, the demand for all kinds of jobs. Those people in occupations that would be adversely affected by legalizing marijuana — for example, lab workers who perform drug tests and law enforcement officials who have been waging a losing war against marijuana for decades — would simply be reassigned to more productive pursuits. It is doubtful that their jobs would be eliminated, only the functions of the jobs. If marijuana is legalized, attention can shift to testing for the use of demonstrably deadly drugs and the enforcement of laws against violent behavior.

Then there is health care reform, an issue that has dominated the thinking of Barack Obama (who seems to have devoted more attention to his NCAA Tournament predictions in the last couple of years than he has to unemployment) and the Democrats in Congress for more than a year. With the passage of health care reform legislation, the thoughts of many have turned to the subject of easing the pain of those afflicted with AIDS, cancer, glaucoma, etc. And that is where the issue of medical marijuana comes in.

Marijuana has been proven — repeatedly — to be effective at fighting the nausea that is a by–product of some treatments (most notably, chemotherapy). It has also been shown to stimulate appetite, which is helpful for those whose medical treatments have robbed them of the desire for food. For glaucoma patients, it eases intraocular pressure that robs people of their vision.

However, fear mongers continue to spread inaccuracies (I prefer that word to lies even though this is one of those times when the latter is more appropriate) about marijuana. I can only assume that, because medical science has established a connection between tobacco consumption and life–threatening illnesses like lung cancer, opponents of legalization have jumped to the conclusion that smoking anything will cause lung cancer, too. I am aware of no medical studies that have shown that marijuana causes cancer. In fact, the Journal of Clinical Investigation, which makes its research articles from the last 86 years freely available online, has demonstrated precisely the opposite. JCI's research shows that marijuana kills cancer cells, which is one more therapeutic benefit.

Of course, it is unlikely that most of the people who consume marijuana do so as a preventive measure — although there may be some who smoke it because they are concerned about the prevalence of cancer in their families.

But it is ironic, I believe, that this issue comes up now — not just because of the passage of health care reform but because it was one year ago that, during his celebrated online town hall meeting, Obama ridiculed the 3½ million people who submitted questions about the legalization of marijuana.

This comes at a time when officials have observed a reversal in marijuana use among the young. For many years, propaganda campaigns succeeded, to an extent, in discouraging marijuana consumption, but recent surveys have noted a shift in the behavior of the young.

Such a shift has been increasingly hard to ignore — or write off as the behavior of those who are unmotivated and untalented. Just a few days ago, Don Banks reported for SI.com that folks in the NFL "are concerned about the increased number of prospects who have a history of marijuana use in their background."

Banks' article goes on to observe that eliminating players — given the success that some marijuana users have had in the NFL in recent years — because they failed drug tests doesn't make sense if the NFL's personnel people are interested in winning — and keeping their own jobs. Some, no doubt, cling to the long–disproved allegations that have been used to justify keeping marijuana illegal — that it causes death, that it leads to madness and violent criminal behavior, that it serves as a "gateway" to other drugs.

Well, Pete Guither debunks a lot of the myths. As he clearly demonstrates, prohibition was on the wrong side of history in the 1930s.

And it's on the wrong side now.

Welcome Back, My Friends ...

... to the show that never ends.

If you thought the war was over when the House approved the Senate's version of the health care bill, you were wrong.

Oh, it had the aura of finality when congressional Democrats gathered to watch Barack Obama sign the bill into law. And one got the sense that many of the Democrats who supported health care reform sincerely wanted to smooth things over with their uncooperative Republican colleagues and move on to the next issue.

However, GOP lawmakers have been talking of tactics for overturning the health care legislation. No Republicans have talked about how the differences could be resolved the next time this is brought to a vote — and it seems all but certain that it will be.

That tends to confirm what I have believed for a long time, that these are people who cannot be appeased, and I really don't understand why Obama (who is an intelligent man) didn't figure that out a lot earlier.

Anyway, I wouldn't advise congressional Democrats to count on winning any Republican votes in that battle. OK, that's the way things have worked in America since the beginning.

But what some private citizens have been doing is a lot more threatening. There is no place for it in a civilized discussion, yet the Republican leadership appears to condone it by not denouncing it.

There is room for passion and honest disagreement in our national debate. I suspect the Founding Fathers would expect no less. But there is no room for what the Associated Press is reporting — vandalism against the property and threats against the lives of 10 Democratic lawmakers and their families.

And I am concerned by the same thing that concerns Rep. Louise Slaughter, one of the sponsors of the health care bill.

"It's more disturbing to me that Republican leadership has not condemned these attacks and instead appears to be fanning the flames with coded rhetoric," she said.

