Voters Are Ready For Sweeping Change

Not only are all the political prognosticators forecasting that the GOP will take control of the Senate, they're also predicting the Republicans will strengthen their majority in the House, hold the majority of state governorships and win a record number of state legislative chambers across the country.


WASHINGTON -- It's almost a foregone conclusion that President Obama and the Democrats are going to suffer a humiliating defeat in next week's midterm elections.

But what would that mean for the last two years of his deeply unpopular presidency, the outcome of the 2015-16 presidential election cycle and the Republicans' chances of winning back the White House?

Certainly, a huge, game-changing win for Republicans on Nov. 4 will dramatically reorder the political dynamics of the next two years. And this election is shaping up as a very big victory for the GOP across the nation.

Not only are all the political prognosticators forecasting that the GOP will take control of the Senate, they're also predicting the Republicans will strengthen their majority in the House, hold the majority of state governorships and win a record number of state legislative chambers across the country.

When you look at the number of major elective offices across the nation, you discover that the GOP -- whatever the polls say about it in Congress -- now controls a hefty chunk of the nation's political power structure.

The Republicans already have a tight hold on the House, are within six seats of taking the Senate, control 29 of the nation's 50 state governorships and rule 59 of the country's 98 partisan legislative chambers. Democrats hold only 39.

A Washington Post survey of the 6,049 state legislative races in 46 states says a "record number of statehouses could go Republican" in next week's elections.

After looking at these lopsided GOP numbers, all the stories from the liberal news media about how unpopular the Republican brand has become now seem positively laughable. If the GOP is that unpopular, why are the voters putting it in charge of the lion's share of the country?

It should be clear by now that it's the Democrats who are unpopular, or at least the Democrats who have been in lockstep with Obama's agenda to move the country in a sharply leftward direction -- one where more government, more spending and still more regulations are the answers to every problem.

So how will all of this play out over the next two years?

It's certainly going to have a profound impact on the 2015-16 presidential campaign, which will officially begin the day after Tuesday's results.

Hardly a day goes by, it seems, that some news story doesn't appear in one of the nation's major newspapers, usually on the front page, extolling Hillary Clinton as the savior of the Democratic Party, and who is on a fast track to follow Obama into the White House.

That she appears to be the overwhelming choice of her party is unarguable. But she also faces a hornet's nest of political obstacles that no one wants to mention.

First and foremost is that the nation's electorate has grown tired of the Democrats' botched, mismanaged handling of the economy and has turned bitterly against them.

A majority of voters now say the government's ability to address the nation's biggest problems has declined in the last several years. And by an overwhelming 3-to-1 ratio, far more voters blame Obama and the Democrats than the GOP, according to a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Clinton is certainly not immune from this deep hostility toward Obama's big-government, anti-business approach to domestic issues, as well as his bungled handling of national security/foreign policy matters, which she oversaw and carried out as the president's secretary of state. She coldly turned a deaf ear to the desperate pleas for added security from the doomed embassy officials who lost their lives in a fiery terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya.

One does not have to be politically clairvoyant to know that the GOP's campaign cry in 2016 will be "it's time for a change," and that means putting the Republicans back in charge of the government.

Meantime, what can we expect from the White House if the Republicans end up in charge of Congress in the last two years of Obama's presidency?

It's hard to see him signing any of the economic reforms the GOP wants enacted to accelerate growth, significantly boost new business formation, job creation and higher middle-class incomes, which have remained flat.

But GOP congressional leaders will want to show the American people the kind of changes that are needed to turn the country around, especially in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.

To do that, they will have to pass pro-growth legislation to reform the tax code by cleansing it of costly corporate tax exemptions and other loopholes, and lowering the tax rates on business, families, individuals and investors.

They will have to tackle a common-sense replacement for Obamacare that lowers health care costs, including the rising cost of medical insurance premiums.

They should dare Obama to veto their pro-growth agenda and, if he does, it will become the virulent issue of the 2016 race for the White House. Then, let's see what Hillary does with that.

It is more than likely that Obama will not give an inch on any of the issues he has steadfastly opposed over his rocky years in office. Not on badly needed budget cuts to slow the growth in spending, tame the deficit and shrink an $18 trillion debt. Certainly not on junking Obamacare, or expanding trade and angering his party's union bosses.

