Possible Epic Party Disaster for Democrats

This analysis today from Michael Barone, America's most widely respected election analyst and forecaster: "Possible Epic Party Disaster for Democrats" - a landslide election which, if held today, would be vastly larger than 1994 or 1946 - with up to 155 house democrat seats in play, and up to 20 democrat senate seats which could swing.

Happy days are here again?!...T


The Real Clear Politics average on the generic ballot now shows Republicans ahead 46%-42%. This is historically unprecedented.

Except for a single CNN/USA Today poll conducted right after the Republican National Convention, September 5-7, 2008, which seems to have been an outlier, Republicans didn’t take the lead on the generic ballot—which party’s candidate will you vote for in House races—until March 9-15, 2009, in Rasmussen polling (which samples likely voters and whose results have therefore leaned more Republican than those of other pollsters since Barack Obama’s inauguration). Republicans since took a lead in the NPR poll (July 22-26), Gallup (November 5-8), Bloomberg News (December 3-7), Battleground (December 6-10), CNN/Opinion Research (January 8-10) and Democracy Corps (January 7-11).

I blogged on the generic vote in December and twice in November. Gallup analyst Jeffrey M. Jones provides useful historic perspective.

“Since Gallup regularly began using the generic ballot to measure registered voters' preferences for the House of Representatives in 1950, it has been rare for Republicans to have an advantage over Democrats. This is likely because more Americans usually identify as Democrats than as Republicans, but Republicans can offset this typical Democratic advantage in preferences with greater turnout on Election Day. Most of the prior Republican registered-voter leads on the generic ballot in Gallup polling occurred in 1994 and 2002, two strong years for the GOP.”

Over the years Republicans have tended to do better in actual House elections than they have on the generic vote question -- although in recent cycles less so, perhaps because the balance of enthusiasm so clearly favored Democrats in 2006 and 2008. But the balance of enthusiasm has clearly changed.

Rasmussen’s tight likely-voter screen has been pretty consistently producing more pro-Republican responses than other polls, and recent generic vote results from other pollsters tend to validate his results. Thus CNN/Opinion Research shows all adults as 46%-45% Republican and registered voters as 48%-45% Republican. Democracy Corps, run by Democrats Stanley Greenberg and James Carville, shows likely voters at 41%-41% and “dropoff voters” at 43%-25% Democratic. NPR, conducted jointly by Public Opinion Strategies (R) and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner (D), shows Republicans ahead among likely voters 44%-39%.

The current results are as favorable for Republicans or more so than the CNN/Gallup polls taken at this point in the 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002 and 2004, cycles in which Republican House candidates received more votes than Democratic candidates . All of which leads me to second Charlie Cook’s suggestion that if the election were held today, Republicans would gain more than the 40 seats they need to get a majority in the House. I would go further and say that if the election were held today Republicans would do better than in 1994 or 2002, their best years since the “had enough?” Republican landslide of 1946.

Of course, the elections will not be held today. Filing deadlines have passed in only three states: Illinois, Texas and Kentucky; the filing deadline in West Virginia is tomorrow, January 30. So we don’t even know who all the candidates—and all of the retirees—will be. Opinions can change, and the balance of enthusiasm, which seems to favor Republicans now at least as much as it favored Democrats in 2006 and 2008, can change even more quickly. The Massachusetts special Senate election result has given Democrats an early warning that is really hard to ignore—although some Democrats seem to be trying to brush it off. Including, perhaps, Barack Obama in his State of the Union address.

Nonetheless, what we have here are the makings of an epic party disaster. Whether it comes to pass is still uncertain. But it certainly could
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Obama's answer for America: more of "me"

The most bitter, cynical, angry and arrogant State of the Union speech this observer of Washington politics has ever seen. It reminded my of a speech a communist dictator such as Castro or Chavez would have delivered to a captive audience (but, then, I am being redundant...)

It is over, politically, for this radical president. All that remains to be seen is whether his agenda will be rammed through congress, using budget reconciliation, against the wishes of the American people.