I agree with her. I am disturbed by that, too, but I am not really surprised. Republicans have been using "coded rhetoric" — with varying degrees of success — for decades. They're better at it than Democrats are. They know which buttons to push.

And they'll keep pushing them as long as they believe they can intimidate the opposition by doing so.

This is the sort of "politics as usual" that many voters believed they were rejecting in 2006 and 2008. Perhaps American voters are starting to realize that it will take several additional elections to purge the system of the kind of obstructionism that has taken up residence there. Unfortunately, it never really seems to sink in with Democratic leadership in Washington, including the guy sitting in the Oval Office.

I will admit, on a couple of occasions in the last year or so, Democrats in Washington have stood firmly against these reprehensible tactics. But they haven't always had the strength of their convictions.

This would be a good time for them to find that courage within themselves and keep it handy.

And it would be an excellent time for Republican leadership to repudiate what is being done in their name.

Timing Is Everything

There is much rejoicing today in some quarters because the House passed health care reform yesterday.

And, as E.J. Dionne observes in the Washington Post, Barack Obama and the Democrats made history by passing a health care reform bill.

Emotions certainly have been running high on this issue — on both sides, really, although emotions seem to be higher among the Democrats who voted in favor of it. Rep. Patrick Kennedy was practically on the verge of tears — given his late father's commitment to health care reform — when talking about the measure on Good Morning America.

Perhaps this reform plan really will lead to the improvements its supporters claim it will.

• John Nichols writes in The Nation that the vote will stand the test of time.


• It is "an accomplishment of historic proportions," crows the New York Times.


• The actual implementation of health care reform will be messy and hard, the Minneapolis Star Tribune acknowledges, but the bill is "[a]n American cure for an ailing system."

Well, the Star Tribune is right. It will be messy. It will be hard.

And it will be years before most of the changes are in place. A lot of uninsured people are going to get sick and a lot of uninsured people are going to die before this legislation truly changes the way things are done in the American health care system — and my guess is that most of their survivors are going to wonder what all the fuss was about and why, since health care reform legislation has been passed, nothing could be done to help their loved ones.

I have said many times that I think health care reform is important. But I have believed all along that things were being done in the wrong sequence.

Until the economic meltdown in the fall of 2008, it was far from certain that Obama would win the presidential election. Once jobs began disappearing at a rate of six figures a month, the momentum moved in his way — not necessarily because of the possibility of health care reform but because of concerns about being able to provide the basics of food, clothing and shelter.

After Obama was elected, I believed then — and I still believe now — that job creation was the most important, most pressing issue and that the administration needed to focus on turning that situation around first. My reasoning was that, by focusing on jobs through the first half of his term, Obama could mitigate the losses a president's party typically endures in the midterm elections because he was emphasizing the issue that more Americans were worried about.

(It is certainly possible that I will be proven wrong, but let me point out that I've been studying elections and voter turnout since before my college days.)

Anyway, without Obama on the ballot, I figured it would be tough for Democrats to persuade the kinds of voters who were instrumental to Obama's victory in 2008 (i.e., the young, the minorities, the liberals) to participate in the midterms. We've had limited opportunities, so far, to see if I was right about voter participation, but the off–year elections in New Jersey and Virginia and January's special election in Massachusetts have shown that the groups who voted overwhelmingly for Obama in 2008 have not been participating in large numbers. (At this point, I see no reason to expect that they will be more inclined to show up at the polls in November.)

I believed focusing on jobs, whether successful or not, would preserve Democratic majorities for Obama beyond 2010. Those majorities still were likely to be diminished, but control of both chambers probably would remain in Democratic hands. Then, after the midterms were over, the focus could shift to health care reform — Obama would be on the ballot in the next election, and his presence might help other Democrats on the ballot by attracting those groups — who could be expected to be more receptive to Democrats — to the polls.

But that isn't how Obama and the congressional Democrats chose to do things. As unemployment continued to get worse, the Democrats focused their attention instead on health care reform, subjecting the nation to more than a year of divisive squabbling.

Well, they have their legislative victory. Will they also have an electoral victory in November?

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Former Democratic pollster Pat Caddell made an interesting observation on Fox News. Now, I'm not a fan of Fox News — and I haven't always been sure what to think of Caddell since he had a falling–out with the Democratic Party some 20 years ago — but the observation made sense to me.

Caddell said the health care reform vote was the Democrats' "Jonestown moment." It may well be. It's certainly a theme that has been picked up by others. Perhaps it was picked up by some of the House Republicans during the floor debate — although I can't really say because the power in my apartment was out yesterday and I couldn't watch any of the coverage.

David Sanger admitted, in the New York Times, that Obama "will go down in history as one of the handful of presidents who found a way to reshape the nation's social welfare system." But he seemed uncertain whether "it was a historic achievement or political suicide for his party — perhaps both."