Thus, we're most likely in store for two more years of gridlock in preparation for the presidential election battle to come.

The Republicans better choose their standard-bearer carefully, someone who, unlike Obama or Hillary, as been in charge of running a government and getting an agenda enacted.

The voters are clearly ready for sweeping change, and that's the midterm message they are going to deliver loud and clear on Tuesday.
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Uncertainty Is Not the Problem

Nice to see a REAL businessman speaking out against our socialist/fascist president's policies - at least to this day, he can still be open with his thoughts, as, after all, Obama's intellectual (sic) predecessors FDR and Woodrow Wilson simply had them imprisoned.

The author (who was an enthusiastic Obama supporter in 2008) makes the compelling and unassailable case that it exactly this president's open war against capital that has depressed our economy and will keep it so until he is consigned to the ash-heap of history.

After all, that is also exactly happened in the 30's and 40's under FDR...T

Many commentators blame our continuing economic woes on "uncertainty." They allege that recent and anticipated dramatic policy changes make business planning difficult, and that this is retarding growth and employment. This view is not wrong—but our main problem is not the uncertainty surrounding new policies. It is the policies.

Consider two uncertain situations. In the first, our business is waiting to find out the location decision for a customer's new industrial plant, so we know where to build our new supply facility. Until this is resolved, we will not invest in building nor will we hire staff. In the second situation, we know we are in for some pain, someone is going to make our business less productive and profitable, but we do not yet know how much. Planning is marginally more difficult, but the main reason we will not grow in the second situation is that investment is less attractive regardless of the precise resolution of uncertainty.

In the first case, uncertainty is the obstacle. Once it is resolved, we invest. In the second case, uncertainty is a small part of the problem. The large part is simply that bad things are happening. The day we are told "well, it's exactly a 30% hit to productivity and profits," all uncertainty is resolved—yet we will still not invest or hire.

The Obama administration's economic policies have defenders. For instance, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman will tell you the stimulus helped, and we didn't have enough. I disagree. I will tell you the stimulus was wasteful and politicized, and the American people, not being idiots, know they will have to pay for it eventually. People adjust their plans to account for the additional debt heaped on them, meaning lower investment and consumption.

I will also tell you Dodd-Frank, with its enshrining of too big to fail and its large regulatory costs, is an albatross. I will add that ObamaCare's gigantic new entitlement has hurt. I will throw in that massive additional regulatory costs being foisted upon business is an extra drain on the economy. I would definitely say that the disregard for law during the auto-company "bankruptcies" has long-lasting negative effects. I'd even throw in that the president's demonization of business has been harmful. Finally, I'd say the expected tax increases, even if only on the "super rich"—defined as anyone still gainfully employed—weigh upon us. So what does all this have to do with uncertainty and whether that's our problem? Consider a hypothetical.

Imagine, right now, we passed a giant additional wasteful stimulus. Imagine all the rules of Dodd-Frank were revealed and are even more stifling than we expected. Imagine we doubled the new health-care entitlement and expanded government control of health care more than previously predicted, but set all the details today. Imagine assorted government agencies passed more burdensome regulations than we anticipated, increasing both the cost of doing business and the drag of crony capitalism. But all uncertainty was resolved by passing them today.

Next imagine that the president promised, in no "uncertain" terms, to up his hectoring of business in perpetuity. Further, imagine we passed higher taxes going forward on everyone but, again, we settled it for certain right now. Finally, imagine we committed ourselves to no entitlement reform ever. Is all this good or bad? Well, uncertainty has been eliminated, but it sounds pretty darn bad.

Now let's go the opposite way and consider good policies surrounded by uncertainty. Imagine we will move from here toward free-market health-care reforms appropriate for a free people. We will reduce government spending and our debt, letting people spend their own money as they see fit. We will lower taxes across the board for individuals and businesses, and we'll reduce and simplify deductions.

Imagine even more that we'll make grown-up decisions and reform entitlements to levels we might possibly afford. Now imagine that while we know the direction of each of these policy changes, alas, we are very uncertain about how far these wonderful ideas will go. Imagine this uncertainty is even higher than it is around today's bad policies. Would these changes, uncertainty and all, make things better or worse? Well, it seems pretty clear that should these changes occur in any nontrivial fashion, you would have to duck to get out of the way of the ensuing economic boom, regardless of the uncertainty.