This bitter arrogant man-child has managed what I had previously though impossible: To make Bill Clinton appear honest by comparison, and Jimmy Carter competent...T


There's a story of an ex hausted tenor at La Scala who, facing repeated cries of "Encore," responded that he couldn't go on. A man rose in the audience to say, "You'll keep singing until you get it right."

That seems to be the defining principle of the Obama administration -- whose response to every problem, every setback, every hiccup and challenge has been, simply, "more Obama."

Indeed, for people who aren't sticklers for political jargon, it will be a shock that last night was Obama's first State of the Union Address, since it was his third formal address to a joint session of Congress. Yet for all of the political déjà vu, what was most surprising last night was the degree to which Obama delivered even more of the same.

Washington graybeards and pundits have been insisting that Obama needs to "start over," "reboot" and "tack to the middle" after Scott Brown's win in Massachusetts. But Obama's response last night was to recommit himself to the agenda that has gotten him in so much trouble.

In fairness, the president took a French-bath of Clintonism before he took to his beloved TelePrompTer. He doused himself with the scent of the deficit-fighter and trade-promoter. He unveiled a slew of small, easy, applause-gathering proposals and populist appeals that he knows will go nowhere.

He also indulged in a lot of feel-your-pain pathos, trying to connect with the real Americans suffering from the recession and the misdeeds of a "Washington" that Obama seems to think is run by someone other than him.

But the eau-de-Clinton couldn't mask the stench -- and Obama, in his supreme arrogance, didn't really seem to care.

There was no "pivot to the center," no serious accounting for the Massachusetts miracle or his misfortunes. Instead, there was an innumerate, inaccurate and distinctly unpresidential whine -- blaming George W. Bush for nearly all of his problems (leaving out, among other things, that the Democrats have been controlling Congress and crafting budgets since 2006).

The White House insists that the new wave of populism created by Democratic governance is, in fact, the same populist wave that carried Obama to victory in 2008. In other words, Obama was elected president by the backlash against his own presidency.

This novel theory allows Obama to stick to his view that there's nothing wrong with his health-care plan, and anyone who feels differently hasn't heard or understood the president's explanations.

So, he not only implored Democrats not to "run for the hills" on the health-reform bill, but insisted that as "temperatures cool," hot-tempered opponents will, of course, realize they were wrong about the bill.

Obama began his presidency insisting that government is the answer to our problems. A year later, he still believes that the era of big government is upon us.

In the same speech in which he preened over a gallingly gimmicky "spending freeze," the president promised more jobs bills, more "investments" in schools, roads, trains and factories. He even reaffirmed his support for his carbon-tax legislation -- which would send far more jobs overseas than it would create here at home.

But Obama has a bigger problem: Aside from a few throwaway lines of self-deprecation, whenever he grew passionate, it was to blame others.

His predecessor topped his list, of course. But also everyone else who disagrees with him.

Obama insists that Americans need to muster the courage to agree with him, to sign on to his agenda. Just as at Omaha Beach and Bull Run, Americans need to show their mettle. "Again, we are tested. And again, we must answer history's call." That "call" is the call of Obama.

"I never suggested that change would be easy, or that I can do it alone." So come on, you slackers, fall into line.

He decried the politicians who are in "permanent campaign" mode -- the same week he brought into the White House his campaign manager.

Other politicians are vain, cowardly and insubstantial. They need the courage to change. Meanwhile, Obama is great the way he is.

That is the attitude that has gotten the president in so much trouble. And last night's State of the Union speech showed us that change really isn't easy, particularly for the president.
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The Guy From Boston on Global Warming

The Guy From Boston on Global Warming - Watch more Funny Videos

Global Warming, bwah, who cares if it's true: "You never want to let a good crisis go to waste" - Rahm Emmanuel. No sacrifice is too great to deter us from the goal of progressive fascism! Heil Osama!...T

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Obama "Teleprompters Up" in front of "Hostile" Kindergarten Audience

Better use that teleprompter! Those kids ask the toughest questions! Anyone still wonder if this guy is a moron, a tool, and an phony, in addition to being an Orwellian Fascist?!...T

President Barack Obama, accompanied by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, speaks to the media after a discussion

with 6th grade students at Graham Road Elementary School in Falls Church, Va., Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2010

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The REAL Global Warming Swindle

Come to think of it, I take it all back - global warming IS real! It is! it is! it is!!!