Obama's supporters — especially those who hadn't been involved in politics much before 2008— may not like it, but midterms usually go against the party in power because the voters' expectations usually have been unfulfilled. Political novices often seem to be shocked by that, and perhaps it is unrealistic for voters to expect as much as they do in less than two years, but, in the words of the late Walter Cronkite, that's the way it is.

And my belief has been, as I said earlier, that Obama was elected largely because of the economy and joblessness. I believe much of it was a backlash against George W. Bush — but, since he wasn't on the ballot, the voters punished the Republican nominee. Maybe the voters would have elected Obama, anyway — albeit by a much smaller margin — if the meltdown hadn't occurred. But, until I see clear evidence that the economy was not the primary force, I will believe that it was foremost in voters' minds when they went to the polls.

Some of those voters may well be pleased today that health care reform has passed. But when they compare their expectations in 2008 to the reality of 2010, I believe many will say this is not the change for which they thought they were voting.

Here's another tidbit of conventional wisdom gleaned from my years of studying American politics, as well as the political science courses I took in college — voters' opinions, especially during recessions, tend to harden about six months before an election.

Nearly 18 years ago, for example, after Bill Clinton had beaten George H.W. Bush in the general election, I heard some Republicans complain that many voters had decided against voting for Bush by May and June (when national unemployment was at 7.3% and 8.0%, respectively) — and many did, in fact, vote against him that fall, even though there were indications in the summer and fall (unemployment dropped to 6.9% by October) that the recovery was under way.

Anyway, assuming that item of conventional wisdom is still valid today — and I have no reason to think it is not — Obama has only two more months, at the most, to persuade voters that his administration is focused on putting millions of unemployed Americans back to work. Given the fact that unemployment has been hovering around 10% for several months now, that is going to be a tough, tough sell.

The other day, I wrote about Lyndon Johnson's address to Congress 45 years ago urging the passage of the Voting Rights Act. The part of the story that I did not mention was that, after he signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited racial segregation, Johnson told an aide, "We have lost the South for a generation." Johnson won by a landslide that November, but Democrats began gradually losing statewide races in the South after that, perhaps in no small part due to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was widely seen as a second civil rights bill, this one outlawing discrimination in voting. And Democrats continue to lose statewide races in the South today.

Then as now, Americans were polarized over the issue that was before the Congress. Then as now the president saw the issue as a moral imperative. But it seems to me that the big difference has been in the way Johnson and Obama approached the task of handling misconceptions. Johnson spoke to the nation in plain, simple, direct and honest language. "There is no Negro problem," he said. "There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem."

Perhaps Obama should have done the same with health care. I don't mean the professorial lecturing that he often does — just some straight talk that everyone can understand. He seemed to do that pretty well on the campaign trail, and it might have allayed some irrational fears. He almost certainly could have been expected to deal as effectively as possible with the misinformation about the impact on abortion law that almost certainly was an inevitable outcome of this debate.

In spite of all his talk about bipartisanship, Obama got not a single Republican vote yesterday — and he came close to losing enough of the members of his own party to derail the health care plan. But in the mid–1960s, Johnson had more support (proportionately speaking) from Republican lawmakers than he got from his own party, probably because many Southern Democrats opposed both measures.

When one considers what had been happening in America in the years before the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, it's hard to imagine if the timing of those proposals could have been altered in a way that would have been more beneficial to Democrats. But then, as now, they held the White House as well as large majorities in Congress. In fact, in 1964 about two–thirds of the senators were Democrats, and a larger share of the House members were Democrats than is the case today. And the question that many Democrats asked then is the same question many Democrats asked about health care reform — "If not now, when?"

In hindsight, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act may seem like such obvious common sense legislation that it may be baffling how anyone could oppose either — or how Johnson could conclude that, with so much Republican support, they could cost Johnson's party the South for a generation.

But when one looks at the election returns from the last four decades, one must conclude that Johnson was right.

Will health care reform cost Democrats in the long term, the way civil rights and voting rights cost them 45 years ago? It might. The setback won't be confined to a single region, and the extent of the loss may depend upon whether the expected benefits materialize or not.

But much of the talk today among Republicans is of repeal, and there seems to be no doubt that this fight isn't over. I am sure it will be a campaign issue in this fall's midterms, and it appears likely to be a campaign issue in 2012 as well.

And that is one more reason why I believe the Democrats should have focused on the economy first.

Will health care reform hurt Obama in the short term? Barring a significant unexpected decline in joblessness, I think it will hurt Obama in the short term — and for the reasons I have outlined.

In politics, timing truly is everything.

Obama's One-Track Mind

For a smart, well–educated guy, Barack Obama has a one–track mind.