Focusing on "uncertainty" takes our eyes off the ball. We should not seek clarity about the many new drags on our economy. We should seek to have the administration cease and desist, then reverse them.

Mr. Asness is the managing and founding principal of AQR Capital Management
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Baroque Obama

This is Osama defined - pretentious, aloof, arrogant, and ignorant of all around him...Much like a Baroque french monarch: "Apre moi, le deluge!"...?!...T

Obama Tunes Out, and Business Goes on Hiring Strike
By Michael Barone


Last week, I noted that various forms of the word "unexpected" almost inevitably appeared in news stories about unfavorable economic developments.

You can find them again in stories about Friday's shocking news, that only 54,000 net new jobs were created in the month of May and that unemployment rose to 9.1 percent.

But with news that bad, maybe bad economic numbers will no longer be "unexpected." You can only expect a robust economic recovery for so long before you figure out, as Herbert Hoover eventually did, that it is not around the corner.

Exogenous factors explain some part of the current economic stagnation. The earthquake and tsunami in Japan caused a slowdown in manufacturing. Horrendous tornados did not help. Nor did bad weather, though only a few still bitterly cling to the theory that it's caused by manmade global warming.

But poor public policy is surely one reason why the American economy has not rebounded from recession as it has in the past. And political posturing has also played a major role.

Barack Obama and the Democratic congressional supermajorities of 2009-10 raised federal spending from 21 percent to 25 percent of gross domestic product. Their stimulus package stopped layoffs of public employees for a while, even as private sector payrolls plummeted.

And the Obama Democrats piled further burdens on would-be employers in the private sector. Obamacare and the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill are scheduled to be followed by thousands of regulations that will impose impossible-to-estimate costs on the economy.

That seems to have led to a hiring freeze. The Obama Democrats can reasonably claim not to be responsible for the huge number of layoffs that occurred in the months following the financial crisis of fall 2008. And Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke did manage to help stabilize financial markets.

But while the number of layoffs is now vastly less than in the first half of 2009, the number of new hires has not increased appreciably. Many more people have been unemployed for longer periods than in previous recessions, and many more have stopped looking for work altogether.

It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the threat of tax increases and increased regulatory burdens have produced something in the nature of a hiring strike.

And then there is the political posturing. On April 13, Barack Obama delivered a ballyhooed speech at George Washington University. The man who conservatives as well as liberal pundits told us was a combination of Edmund Burke and Reinhold Niebuhr was widely expected to present a serious plan to address the budget deficits and entitlement spending.

Instead, the man who can call on talented career professionals at the Office of Management and Budget to produce detailed blueprints gave us something in the nature of a few numbers scrawled on a paper napkin.

The man depicted as pragmatic and free of ideological cant indulged in cheap political rhetoric, accusing Republicans, including House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, who was in the audience, of pushing old ladies in wheelchairs down the hill and starving autistic children.

The signal was clear. Obama had already ignored his own deficit reduction commission in preparing his annual budget, which was later rejected 97-0 in the Senate. Now he was signaling that the time for governing was over and that he was entering campaign mode 19 months before the November 2012 election.

People took notice, especially those people who decide whether to hire or not. Goldman Sachs' Current Activity Indicator stood at 4.2 percent in March. In April -- in the middle of which came Obama's GW speech -- it was 1.6 percent. For May, it is 1.0 percent.

"That is a major drop in no time at all," wrote Business Insider's Joe Weisenthal.

After April 13, Obama Democrats went into campaign mode. They staged a poll-driven Senate vote to increase taxes on oil companies.

They launched a Mediscare campaign against Ryan's budget resolution that all but four House Republicans had voted for. That seemed to pay off with a special election victory in the New York 26th congressional district.

The message to job creators was clear. Hire at your own risk. Higher taxes, more burdensome regulation and crony capitalism may be here for some time to come.

