Bitch About Obama

Presidential politics is about storytelling. Presented with a vivid storyline, voters naturally tend to fit every new event or piece of information into a picture that is already neatly framed in their minds.

No one understands this better than Barack Obama and his team, who won the 2008 election in part because they were better storytellers than the opposition. The pro-Obama narrative featured an almost mystically talented young idealist who stood for change in a disciplined and thoughtful way. This easily outpowered the anti-Obama narrative, featuring an opportunistic Chicago pol with dubious relationships who was more liberal than he was letting on.

A year into his presidency, however, Obama’s gift for controlling his image shows signs of faltering. As Washington returns to work from the Thanksgiving holiday, there are several anti-Obama storylines gaining momentum.

The Obama White House argues that all of these storylines are inaccurate or unfair. In some cases these anti-Obama narratives are fanned by Republicans, in some cases by reporters and commentators.

But they all are serious threats to Obama, if they gain enough currency to become the dominant frame through which people interpret the president’s actions and motives.

Here are seven storylines Obama needs to worry about:

He thinks he’s playing with Monopoly money

Ecocomists and business leaders from across the ideological spectrum were urging the new president on last winter when he signed onto more than a trillion in stimulus spending and bank and auto bailouts during his first weeks in office. Many, though far from all, of these same people now agree that these actions helped avert an even worse financial catastrophe.

Along the way, however, it is clear Obama underestimated the political consequences that flow from the perception that he is a profligate spender. He also misjudged the anger in middle America about bailouts with weak and sporadic public explanations of why he believed they were necessary.

The flight of independents away from Democrats last summer — the trend that recently hammered Democrats in off-year elections in Virginia — coincided with what polls show was alarm among these voters about undisciplined big government and runaway spending. The likely passage of a health care reform package criticized as weak on cost-control will compound the problem.

Obama understands the political peril, and his team is signaling that he will use the 2010 State of the Union address to emphasize fiscal discipline. The political challenge, however, is an even bigger substantive challenge—since the most convincing way to project fiscal discipline would be actually to impose spending reductions that would cramp his own agenda and that of congressional Democrats.

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Mr Ainsworth took the unprecedented step of publicly criticising the US President and his delays in sending more troops to bolster the mission against the Taliban.

A “period of hiatus” in Washington – and a lack of clear direction – had made it harder for ministers to persuade the British public to go on backing the Afghan mission in the face of a rising death toll, he said.

Senior British Government sources have become increasingly frustrated with Mr Obama’s “dithering” on Afghanistan, the Daily Telegraph disclosed earlier this month, with several former British defence chiefs echoing the concerns.

But Mr Ainsworth is the first Government minister to express in public what amounts to personal criticism of the US president’s leadership over the conflict which has so far cost 235 British lives.

Polls show most voters now want an early withdrawal, following the death of 98 British service personnel this year alone.

Ministers say the mission is vital to stop international terrorists using Afghanistan as a base, but Gordon Brown has promised an “exit strategy” that could start next year.

The Defence Secretary’s blunt remarks about the US threaten to strain further a transatlantic relationship already under pressure over the British release of the Lockerbie bomber and Mr Obama’s decision to snub Mr Brown at the United Nations in September.

Mr Ainsworth spoke out as the inquiry into the 2003 war in Iraq started in London, hearing evidence from British diplomats that the UK government concluded in 2001 that toppling Saddam Hussein by military action would be illegal.

Mr Obama has been considering advice from General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan, to send more than 40,000 extra troops to the country.

Next week, after more than three months of deliberation, the president is expected to announce that he will send around 34,000 more troops.

Mr Ainsworth, speaking to MPs at the defence committe in the House of Commons, welcomed that troop ’surge’ decision, but lamented the time taken to reach it.

He said that the rising British death toll, the corruption of the Afghan government and the delay in Washington all hamper efforts to retain public backing for the deployment.

“We have suffered a lot of losses,” he said. “We have had a period of hiatus while McChrystal’s plan and his requested uplift has been looked at in the detail to which it has been looked at over a period of some months, and we have had the Afghan elections, which have been far from perfect let us say.

