PROGRESS REPORT: WINNING THE SENATE
Seven months ago, the conventional wisdom was that, while the Republicans would score impressive gains in both houses of Congress in the elections of 2010, the Democrats would keep control. Now, it is that the Republicans may, indeed, capture the House, but never the Senate. Presidential press secretary Robert Gibbs admitted that the loss of the House was a possibility.
The conventional wisdom is still wrong. The Republicans will take the Senate and the House.
Here’s the Senate rundown:
OBAMA DIGS A DEEPER HOLE
Published on TheHill.com on July 13, 2010
Any president facing a recession has a basic conundrum to resolve: If he doesn’t try to make people believe that a recovery is in progress, nobody will. But if he tries to make them believe that all is getting better, he risks being seen as out of touch at best or insensitive at worst.
It was just such a predicament that landed George H.W. Bush in trouble in 1991 when he preached that the economy was emerging from the recession, only to be seen as rich and elitist for his efforts. Things got so bad that this verbally challenged president once blurted out his staff’s strategy memo by saying, “Message: I care.” That was about as well-received as Nixon’s statement that “I am not a crook.”
THE END OF BRITAIN AS WE KNOW IT
The United Kingdom, the mother of all democracies, is about to change its political system in fundamental ways – changes which will spell disaster for the nation and for its politics. For those who love Britain, the news of these impending alterations can only cause angst and distress.
As a result of the inability of either the Conservatives or Labor to win a majority in Parliament in the recent elections, both parties had to bid for support from the Liberal/Social Democratic Party. The price the Conservatives ultimately paid was to agree to some of these changes and to refer others to the electorate for a referendum.
THE LEFT WING SPIRAL TRAP
Barak Obama faces about the same problem that confronted Bill Clinton in 1994 when he lost control of Congress. In both cases, the Democratic presidents had alienated moderate and conservative voters and found themselves increasingly isolated with a political base of liberals and minorities. In each instance, the president worried that off-year election turnout among their base would be attenuated both because it always is in non-presidential years and because their policy failings had reduced the enthusiasm they found among their base voters. And both men found themselves forced to escalate their rhetoric and move their ideological positions to the left in order to try to drum up the kind of turnout they needed to keep power in Congress.
Clinton failed and Obama will too.
ECONOMIC NUMBERS HURTING OBAMA
The increasing consensus that we are entering a “double dip” recession is seeping into the conventional wisdom, posing a further obstacle to Obama’s attempts to keep control of Congress. Even when the conventional wisdom was that the economy was slowly emerging from recession, the president was having his problems keeping Congress. But now that all indicators – from employment to housing to consumer confidence to the Dow – are trending downward, the task is likely to become even harder.
The days are fading when Bush could be blamed for the economic problems we are facing as a nation. The passage of time and, interestingly, the very perception that things had been getting better earlier in the year both make this second dip the Obama dip rather than just a continuation of the “Bush recession.”
OBAMA’S IMMIGRATION HYPOCRISY
When Obama could have passed comprehensive immigration reform – when he still had 60 Senate Democrats – he didn’t lift a finger to push it. Now that he can’t pass it – it is too late in the year, he doesn’t have 60 votes, and many Democrats will defect – he aggressively pushes it in a national speech.
The opportunism and hypocrisy of his attempt to manipulate America’s Latinos into forgetting his previous inaction is transparent and obvious. Polls show him losing Hispanics due to high and continuing unemployment and losing Congressional seats in the bargain, so Obama has dug up the immigration proposals of former President George W. Bush, dusted them off, and made them his own. He knows it won’t pass. But he hopes that it will reignite Latino enthusiasm for his failing presidency and anger at Republicans for frustrating immigration reform.
BOOK REVIEW: QUIET HERO: SECRETS FROM MY FATHER’S PAST BY RITA COSBY
A Book Review By DICK MORRIS of Quiet Hero: Secrets From My Father’s Past By Rita Cosby
The Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943 is justifiably the stuff of numerous books, articles, and films. But, just as significant and lasting in its impact was the Polish Resistance Revolt of 1944.
In one of the most galling stories of perfidy and trickery, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin summoned the Polish resistance to come out of hiding and rise to fight the German war machine, promising immediate aid from the hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops massed on the other side of the Vistula River gazing down on the city of Warsaw. The resistance emerged from their underground hiding spots and fiercely attacked the Wehrmacht inflicting large casualties on the German occupiers. But the Soviet troops sat there on the opposite bank of the Vistula for five months and did not budge to assist them. Almost one million Poles were slaughtered as the Nazis destroyed their units. Once the smoke of battle had cleared, the Soviets crossed the river and pushed the Nazis back on their drive to Berlin. Stalin had succeeded in getting Hitler to wipe out the only forces of democracy and freedom in Poland.