One possible upside is that economic bad news may no longer be "unexpected." Another is that voters may figure out what is going on.
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The Truth About Obama Care

Thank God for John Roberts and his 4 colleagues on SCOTUS: the last standing firewall between constitutional republicanism and liberal fascism - socialism

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Republicans put 99 Democrat-held House seats in danger

“It’s thermonuclear,” ...this is from a democrat congressman in New York...New York! Where republicans may gain up to 9 seats. Dick Morris may be correct after all that republicans could conceivably gain as many as 100 house seats and with them, an veto proof majority. Believe me, everyone, if we gain over 50 seats the Senate WILL fall as well. It always has, when a wave election of such magnitude has occurred historically. HEIL OSAMA!


With two weeks remaining until Election Day, the political map has expanded to put Democrats on the run across the country — with 99 Democratic-held House seats now in play, according to a POLITICO analysis, and Republicans well in reach of retaking the House.

It’s a dramatic departure from the outlook one year ago — and a broader landscape than even just prior to the summer congressional recess. As recently as early September, many Republicans were hesitant to talk about winning a majority for fear of overreaching.

Today, however, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report predicts a GOP net gain of at least 40 House seats, with 90 Democratic seats in total rated as competitive or likely Republican.

"When Chairman [Pete] Sessions and Leader [John] Boehner said that 100 House seats were in play, Democrats scoffed,” said Ken Spain, the National Republican Congressional Committee’s communications director. “Today, they aren't laughing anymore."

The number of Democrats in danger is more than double the 39 seats Republicans need to seize control of the House. It reflects an elastic electoral environment that favors the GOP by every measure: money, momentum and mood of the country — in this case, sour on Democratic incumbents.

For Democrats, a deteriorating political environment — unemployment high, President Barack Obama’s approval ratings low — has been exacerbated by the presence of cash-flush, independent conservative groups that have poured huge sums of money into races.

The groups, including American Crossroads, have combined with the National Republican Congressional Committee to stretch the boundaries of the 2010 map into races where there’s even a scent of Democratic vulnerability.

“This year is shaping up to be something of a repeat of the 52-seat House and eight-seat Senate rout of Democrats in 1994,” handicapper Charlie Cook wrote last week. “Sure, the circumstances and dynamics are different from then, but the outcome seems to be shaping up along the same lines.”

At one time, there was serious doubt the GOP would have the financial resources to compete effectively for the House majority. The thinking was that scores of potential opportunities could go unexplored due to the cash disparity between the NRCC and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

While the NRCC still trails in cash on hand, its fundraising has picked up — the September total was the committee’s largest one-month take since 2006 — and independent groups have helped fill the void. And with anti-incumbent, anti-Obama and anti-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sentiment running so high in many districts, even a relative pittance has been enough to push a few Democrats onto thin ice.

The assessment by POLITICO is based on a review of TV media-buy information from those independent groups and the party committees in more than 80 districts; internal and public polling in individual races; Federal Election Commission fundraising data for incumbents and challengers; and reporting on the districts. ( See: More photos from the campaign trail)

While the level of competitiveness among the 99 seats varies widely, they share a common denominator: all of them show some serious sign of vulnerability to takeover by the GOP. Factors included a Democratic incumbent’s unpopular legislative votes, the quality of opposition, the partisan breakdown of the districts or the huge sums of money dedicated to Democratic defeat — or some combination of all those factors — to place them “in play” ahead of Nov. 2. (See: Candidates take the debate stage)

The subjectivity of those factors have led to varying interpretations of just how many seats are actually at risk for Democrats. The Rothenberg Report, another political handicapper, lists 91 Democratic-held seats as in play, and predicts the “extremely large field of competitive races” will produce a “likely Republican gain of 40-50 seats, with 60 seats possible.”

POLITICO’s list of 99 seats — some of which have only recently emerged — places GOP pickup opportunities across the political map, stretching from regions of Republican strength such as the South to Democratic states such as California, where three incumbent Democrats face competitive challengers.

In deep-blue New York, Republicans have a shot at as many as nine Democrats. “It’s thermonuclear,” said two-term Rep. Michael Arcuri, in describing the campaign against him to The New York Times.


The list doesn’t include several Republican-oriented seats that Democrats have all but ceded to Republicans, including districts in southeastern Louisiana, Upstate New York and Middle Tennessee.
Some Democrats are clearly facing more difficult challenges than others. The DCCC, which is charged with protecting the party’s 39-seat majority, has already pulled TV ad reservations in at least six contests — a sign that Democratic hopes of retaining those seats are diminishing.