“All of those things have mitigated against our ability to show progress… put that on the other side of the scales when we are suffering the kind of losses that we are.”

Britain has 9,000 troops in Afghanistan and has announced it will send another 500, a decision some US officials saw as a move to put pressure on Mr Obama.

Mr Ainsworth said he is confident that once Mr Obama confirms his new strategy, allies will follow and British public opinion will shift back in favour of the mission.

“I hope and believe that we are about to get an announcement from the USA on troop numbers and I think that that will be followed by contributions from many other Nato allies and so we will be able to show that we are going forward in this campaign to an extent that we have not been able to in recent months with those issues still hanging,” he said.

Mr Ainsworth was appointed defence secretary earlier this year, his first Cabinet post.

A former factory worker and union official, he has faced questions about whether he has the stature or political clout to oversee the Armed Forces at a time of war.

In August, he told The Daily Telegraph he was less intellectually accomplished than the commanders who answer to him and suggested that his critics are motivated by class prejudice.

A report earlier this week suggested that Mr Brown is considering removing Mr Ainsworth and replacing him with Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary.

Attempting to play down Mr Ainsworth’s remarks, No 10 and the Ministry of Defence last night made a statement backing Mr Obama’s deliberations.

It stated: “It is right that Nato partners have taken the time to review next steps in the campaign. These are hugely important issues that rightly need careful and detailed consideration.”

In an article in this newspaper today Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, claims that the reason public opinion is switching against the war in Afghanistan is because of the lies told in the run up to the Iraq war.

Mr Clegg also calls for a new approach to Afghanistan from the US. He writes: “We now need a complete change of strategy, which we still hope President Obama will announce next week.”

White House sources said yesterday that Mr Obama is preparing to address Americans in a live prime-time broadcast next Tuesday followed by testimony before Congress by senior figures such as General Stanley McChrystal, commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, and Karl Eikenberry, US ambassador to Kabul.

Mr Obama is believed to have decided to send about 34,000 more American troops in addition to the 68,000 currently in Afghanistan. Gen McChrystal requested about 40,000 more soldiers.

The US president convened a group of senior officials, including Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Mr Gates in the White House Situation Room on Monday night for a ninth and final “war council” meeting.

Source:  Telegraph

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By: Jeff Cox

As experts debate the potential speed of the US recovery, one figure looms large but is often overlooked: nearly 1 in 5 Americans is either out of work or under-employed.

Unemployment

According to the government’s broadest measure of unemployment, some 17.5 percent are either without a job entirely or underemployed. The so-called U-6 number is at the highest rate since becoming an official labor statistic in 1994.

The number dwarfs the statistic most people pay attention to—the U-3 rate—which most recently showed unemployment at 10.2 percent for October, the highest it has been since June 1983.

The difference is that what is traditionally referred to as the “unemployment rate” only measures those out of work who are still looking for jobs. Discouraged workers who have quit trying to find a job, as well as those working part-time but looking for full-time work or who are otherwise underemployed, count in the U-6 rate.

With such a large portion of Americans experiencing employment struggles, economists worry that an extended period of slow or flat growth lies ahead.

“To me there’s no easy solution here,” says Michael Pento, chief economist at Delta Global Advisors. “Unless you create another bubble in which the economy can create jobs, then you’re not going to have growth. That’s the sad truth.”

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By Michael Barone

Comes the news that Democratic Congressman Dennis Moore of the 3rd district of Kansas is not running for reelection. Interesting. Congressman Moore was reelected by a 56%-40% margin in 2008, and Barack Obama carried his district 51%-48%, while losing the other three congressional districts in Kansas.

There could be many plausible reasons for Moore to retire from Congress. He turns 65 in 2010 and at the end of his term will have served 12 years in Congress. He served 12 years as Johnson County District Attorney in 1976-88, and so he’s devoted more than half his working lifetime to public service. Serving in Congress means having to go back and forth between your district and Washington all the time (and a quick look at a travel website shows only two flights per day between Reagan National and Kansas City International), constantly being reachable by your constituents, etc., etc.