Even after insisting that his administration was going to emphasize jobs, he simply couldn't resist the temptation to keep talking about the same thing he's been talking about since he took office — health care reform.

"By the time March arrived, President Obama was supposed to be entering his third month of the year talking about three things: jobs, jobs, jobs," writes Jeff Zeleny in the New York Times.

Zeleny goes on to ponder why Obama's "shift from health care to the economy" was so short–lived. After all, the problem hasn't been solved. Unemployment is still in double digits — and may be even worse when the monthly jobs report comes out on Friday.

I'm glad that Jim Bunning backed down last night and allowed unemployment benefits to be extended. They aren't the answer — they're enough to help some people, not enough to help others — but depriving the unemployed of what is, for many of them, their only lifeline isn't the answer, either.

It's fine that job cuts seem to be less than they have been in two years. But how does that help the Americans who have been out of work for months, even a year or more?

This should be making Democrats nervous because many of them will pay the price for this inattention in November. I know there are a lot of Obama defenders who will talk about whose fault this is, and they'll get no argument from me on that point. But that isn't the issue. The issue is action. In the absence of action, the issue — at the very least — is whether it appears that Democrats are even attempting to address the problem.

Because that is what they were elected to do. But it ain't what they've been doing.

Zeleny quotes at least one congressional Democrat, Rep. Sanford Bishop of Georgia, who expresses what other Democrats are certainly thinking: "Health care is important. But it's jobs, period. We need to talk about jobs."

Even if he is only giving it lip service, Obama needs to be talking about jobs every day — with the same fervor he has given to health care reform. More, in fact. Because the unemployed do care about health care — but they need an income so they can pay for the other necessities, like food, clothing and shelter, first.

Until he does that, the unemployed (and there are millions of us, in case he and the Democrats need reminding) can't really participate in the health care reform discussion.

And they will not feel reassured that anyone in Washington cares about their plight. Can they be blamed for looking for someone else who will pay attention to their concerns?

The Hourglass Presidency

You know how movies and TV shows like to use an hourglass to illustrate how quickly the sands of time run out?

As a matter of fact, I was just thinking the other day that the first time I can remember seeing that particular visual aid used in a movie or TV show was when I was a child and I saw "The Wizard of Oz" on TV for the first time. I must have been about 5 or 6, and the winged monkeys scared the crap out of me. Yes, I was young and gullible, but I got the concept of the hourglass.

It seems to me the analogy applies to presidencies, this presidency in particular.

Last year, it was a big deal for Democrats to get their 60th seat in the Senate because that meant that the Democrats could prevent a Republican filibuster. Procedurally, it meant the Democrats could call the tune and the Republicans would have no choice in the matter.

Having that 60th vote was so important that Ted Kennedy, in his final days, arranged for the law to be changed so the Democratic governor could appoint the senator who would take his place until a special election could be held. Kennedy wanted to make sure, it was said, that there would be no obstacles to health care reform because that was the cause of his life. And, as the Democrats took Kennedy to his grave last August, one after another pledged they would pass health care reform in his memory.

Well, the voters in Kennedy's home state chose a Republican to replace him. That means that the Republicans can filibuster if they want to, and the Democrats won't be able to stop them.

And, currently, political observers like Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball and The Rothenberg Political Report are suggesting that enough Senate seats that are currently held by Democrats are potential takeover targets to make the Democrats nervous about the midterm elections.

Everyone has an opinion on the matter.

Some would encourage Barack Obama to continue a bipartisan approach. The Christian Science Monitor calls this Obama's "Bill Clinton moment," referring to the welfare reform plan he oversaw after the 1994 midterms put both the House and Senate in Republican control.

Ruben Navarette writes, for CNN, that Democrats should not attempt to push anything through without the support of some Republicans.

But I'm inclined to agree with Harold Pollack of The New Republic, who says the time to act is now.

I agree that health care reform is important, but, as I have been saying for many months now, I think jobs are more important. There was a time there, for maybe a week, right after Scott Brown won the special election in Massachusetts when Obama and the Democrats did a fine job of giving lip service to job creation.

But they're back to promoting health care reform.

So if nothing else is going to get done until we've seen health care reform as far as we can, let's finish it off and then turn our attention to promoting job creation.

Because that is what public opinion polls indicate that the voters are most concerned about.

I know, polls are only snapshots of opinion at a particular moment. But the polls have been remarkably consistent.

Any politician who ignores what they're saying does so at his own risk. And, at the moment, those polls are screaming J–O–B–S!

The Democrats had better come up with a strategy soon. The grains of sand are running through the hourglass.

The Bait and Switch

"So much for the pivot to jobs," write James Capretta and Yuval Levin in The Weekly Standard, and I have to agree.