There are dramatic differences in the competitiveness of races even within states. In California, Reps. Jim Costa and Loretta Sanchez appear to have easier paths to reelection than fellow Democratic Rep. Jerry McNerney. In New York, Upstate Rep. Bill Owens has a higher degree of reelection difficulty than Long Island-based Rep. Carolyn McCarthy. In Texas, Rep. Solomon Ortiz — who typically wins by wide margins —- is far likelier to win than Rep. Chet Edwards, who is regularly faces stiff opposition in his solidly Republican district.

What does an endangered Democrat look like? Take your pick.

Freshman Democrats make up a large share — more than a quarter — of those facing competitive races. Of the 38 Democrats serving their first full terms in the House, POLITICO rates 29 as at-risk. Some — such as Reps. Bobby Bright of Alabama, Betsy Markey of Colorado, Alan Grayson of Florida and Frank Kratovil Jr. of Maryland — hail from GOP-friendly districts, where they have been in the cross hairs almost since the moment they were elected.

But legislative vets are under fire too. Nine-term New York Rep. Maurice Hinchey and four-term Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva until recently were considered near-locks to win, before their campaigns hit unexpected turbulence. Hinchey attracted unflattering attention this weekend after a videotaped confrontation with a reporter at the same time American Crossroads and other GOP groups are pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into ads in his district.

Grijalva, who called for an economic boycott of his own state amid a housing crisis and record unemployment, has also been hit by outside spending right after an automated poll unexpectedly showed him in a dead heat with his GOP opponent.

The list also includes a handful of veteran Democrats who typically enjoy the benefits of seniority on Capitol Hill and cruise to reelection but this year find themselves locked in competitive races. Among those Democrats are Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton of Missouri and Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt of South Carolina. (Join Arena debate: Which candidates should Dems try to save using limited resources?)

Getting outhustled in fundraising is another way for candidates to find themselves on the bubble.

In a sign of GOP momentum — and of the breadth of the competitive landscape — at least 40 Democratic incumbents were outraised by their GOP challengers in the most recent quarter, according to FEC filings. Reps. Ron Klein of Florida and Stephanie Herseth Sandlin of South Dakota, both stellar fundraisers, were among those outraised in the latest reporting period.

Not all Democratic districts in play are held by incumbents: The party is trying to retain open seats in states including Pennsylvania, Indiana and Washington.

If there is a particular trouble spot for Democrats, it is the Midwest, where 31 seats are at risk. Democrats are trying to defend incumbents including Reps. Steve Kagen of Wisconsin, Bill Foster of Illinois and Leonard Boswell of Iowa, as well as several open seats.

In the South, where many Democrats occupy conservative-oriented districts, Republicans are making a play for 24 seats.
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Dems Start to Panic As Midterm Reality Sets In

Stunning. This is from TIME magazine. TIME! The most liberal rag in existence today. They know the regime is collapsing from within, and that the peasants will be at the gates wielding pitchforks, tar & feathers in a little more than three months from now. When the regime is overthrown, so will be the state run media, which has shockingly lost whatever pretense of objectivity it had retained, prior to it's conscious decision to collectively make Pravda and Izvestia look unbiased by comparison.

A political revolution is coming...T

Under pressure, the Democrats are cracking. On both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, there is a realization that Nancy Pelosi's hold on the speakership is in true jeopardy; that losing control of the Senate is not out of the question; and that time, once the Democrats' best friend, is now their mortal enemy. Since January, when Scott Brown won Ted Kennedy's Massachusetts Senate seat, the President's party has tried to downplay in public what its pollsters have been saying in private: that Obama's alienation of independents and white voters, along with the enthusiasm gap between the right and the left, means that Republicans are on a trajectory to pick up massive numbers of House and Senate seats, perhaps even to regain control of Congress.

Evidence of the pervasiveness of this view: Sunday's New York Times op-ed page, which featured a series of short essays from leading Democratic and Republican strategists about how Obama could go about staging a political comeback, focused not on November's midterms but on 2012 — an indication that Washington conventional wisdom has already written off prospects of Democrats sustaining a majority in the legislature.