All that said, this still seems an ominous sign for congressional Democrats. Moore was first elected in 1998 when he beat one-term incumbent Vince Snowbarger. Moore profited from a bitter split in the Republican party between hard-line opponents of abortion (including Snowbarger) and moderates based in Johnson County. That split persisted for a decade; the current governor of Kansas, Mark Parkinson, is a longtime moderate Republican and sometime state legislator who was chosen as a ticket-mate by Democratic Governor Kathleen Sebelius and who succeeded her when she resigned to become Health and Human Services Secretary; Parkinson has said he will not run for a full term in 2010.

Moore’s moderate mien and voting record, his history of winning votes in Johnson County and internecine Republican fighting enabled him to win reelection five times. He won 65%-34% in 2006, his best showing, and against challenger Nick Jordan, a moderate touted by national Republicans, he won by the very solid margin of 56%-40%. Moore was undoubtedly helped by the Obama candidacy in 2008 in the three distinct parts of the district.

●In Wyandotte County, which includes Kansas City, Kansas, with its black community; turnout was up 7% (despite zero population growth) between 2004 and 2008 and Obama carried the county 70%-29%, with a 23,000-vote margin.

●Historically Republican Johnson County, containing many of the affluent suburbs of metro Kansas City, is now the largest and highest-voting county in Kansas. Turnout in 2008 was up 10% from 2004. In that year Johnson County voted 61%-38% for George W. Bush; in 2008 it voted only 54%-45% for John McCain. The Republican margin was cut from 60,000 to 25,000—barely enough to offset the Obama margin in much smaller Wyandotte County. Johnson County has had robust population growth (8% in 2004-08) and turnout seems likely to be robust in this affluent area in 2010. 

●The 3rd district also includes part of Douglas County, including most of the old New England Yankee-established town of Lawrence, home of the University of Kansas. Historically Douglas County was Republican and in presidential elections from 1920 to 1988 voted Democratic only once, in 1964. But starting in 1992 it has voted Democratic in every presidential election. Kansas was not a target state, so we can assume that the Obama campaign did not spend lavishly on organization here; even so, turnout was up 7% countywide in 2008 over 2004, and the Democratic margin increased from 57%-41% to 64%-34%. In popular votes the margin doubled from 8,000 votes to 16,000 votes.

That’s how the three parts of the district voted in 2008. Now look at the prospects for each of them in 2010 from Dennis Moore’s point of view, keeping in mind current public opinion polling and the results in the actual elections held in 2009. In Wyandotte County, black turnout is likely to be sharply down from 2008, when Americans elected our first African-American president.  Moore’s vote for House Democrats’ cap-and-trade bill could be a liability if Republicans can convince lower-income voters that it means higher utility rates for them. In Johnson County, opposition to the big government programs of the Obama administration and congressional Democratic leaders is likely to produce sharply increased Republican percentages and could produce robust offyear turnout.  Moore’s vote for the House Democrats’ health care bill is likely to be a political liability here. In Douglas County, turnout among students and college town denizens is likely to be off, particularly among those voters who hoped that Obama’s installation would produce a speedy end to American involvement in Iraq. Meanwhile, it seems unlikely that Kansas Republicans will be riven by the abortion war that raged between 1998 and 2006, as economic issues have overwhelmed cultural issues in voters’ minds.

In other words, 2010 undoubtedly looks like an uphill race for Dennis Moore. By announcing his retirement, he is free to vote for House Democratic leaders’ unpopular legislation without political repercussion and is spared the trouble of extensive campaigning. That’s fine for him. But if other Democratic incumbents in marginal districts—and, remember, the 3rd district voted for Obama—choose to follow Moore’s course, that could make it much harder to Democrats to maintain a big majority in the House and could make it easier for Republicans to gain most or all of the 41 seats they need to win a majority there.

Source:  The Washington Examiner

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Just 38% of voters now favor the health care plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats. That’s the lowest level of support measured for the plan in nearly two dozen tracking polls conducted since June.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 56% now oppose the plan.

Half the survey was conducted before the Senate voted late Saturday to begin debate on its version of the legislation. Support for the plan was slightly lower in the half of the survey conducted after the Senate vote.

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