Whether it was for appearances, in the wake of the loss of Ted Kennedy's seat, or whatever, the Obama administration's attention has been diverted from job creation back to its obsession with health care.

In spite of plummeting job approval numbers. In spite of increasing indications that the Democrats are constantly and irreversibly alienating those who helped them gain power.

So, for those millions of Americans who have been hoping the government would do something, anything, to encourage job creation — better luck with the next president.

'Cause this one sure doesn't feel your pain.

And despite the grand talk from Obama and the Democrats about a desire for bipartisanship, as Capretta and Levin observe, "It is now clear that the 'summit' the president has called for February 25 is not intended to consider different approaches to health care financing, but rather to create an illusion of momentum that might just lull disoriented congressional Democrats into ramming the health care bill through the budget reconciliation process."

Maybe he will feel the pain of the unemployed in November — when they march to the polls to vote incumbents out of office. Sure, that will mean Republicans as well as Democrats. But the Democrats will learn that, while some things have changed, other things — like the tendency to punish the party in power in midterm elections — have not changed.

And it ought to send a chill down the spines of everyone in Congress — assuming they get the message and figure out who they're supposed to be working for.

But that won't help those whose names will be on the ballot this year. It might help those who will face the voters in 2012 and 2014 — but only if they're paying attention.

Obama's Opportunism

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When Bill Clinton was president, he was often criticized — and, perhaps, deservedly so — for political opportunism.

Among those who criticized him were people who later became (and many still remain) enthusiastic supporters of Barack Obama. I find that to be hypocritical because Obama strikes me as being as much of an opportunist as Clinton ever was. If not more so.

Actually, it seems to me that anyone who goes into politics and manages to succeed to any degree is an opportunist. A politician may start out as a staunch advocate for whatever cause he/she may think is critical, and he/she may ride a wave of what is at least perceived to be genuine discontent over that issue to office, but, sooner or later, that politician must bow — at least to a certain extent and often temporarily — to whatever worries his/her constituents the most. It's the law of survival.

Thus, it was with some interest that I noted Obama's visit to Ohio this week.

Now, Obama's political survival is not on the line this year, but all the signs indicate that the members of his party who must face the voters this year are hunkering down in survival mode.

And with good reason.

As you can see from the chart I have attached to this post from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment in Ohio has been higher than the national rate for much of the last 20 years. Perhaps that is due, at least in part, to the fact that Ohio is in the industrial midwest, which is usually vulnerable during economic downturns.

Whatever the reason(s) may be, if unemployment is going up in Ohio, I think you can be sure that a recession is occurring in the rest of America. Ohio's unemployment rate broke the double–digit barrier last spring, months before the national rate followed suit.

And this week, following Republican Scott Brown's victory in the special election in Massachusetts — coming on the heels of Republican gubernatorial victories in Virginia and New Jersey — Obama appears to have gotten the message that voters are (a) worried about the cost of the health care reform plan and (b) convinced that not nearly enough is being done to encourage job creation, even though, nationally, unemployment is in double digits.

Obama remains personally popular in Massachusetts and, to a lesser extent, elsewhere. (Do you hear me, conspiracy theorists? They like him. They really like him.) But that popularity doesn't transfer easily to others — and it's especially hard when the historically unreliable voting blocs that showed up to elect Obama aren't motivated to turn out when he isn't on the ballot.

Now, the unemployment rate in Massachusetts is not as severe as it is in Ohio or the nation at large. But it is certainly bad enough. When Massachusetts' voters went to the polls in November 2008 and gave Obama nearly 62% of their ballots, unemployment in the Bay State was slightly higher than 6%, a little more than a full percentage point higher than it was when George W. Bush ran for re–election against John Kerry in 2004 but considerably higher than the state's 2.7% unemployment rate when Bush was elected president in 2000.

Today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says the unemployment rate in Massachusetts is 9.4%. I don't know how much attention either Brown or Martha Coakley gave it during the campaign, but I'm sure an unemployment rate that has more than tripled in the last 10 years was a factor for the voters.

The fact that the economy shed 85,000 jobs in December couldn't have helped the party in power, either.

(For that matter, New Jersey's unemployment rate was 9.7% when it elected a Republican governor in November. It cracked double digits in December. Virginia's unemployment rate is, by comparison, relatively modest — 6.9% — but it, too, has risen dramatically since the state voted for Obama in November 2008, when unemployment was below 5%.)

Obama's trip to Ohio may well have been planned months ahead of time, but the timing couldn't have been worse for a president who clearly prefers to tinker with the health care system instead of promote job creation.

Reality demanded that Obama at least give some lip service to joblessness when he visited the Cleveland suburbs of Lorain and Elyria, which he did. But I found it to be fleeting, obligatory, almost a tactic, a verbal bridge to what he really wanted to talk about — health care reform. And, to my disappointment (but, frankly, not really to my surprise), his enablers in the media have been all too willing to keep the spotlight on health care reform.