What has kept the easily panicked denizens of Capitol Hill from open revolt until now was a shared confidence that there was still plenty of time to turn things around, and that the White House had a strategy to do just that.


The two-part scheme was pretty straightforward. First, Democrats planned a number of steps to head off, or at least soften, the anti-Washington, anti-incumbent, anti-Obama sentiment that cost them the Massachusetts seat. Pass health care, and other measures to demonstrate that Democrats could get things done for the middle class; continue to foster those fabled green shoots on the economy, harvesting the positive impact of the massive economic stimulus bill passed early in the Administration; heighten the contrast between the two parties by delivering on Wall Street reform and a campaign-funding law to counteract January's controversial Supreme Court decision. Use all of those elements to contrast the Democrats' policies under Obama with the Republicans' policies under Bush, rather than allow the midterms to be a referendum on the incumbent party.


The second strand of the Democrats' plan was more prosaic and mechanical. Recruit strong candidates for open seats. Leverage the White House and congressional majorities to raise more money than the other side. Make mischief by playing up the divisions between the Tea Party and the more traditional elements of the Republican Party, in part to increase the chances that more extreme, less electable candidates edge out moderates in GOP primary battles. Do extensive opposition research and targeted messaging in the fall to delegitimize Republican candidates in the minds of centrist voters. Coordinate below the radar with labor unions, environmentalists and other allies on get-out-the-vote efforts, focusing on young, nonwhite and first-time voters who came out for Obama in 2008.

Robert Gibbs' now-famous acknowledgement on Meet the Press on July 11 that Republicans were in a position to win back control of the House sparked a notable outbreak of hostility between the White House and congressional Democrats for two reasons. First, it forced Pelosi & Co. to recognize that the first part of their plan is failing. Public and private polling suggests that anxiety over the lack of jobs and anger over the big-spending ways of the Administration will trump the merits of the stimulus spending, health care reform and the financial regulation bill in voters' minds. Neither the economy nor voters' perceptions are likely to be turned around by Election Day. Congressional Democrats were aware of this hard reality before Gibbs opened his mouth, but having him say it out loud was apparently too much for those on the Hill to bear.


Democrats also fear that Gibbs' admission will impact the flow of donations from corporate interests and lobbyists, who tend to want to bet on the party more likely to win the majority. Open musing about a speaker John Boehner, House Democrats believe, will drive mercenary donors to shift their support to the GOP. The huge fundraising hauls by GOP Senate candidates just reported for the second quarter of the year were not, of course, the result of Gibbs' statement, but the momentum suggested by those figures could be hypercharged by White House pessimism.

To be sure, the White House plans to continue to try to impact the national environment by touting its accomplishments, blaming Republicans for stopping other measures, and railing against the Bush legacy. They will also continue to work aggressively on the mechanics of victory, hoping to save their incumbents with their customized, race-by-race tactics. Vice President Joe Biden on ABC News' This Week crowed about Senate majority leader Harry Reid's back-from-the-dead strength in his Nevada race, credited largely to Reid's shaky Republican opponent, who landed her nomination in part because of Democratic shenanigans. Democrats hope to replicate that micro-success to save other seats.


After days of public intraparty acrimony, a cold peace has been restored, with Democrats all around saying they share the same goals and strategy for November. But if the party's poll numbers stay bad and it loses big, expect a fundamental difference between the White House and congressional Democrats to emerge in sharp relief after Nov. 2.

Even if the midterms end the Democrats' one-party rule, the President may well believe that his accomplishments during his first two years in office were worth it. But it's a sure bet that the vanquished House Democrats who lose their jobs and their gavels won't share that assessment.
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DEM STRATEGISTS HAVE IT WRONG - Republicans to control both houses after this election

Republicans will gain more than fifty House seats and at least ten in the Senate, enough to take control in both Houses. That’s reality.

That's the stunning prediction, which I concur with, about what the passage of osamacare has done to the democrat party. They can't run from it, it won't pass away, or improve with age. Say hello to speaker Boehner and majority leader McConnell...T


Stanley Greenberg and James Carville claim that the Republican Party has peaked too soon. Incredibly, Greenberg says “when we look back on this, we’re going to say Massachusetts is when 1994 happened.” Stan’s only claim to expertise in the 1994 elections, of course, is that he’s the guy who blew it for the Democrats. Right after that, President Clinton fired both of the flawed consultants and never brought them back again.