Truths We Dare Not Speak

The incomparable VDH revisits our so called disastrous war in Iraq. We never hear about Iraq anymore do we? How strange! The state run media won't say it, so here goes. The most successful campaign, in the shortest time, with the fewest losses, in the history of warfare. Iran will be the next to fall. God bless George Bush...T

We are tired of Iraq and have Trotskyized it out of our existence, given the huge cost and 4,000 dead.

But consider: not a single America died in Iraq in December (38 murdered in Chicago during that period); three have been lost this month (24 murdered so far this month in Chicago).

Some random thoughts. The surge was a brilliant success.

The heroes are relatively ignored. They are U.S. forces who served in Iraq, of course; Gens. Odierno and Petraeus (recall what he endured from Hillary Clinton and MoveOn.org in his Senate inquisition); civilian analysts like Fred Kagan and retired Gen. Keane; and, of course, a demonized George Bush—attacked by most of his former supporters, the majority of pundits and columnists, those Democrats who had voted to authorize the war, many of the Iraq Study Group members; and by a cadre of retired “revolt of the generals” officers.

Yet for some reason, very few senators (cf. the You Tube videos of the debates of October 11-12, 2002) who gave impassioned pleas, authorizing 23 writs to go to war, have ever quite explained why they flipped—and what they think now of both their original support, and their subsequent opposition.

A Harry Reid (“the war is lost”) or Barack Obama (out of Iraq by March 2008 and the surge “is not working”) have never subsequently suggested that they were wrong at a time when our troops desperately were trying against all odds to save the fragile country.

Nor has anyone questioned the conventional dogma that Iraq empowered Iran, supposedly by removing the demonic Saddam. (Yet consider the liberal logic: we were wrong to remove a monster because he was a useful balance-of-power monster [ignore the genocide of the Kurds, Marsh Arabs, etc]; yet we deplore prior administrations for giving the same monster some aid in his war against Iran.)

In fact, mass demonstrations and unrest now take place in an isolated Iran, not so much in a democratic Iraq. The latter is proving more destabilizing by its open broadcasting and word of mouth freedom to Iran than Iran is to Iraq by its savage use of terrorism. (What will happen to conventional wisdom, if there comes a day when Iran is constitutional, along with Iraq and Lebanon?)

No one has officially said they were wrong in alleging “No Blood for Oil.” But we got no oil from Iraq. The price rose after we invaded. The Chinese, Russians, and Europeans got the contracts in free and fair bidding.

(Contrast Saddam’s rigged pre-war, quid-pro-quo oil concessions to the corrupt French). There was no Halliburton conspiracy to steal resources. The left often now, mirabile dictu, accuses us of being naïve in bleeding to give others the resources that they once accused us of wishing to steal. Barack Obama still talks of Iraq as a mistake, even as he quietly ignores his own prescriptions to have gotten out by early 2008, and to have stopped the surge—and continues to follow the Petraeus/Bush plan.
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One year out: President Obama's fall

Finally the chatting classes are beginning to "get it" that president Osama is indeed a committed fanatic, a dangerous radical, and not just a liberal demagogue representing the leftist tendencies of the democratic party (most of them actually liked that Osama).

Indeed, the man behind the red curtain is not Oz: it is Trotsky, Stalin, Woodrow Wilson, an incarnation of every socialist progressive monstrosity which 20th century thought created, and most thought had been aborted.

He must be stopped, and if Scott Brown becomes a reaganesque conservative senator from the people's republic of Massachusetts next week, stopped he will be, just in the nick of time. Perhaps the deus ex machina will swoop in to carry Dorothy safely back to Kansas after all. Better there than Nebraska...T

What went wrong? A year ago, he was king of the world. Now President Obama's approval rating, according to CBS, has dropped to 46 percent -- and his disapproval rating is the highest ever recorded by Gallup at the beginning of an (elected) president's second year.