"You know," a friend of mine said to me after it was pointed out that the last president who tried to lead his party through a midterm election year that was plagued by double–digit unemployment was Ronald Reagan, "at least he's ahead of Reagan in one way. He doesn't stick his head in the sand about anything. Reagan wouldn't discuss financial assistance for AIDS research, wouldn't even say 'AIDS' in public until his old pal, Rock Hudson, died of it. And, by that time, so much time had been lost that it took years for us to catch up."

Aware as I am of the tragic and shameful treatment the federal government gave AIDS research in the early years, I have to wonder ... just what does that have to do with the price of tea in China?

There's so much misdirection in political discourse these days. I haven't decided if it's a little better now — maybe it's worse? — than it was in 2004, when some people wanted to address the very issues that contributed to a major crisis while others were intent only on talking about the threat posed by gay marriage.

Obama conceded that "[t]hese are difficult and unsettling times," which couldn't have come as a surprise to any of his listeners, and he proceeded to repeat his vague and unconvincing claims that his policies had "saved" jobs. Yep, times are hard. But he insisted that "the worst of this economic storm has passed" because of the steps he and the Democrats in Washington have taken.

I would argue that the unemployment figures alone tell a different story. And the results of a recent Gallup Poll are on my side. Gallup reports that two–thirds of Americans believe an economic recovery won't start for at least another two years.

Clearly, there is a disconnect between Obama and ordinary Americans on this issue.

In truth, I find it ironic that Obama came to Ohio, where he received far more credit for addressing joblessness than he actually deserved. In October 2008, in Toledo, about 75 miles to the west–northwest of where he spoke yesterday, Obama addressed voters during his campaign against John McCain.

During that campaign stop, Obama pledged to offer tax credits to businesses that hired Americans in 2009 and 2010. The idea probably met a receptive audience in Lucas County. Unemployment was 8.8% there in October 2008 (by the following June, it had soared to 14.6%), but the plan was not part of the stimulus package that Obama and the Democrats rammed through Congress nearly a year ago.

Consequently, PolitiFact rates it a broken promise.

The rhetoric yesterday was much the same as we've heard for the last year. "So long as I have some breath in me, so long as I have the privilege of serving as your president, I will not stop fighting for you," he said. "I will take my lumps. But I won't stop fighting to bring back jobs here."

Well, some people are still buying it, but the approval ratings suggest that not as many are. Anyway, as far as I can tell, the priorities haven't shifted significantly. The emphasis is still on health care. He spoke about hitting a "buzz saw" with the loss of Ted Kennedy's seat, and he made it clear that health care was still at the top of his agenda. "This is our best chance to do it," he said. "We can't keep on putting this off."

They just don't get it, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert marveled.

"How loud do the alarms have to get? There is an economic emergency in the country with millions upon millions of Americans riddled with fear and anxiety as they struggle with long–term joblessness, home foreclosures, personal bankruptcies and dwindling opportunities for themselves and their children," Herbert wrote.

"The door is being slammed on the American dream and the politicians, including the president and his Democratic allies on Capitol Hill, seem not just helpless to deal with the crisis, but completely out of touch with the hardships that have fallen on so many."

You know, just when I think Herbert can't get any more on target, he writes a column like the one in today's Times. And he raises the bar another notch or two.

I hate to keep quoting him, and I certainly do recommend that you read the column for yourself, but here's an observation that is simply too good not to share.

"The Democrats still hold the presidency and large majorities in both houses of Congress," he writes. "The idea that they are not spending every waking hour trying to fix the broken economic system and put suffering Americans back to work is beyond pathetic. Deficit reduction is now the mantra in Washington, which means that new large–scale investments in infrastructure and other measures to ease the employment crisis and jump–start the most promising industries of the 21st century are highly unlikely.

"What we'll get instead is rhetoric. It's cheap, so we can expect a lot of it."

Amen.

What a Difference a Year Makes

Actually, it has been less than a year since Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson bragged about the compromise that House and Senate negotiators hammered out to send the stimulus bill to Barack Obama's desk. "Call us the jobs squad," Nelson said.

So how's that working out for you?

Well, now, he tells the Fremont (Neb.) Tribune, "[I]t was a mistake to take health care on as opposed to continuing to spend the time on the economy." I guess that double–digit unemployment rate has something to do with it.

Some folks will tell you that we may see an improvement when the Labor Department issues its monthly jobless report tomorrow. We had a modest decline in the jobless rate last month — although unemployment has been at 10% nationally for the last two months — and it is possible that we may see another modest decline tomorrow.