Now,their latest pitch is that the highpoint of the GOP advance was the Scott Brown election and that, from here on, things will “improve slightly” for the Democrats.

Once again, Carville and Greenberg are totally misreading the public mood. Each time the Republican activists battle, they become stronger. Their cyber and grass roots grow deeper. The negatives that attach to so-called “moderate” Democratic incumbents increase. And each time Obama, Reid and Pelosi defy public opinion and use their majorities to ram through unpopular legislation, frustration and anger rises.

Were Obama’s ambitions to slacken, perhaps a cooling off might eventuate. But soon the socialist financial takeover bill will come on the agenda, followed by amnesty for illegal immigrants, cap and trade, and card check unionization. Each bill will trigger its own mobilization of public opposition and add to the swelling coalition of opposition to Obama and his radical agenda.

And, all the while, the deficit will increase, interest rates will rise, and unemployment will remain high.

Meanwhile, the political process will generate more and more strong Republican challengers. We have yet to see if former Governor Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin or Dino Rossi of Washington State will emerge to challenge Senators Feingold and Murray. Better House candidates will decide to capitalize on the momentum and will jump into the race and Republican donors will come out of hiding, their efforts catalyzed by the growing optimism about GOP chances.

Presaging the Republican sweep that looms ahead, is the shift in the party ratings on various issues. Rasmussen has the Republicans ahead by 49-37 on the economy and 53-37 on health care. His likely voter poll shows GOP leads on every major issue area: national security (49-37), Iraq (47-39), Education (43-30), Immigration (47-34), Social Security (48-36), and Taxes (52-34).

When Republicans are winning issues like education, healthy care, and social security – normally solidly Democratic issues – a sweep of unimaginable proportions is in the offing.

Will the rise in economic growth and job creation – if they continue — offset the Republican gains? Not very likely. Remember Bill Clinton’s 1994 experience. Even though the recession had officially ended in the quarter before he took office and he proudly pointed to five million new jobs that had been created during the first two years of his presidency, Clinton got no bounce from the jobs issue or the economy. Even in the election of 1996, the economy was only marginally a source of strength for the Democratic president. It wasn’t until impeachment that the job growth that had been ongoing since he took office began to work heavily in his favor with the public. The hangover from a recession, certainly from one a violent as this, lasts a long time. A very long time.

And all this assumes that things will, indeed, improve. Worries about inflation loom large and concerns that higher taxes and interest rates will trigger a new downturn also abound. As long as the deficit is as high as it is, there is no solid foundation for a sustained period of economic growth.

Finally, Obama is now responsible for health care in America. When premiums rise, it will be his fault. When coverage is denied, it will be on his watch. When Medicare cuts kick in, it will be Obama who gets the blame.

Carville’s last book touted “forty more years of Democrats.” Now he dreams of a loss of “only” 25 seats in the House and “six or seven” Senators. But these are pipe dreams. Republicans will gain more than fifty House seats and at least ten in the Senate, enough to take control in both Houses. That’s reality.
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Obama's Flow Chart - Democracy Denied

And that's after one year! Wait until card-check, cap and trade, and obamacare get passed. Can you say, goodbye representative constitutional goevernment, and hello, fascism?!...T

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If Democrats ignore health-care polls, midterms will be costly

"Bluntly put, this is the political reality:

First, the battle for public opinion has been lost. Comprehensive health care has been lost. If it fails, as appears possible, Democrats will face the brunt of the electorate's reaction. If it passes, however, Democrats will face a far greater calamitous reaction at the polls. Wishing, praying or pretending will not change these outcomes."

This public memorandum, for a last minute change of course, is from two of the longest serving liberal democratic pollsters in America: Doug Schoen and Patt Caddell, both of whom worked tirelessly for the last two democrat presidents, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton. This is the precipice Osama and his progressives fascists have lead us to. These two gentlemen give us an idea of the panic and desperation that the left wing has led itself into. God bless America...T

In "The March of Folly," Barbara Tuchman asked, "Why do holders of high office so often act contrary to the way reason points and enlightened self-interest suggests?" Her assessment of self-deception -- "acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts" -- captures the conditions that are gripping President Obama and the Democratic Party leadership as they renew their efforts to enact health-care reform.