A year ago, he was leader of a liberal ascendancy that would last 40 years (James Carville). A year ago, conservatism was dead (Sam Tanenhaus). Now the race to fill Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in bluest of blue Massachusetts is surprisingly close, with a virtually unknown state senator bursting on the scene by turning the election into a mini-referendum on Obama and his agenda, most particularly health-care reform.

A year ago, Obama was the most charismatic politician on Earth. Today the thrill is gone, the doubts growing -- even among erstwhile believers.

Liberals try to attribute Obama's political decline to matters of style. He's too cool, detached, uninvolved. He's not tough, angry or aggressive enough with opponents. He's contracted out too much of his agenda to Congress.

These stylistic and tactical complaints may be true, but they miss the major point: The reason for today's vast discontent, presaged by spontaneous national Tea Party opposition, is not that Obama is too cool or compliant but that he's too left.

It's not about style; it's about substance. About which Obama has been admirably candid. This out-of-nowhere, least-known of presidents dropped the veil most dramatically in the single most important political event of 2009, his Feb. 24 first address to Congress. With remarkable political honesty and courage, Obama unveiled the most radical (in American terms) ideological agenda since the New Deal: the fundamental restructuring of three pillars of American society -- health care, education and energy

Then began the descent -- when, more amazingly still, Obama devoted himself to turning these statist visions into legislative reality. First energy, with cap-and-trade, an unprecedented federal intrusion into American industry and commerce. It got through the House, with its Democratic majority and Supreme Soviet-style rules. But it will never get out of the Senate.

Then, the keystone: a health-care revolution in which the federal government will regulate in crushing detail one-sixth of the U.S. economy. By essentially abolishing medical underwriting (actuarially based risk assessment) and replacing it with government fiat, Obamacare turns the health insurance companies into utilities, their every significant move dictated by government regulators. The public option was a sideshow. As many on the right have long been arguing, and as the more astute on the left (such as The New Yorker's James Surowiecki) understand, Obamacare is government health care by proxy, single-payer through a facade of nominally "private" insurers.

At first, health-care reform was sustained politically by Obama's own popularity. But then gravity took hold, and Obamacare's profound unpopularity dragged him down with it. After 29 speeches and a fortune in squandered political capital, it still will not sell.

The health-care drive is the most important reason Obama has sunk to 46 percent. But this reflects something larger. In the end, what matters is not the persona but the agenda. In a country where politics is fought between the 40-yard lines, Obama has insisted on pushing hard for the 30. And the American people -- disorganized and unled but nonetheless agitated and mobilized -- have put up a stout defense somewhere just left of midfield.

Ideas matter. Legislative proposals matter. Slick campaigns and dazzling speeches can work for a while, but the magic always wears off.

It's inherently risky for any charismatic politician to legislate. To act is to choose and to choose is to disappoint the expectations of many who had poured their hopes into the empty vessel -- of which candidate Obama was the greatest representative in recent American political history.

Obama did not just act, however. He acted ideologically. To his credit, Obama didn't just come to Washington to be someone. Like Reagan, he came to Washington to do something -- to introduce a powerful social democratic stream into America's deeply and historically individualist polity.

Perhaps Obama thought he'd been sent to the White House to do just that. If so, he vastly over-read his mandate. His own electoral success -- twinned with handy victories and large majorities in both houses of Congress -- was a referendum on his predecessor's governance and the post-Lehman financial collapse. It was not an endorsement of European-style social democracy.

Hence the resistance. Hence the fall. The system may not always work, but it does take its revenge.
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New Contributor - The Daily Pledge

We would like to welcome our new contributor, "The Daily Pledge" - The Daily Pledge - to this site. You will find frequent updates in the "Blogs of Note" section on the left column of this page. Welcome Kathy! -...T

White House Negro

Alveda King, the niece of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and founder of King for America Inc., is right on the money with her assessment of Harry Reid, and his MORE than racist remark about Obama -- "a ‘light-skinned' African American ‘with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,'..." Harry Reid is an INSULT to every WHITE human being and to every BLACK human being and their ancestors!!
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