But it is also possible that these declines are the result of temporary, seasonal hiring. Now that the holidays are over, many of those workers are likely to find themselves back in the same predicament as before.

Either way, the "jobs squad" has not produced as promised.

I guess it's a good thing for Nelson he doesn't face the voters this year.

Health Care Passes; Can We Create Jobs Now?

In a party–line vote, the Senate approved health care reform today.

As Robert Pear observes in the New York Times, this is something Democrats have been trying to do for decades.

Well, in most of those years, the unemployment rate was about half what it is today.

Now, I know health care reform is important, but, as I understand it, this legislation (once the House and Senate agree on the shape of the bill) is not going to go into effect until 2013. I've heard that it will create jobs — and that is a good thing, but I hope our leaders are planning to do more about joblessness in the next four years than wait for health care reform to pick up the slack.

I have more than just a passing interest in this. I am one of the millions of unemployed, as my regular readers already know, and if I am in the position of having to choose between paying my rent and paying for health insurance, I'm going to choose to keep a roof over my head. It's the mother of all no–brainers.

So, Mr. President and Democrats in Congress, the choice is yours.

At some point, the people in charge must decide on their priorities. What are yours?

Are you going to continue to pass the buck and excuse your inaction by blaming the previous administration?

Or are you going to start doing things to encourage job creation?

If you need more incentive, the clock to the midterm elections is ticking ...

Playin' Those Word Games

Last night, the House of Representatives approved a version of the health care reform plan by the narrow vote of 220–215. If the vote supporting the measure had been strictly along party lines, that would have meant that there were 38 Democratic defectors.

But, in reality, there were 39 Democrats who opposed the bill. That left 219 Democrats. In order to reach 220, they picked up the vote of one Republican. You may remember his name. He is Anh Cao, a Vietnamese–American who was elected last year to replace William Jefferson as the representative of a heavily Democratic district in New Orleans.

"Bipartisanship" has been a key word for Democrats this year, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wasted little time bragging that the health care reform bill had been passed with a bipartisan vote.

Let's see. If one Republican votes for a Democratic measure and 39 Democrats vote against it, doesn't it stand to reason it is actually the Republicans who achieved bipartisanship?

I guess that depends on how something is being spun — and who's doing the spinning.

Well, at the very least, it's another example of how politicians induce a verbal fog by deliberately saying as little as possible for as long as possible. In this case, the Democrats in Washington, including the president, have spent a year trying to appease their Republican colleagues in the name of bipartisanship — with extremely limited results.

Before the Democrats in Congress and "the One" in the White House get carried away with their bipartisan achievement, I'd like to remind them that the Senate still has to approve precisely the same legislation that is approved by the House. If the Senate approves a health care reform bill that differs in any way from the version that was approved by the House, it comes back for another vote. And this can go on indefinitely.

Next time, Rep. Cao may be persuaded to vote with the rest of the Republican membership (which may, at this very minute, be trying to lure him back to their side with pledges of personal and financial support in next year's election). And some Democrats who straddled the fence before choosing to support their party may be nudged to join the three dozen defectors thanks to poll results from their districts.

Slowly I Turn, Step by Step ...

Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress remind me of Bill Clinton and the Democrats in the Congress of the early 1990s more and more with each passing day.

Except that the stakes today are so much higher than they were in Clinton's day.

Instead of focusing like a laser beam on policies that would make job creation his administration's top priority, Obama has squandered most of the first year of his presidency pursuing the quixotic goal of health care reform.

Millions have lost their jobs this year. Hundreds of thousands are on the verge of having their unemployment benefits pulled out from under them. And Obama has been making concessions in the hope of appeasing enough Republicans to pass health care reform legislation.

Garden–variety Democrats assumed that having 60 votes in the Senate insulated them from setbacks. Not so. The Senate Finance Committee voted down the public option today by a vote of 15–8. All 10 Republicans on the committee voted against it, and they were joined by five Democrats — Max Baucus of Montana, Thomas Carper of Delaware, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Bill Nelson of Florida.

So, after devoting all this time and energy to health care reform, Obama might get some legislation passed. But it's going to be a watered–down version of the legislation he has been pushing for. Real reform will have to wait — perhaps for the next Democratic president.

Meanwhile, unemployment continues to get worse. How much worse? We'll find out on Friday, when the next jobs report comes out.

My guess is that it won't be pretty.

And here's another guess. Florida Gov. Charlie Crist may be right when he says Obama is headed for a defeat in 2012 that will rival Jimmy Carter's in 1980.

And it sure doesn't seem like a good time to be pressing for the Olympics to be held in Chicago.

Of course, by 2016, Obama may be back in Chicago, doing his community organizing shtick again.