Their blind persistence in the face of reality threatens to turn this political march of folly into an electoral rout in November. In the wake of the stinging loss in Massachusetts, there was a moment when the president and the Democratic leadership seemed to realize the reality of the health-care situation. Yet like some seductive siren of Greek mythology, the lure of health-care reform has arisen again.

As pollsters to the past two Democratic presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, respectively, we feel compelled to challenge the myths that seem to be prevailing in the political discourse and to once again urge a change in course before it is too late. At stake is the kind of mainstream, common-sense Democratic Party that we believe is crucial to the success of the American enterprise.

Bluntly put, this is the political reality:

First, the battle for public opinion has been lost. Comprehensive health care has been lost. If it fails, as appears possible, Democrats will face the brunt of the electorate's reaction. If it passes, however, Democrats will face a far greater calamitous reaction at the polls. Wishing, praying or pretending will not change these outcomes.

Nothing has been more disconcerting than to watch Democratic politicians and their media supporters deceive themselves into believing that the public favors the Democrats' current health-care plan. Yes, most Americans believe, as we do, that real health-care reform is needed. And yes, certain proposals in the plan are supported by the public.

However, a solid majority of Americans opposes the massive health-reform plan. Four-fifths of those who oppose the plan strongly oppose it, according to Rasmussen polling this week, while only half of those who support the plan do so strongly. Many more Americans believe the legislation will worsen their health care, cost them more personally and add significantly to the national deficit. Never in our experience as pollsters can we recall such self-deluding misconstruction of survey data.

The White House document released Thursday arguing that reform is becoming more popular is in large part fighting the last war. This isn't 1994; it's 2010. And the bottom line is that the American public is overwhelmingly against this bill in its totality even if they like some of its parts.

The notion that once enactment is forced, the public will suddenly embrace health-care reform could not be further from the truth -- and is likely to become a rallying cry for disaffected Republicans, independents and, yes, Democrats.

Second, the country is moving away from big government, with distrust growing more generally toward the role of government in our lives. Scott Rasmussen asked last month whose decisions people feared more in health care: that of the federal government or of insurance companies. By 51 percent to 39 percent, respondents feared the decisions of federal government more. This is astounding given the generally negative perception of insurance companies.

CNN found last month that 56 percent of Americans believe that the government has become so powerful it constitutes an immediate threat to the freedom and rights of citizens. When only 21 percent of Americans say that Washington operates with the consent of the governed, as was also reported last month, we face an alarming crisis.

Health care is no longer a debate about the merits of specific initiatives. Since the spectacle of Christmas dealmaking to ensure passage of the Senate bill, the issue, in voters' minds, has become less about health care than about the government and a political majority that will neither hear nor heed the will of the people.

Voters are hardly enthralled with the GOP, but the Democrats are pursuing policies that are out of step with the way ordinary Americans think and feel about politics and government. Barring some change of approach, they will be punished severely at the polls.

Now, we vigorously opposed Republican efforts in the Bush administration to employ the "nuclear option" in judicial confirmations. We are similarly concerned by Democrats' efforts to manipulate passage of a health-care bill. Doing so in the face of constant majority opposition invites a backlash against the party at every level -- and at a time when it already faces the prospect of losing 30 or more House seats and eight or more Senate seats.

For Democrats to begin turning around their political fortunes there has to be a frank acknowledgement that the comprehensive health-care initiative is a failure, regardless of whether it passes. There are enough Republican and Democratic proposals -- such as purchasing insurance across state lines, malpractice reform, incrementally increasing coverage, initiatives to hold down costs, covering preexisting conditions and ensuring portability -- that can win bipartisan support. It is not a question of starting over but of taking the best of both parties and presenting that as representative of what we need to do to achieve meaningful reform. Such a proposal could even become a template for the central agenda items for the American people: jobs and economic development.

Unless the Democrats fundamentally change their approach, they will produce not just a march of folly but also run the risk of unmitigated disaster in November.
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