Where the Wild Things Are

David Brooks writes, in the New York Times, about "the Obama slide."

If it isn't obvious what the "Obama slide" is, Brooks is writing about the president's sharp decline in public opinion polls.

My friends often remind me that polls are not infallible. I agree with that. In fact, I have often pointed out that polls are nothing more than snapshots of public opinion at a particular moment, but the science of polling has improved greatly over the decades, and I have found some (but certainly not all) of the polls to be valid.

Current polls offer lessons that Obama and his supporters would be wise to heed. The president's "slide" need not be permanent, but a certain amount of flexibility is required.

Brooks' column is worth reading in its entirety. It provides plenty of insight, which may be helpful for bewildered Obama supporters who can't understand why "The One" has fallen from favor so quickly with so many.

Take heart. Brooks feels your pain. "All presidents fall from their honeymoon highs," Brooks writes, "but in the history of polling, no newly elected American president has fallen this far this fast."

And, as Brooks goes on to say, "Anxiety is now pervasive." Much of that can be laid at the doorstep of Obama's political adversaries, who have been guilty of using all kinds of scare tactics against not only the health care reform plan but other Obama initiatives as well.

But there is no reason for those on the left to feel smug or superior. They were not above resorting to emotional appeals to further their own causes when the right wing was in charge.

That's probably a significant part of the reason why, as Brooks observes, "[o]ver the first months of this year, the number of people who called themselves either Democrats or Republicans declined, while the number who called themselves independents surged ahead."

Brooks encounters resistance from one of the left wing's most virulent defenders, the Daily Kos, which calls Brooks' column "especially vile and dishonest," even though, as far as I can tell, Brooks is merely offering constructive criticism that can help Obama restore some of the luster his presidency has lost in recent months. The Daily Kos may be reluctant to admit it now, but last spring, Brooks supported Obama so much that Jennifer Rubin was prompted to lament in Commentary that "[Obama] lost David Brooks" over the budget. I took issue with the idea that Obama "lost" Brooks merely because he asked questions from a centrist's perspective.

The Daily Kos' rant also seems to me to be an indicator why TIME labeled it one of the "most overrated blogs." I would add to that that the Daily Kos has an over–inflated opinion of itself.

There doesn't seem to be any room in the political debate for centrists anymore. It seems to me that both sides have adopted the Bush doctrine of "you're either with us or against us." Need more details? Feel compelled to ask questions? Good luck with that. Let me know how it works out for you.

I must say, though, that the campaign against the health care reform plan has been particularly vitriolic — with talk of "death panels" and armed opponents going to rallies while other opponents, instead of carrying guns, have carried signs equating Obama to Hitler.

That is clearly an emotional appeal. I doubt that anyone who has spent any time studying the Nazis' rise to power can make make a convincing, fact–based case that Obama and the Nazi fascists have anything in common.

I certainly understand the suspicion that many have about centralized government. It is a concern that goes back to the earliest days of the republic, and fear of it intensified with the passage of the stimulus package. Right wingers recognized that fear and, realizing they could capitalize on it, fanned the flames with their scare tactics on health care.

But will it be any better if Republicans make big gains in Congress next year? Will it be better if 2010 turns out to be like 1994, with Republicans taking control of Congress?

After the 1994 elections, Bill Clinton moved more to the middle, which helped him win re–election but didn't necessarily help his party in the 1996 congressional campaigns.

Could Obama, who appears to be more committed to left–wing causes, as well as less pragmatic, than Clinton, move far enough to the middle to be re–elected if Democrats lose a lot of ground in the Congress in 2010? Even if Democrats retain a majority in Congress, will it be better if 2012 brings a Republican capture of the White House?

That's a tough one for me. In my lifetime, it seems that things have worked better for the country when government was divided, when one party held the White House and the other party controlled Congress. If a Republican is elected president in 2012, my guess is that, if Democratic lawmakers still hold the majority in Congress, they will be just as obstructionist as Republican lawmakers have been in the first seven months of this year.

I can remember when lawmakers in this country were civil to each other, in spite of opposing views. I'm afraid we may have laid to rest the last of the cordial lawmakers Saturday when Ted Kennedy was buried. Say what you will about Kennedy's politics, but when they held his funeral mass in Boston, TV cameras picked up the likes of John McCain and Phil Gramm in the audience. Kennedy, as his oldest son said, was a pragmatist. He knew how to work with folks with whom he disagreed.

Now the wild things have been turned loose.

At a time when legislators on both sides of the aisle need to be reaching out to each other and pulling together, it's turned into a vicious game of tug–o–war instead.

And, if the polls are correct, many Americans who voted for Obama in the hope that he would bring real change to Washington are now saying — as the dying Mercutio said to the feuding Capulets and Montagues — "a plague on both your houses."