A better solution would be a multiparty system. Then almost certainly there would be no majority party in either house of Congress, ever, and nothing would get passed unless two or more parties agreed to support it. Think about it.
Well, right now, they can obstruct legislation at their leisure and provide boiler-plate “solutions” without offering an ounce of specifics, and get away with it because they’re in the minority.
But if they win both houses, then they really will have to put up or shut up. There will be greater scrutiny to everything they propose, they’ll be more likely to keep the crazies at bay, and they can’t act like a bunch of crybabies anymore. The short term bad for the Dems in this scenario will be a long-term good, for both the party & Obama (and by extension, IMHO, us).
I agree, and I think a Republican takeover of congress this fall will pretty much guarantee Obama’s re-election in 2012.
I have studied it, and one of the essential steps is that the legislators vote. For the past two years, the Republicans in the Senate have been systematically refusing to do that.
Sophistry is abound on the dope these days.
Wow, how do our British cousins manage? :rolleyes:
Why not? When companies fail it’s blamed on the CEO regardless of whether he’s at fault or not. The public doesn’t really care who caused the problems, they just want to see heads roll. The more public the figure, the better. And you don’t get more public than being President of the United States.
Since this thread was started the situation has only worsened for the Democrats.
House races that they never expected to have to defend (John Dingell, Barney Frank, etc.) are now close enough that the incumbents actually have to spend money and campaign instead of taking election for granted. Realclearpolitics keeps rolling back the estimated safe, likely and leaning Democrat house seats. As of now, RCP estimates 186 safe Democrat seats and 210 Republican seats. 39 seats are toss ups. Of those 39, all but two of them are Democrat incumbents. If the Republicans take 1 seat out of five of those that are classified as “toss ups”, they will win the majority. It’s likely that they will win far more than that. Right now, RCP estimates the Senate at 48 safe Senate seats for the Democrats and 46 for Republicans. The six “toss up” states were or are occupied by Democrat incumbents. Republicans lead in four of them. One more and the Senate is controlled by the GOP. Only a kool-aid besotted partisan with a tenuous grasp of reality would deny that the Democrats are due for a historic defeat…i.e. a “whupping”.
The question that will be debated for years to come is…why? The short answer is that America got a look at big-government progressive politics and has recoiled. The latest Gallup poll on political self-identification showed 52 percent calling themselves “conservative” and only 18 percent calling themselves “liberal”. Those numbers are toxic for the progressive agenda. Again…why did this happen? I think the “great recession” had a lot to do with it.
Its impact was so large and long-lasting that the reaction to it has become cultural. People are holding onto their money and have changed their spending habits. Couple that with the historic struggle between the “haves” (taxpayers) and the “have nots” (net consumers of federal dollars compared to what they pay in taxes) and you have tension and frustration. President Obama has made it abundantly clear that even though he campaigned as a moderate, he is governing as a liberal. Say what you will about “liberal” being a relative term, he’s not really a liberal compared to (fill in the blank), etc…the American voting public sees him as a liberal. They don’t approve. Since Obama likes to use a driving analogy on the campaign trail, let me try one on for size. The American people have seen what happens when you give liberals the keys to the car and they are taking the keys away. The President and Congress are driving too fast in a direction the owners of the car do not want to go.
American progressive politics will be dealt a serious blow this November. How long will it last? I don’t know. It depends on how well the Democrats can gather and hold a diverse group of young people, minorities, liberals, union members and others together. The main problem they will have is that when most people get older, they become more conservative. Home ownership, taxes and other obligations tend to open up the eyes of people who previously found it easy to be enamored of nebulous ideas of what’s “fair” when they didn’t have to pay for them or think them through. When it’s all said and done, I think the democrats will have a solid 35-40 percent of the public as a voting bloc. And as long as they forsake the middle (and moderates) for pie-in-the-sky policies of the left, that will not be enough.
I don’t think so. I think there are a lot of factors, but I honestly don’t think that’s a huge one. If I had to name one, it’d be that the economy hasn’t recovered as quickly as people would like it to. But I think we’d be worse off under a less “progressive” White House, and so do a lot of other people.
That’s because conservatives have somehow (mind-boggling to me) succeeded in making"liberal" a dirty word in this country. If you ask people about the issues instead of asking them to label themselves with one-word political terms, you’ll see a much different picture.
I really think that you’ll prove to be the one out of touch here. The opposition is really fired up right now and the majority isn’t, big whoop; that’s pretty common in mid-terms. When the next presidential election comes along and the people have seen how poorly the Republican congress has performed, Obama will be easily swept back into office and the progressive march will continue.
So how does this work? Liberals forsake the middle and reap the whirlwind, but conservatives make a hard right into WTF Land, and moderates and independents flock to them?
I think you and most of the right are going to be sorely disappointed when the results of the election fail to live up to the stratospheric expectations that are being flogged on Fox. I have to give you credit though, going out on a limb on on the frothy right wing euphoria that peaked about two weeks ago, in case you didn’t notice. Most polls have the gap closing noticeably, and the smart money says you aren’t taking the Senate.
When the smoke clears and the Tea Baggers realize they cannot achieve the massive overhaul of government they were promised, and it won’t be pretty when they have their wrath. The Republicans are going to be in total disarray in the runup to 2012.
BS, the short answer is bad economy + normal off party mid term election gains + black president = huge enthusiasm gap. And to claim that Obama has gone more liberal than what he campaigned as is utterly ridiculous, a lot of Obama supporters are staying home this november because they voted for a liberal and got a center right president.
Ok, that’s one prediction.
Given the state of the economy and ordinary midterm losses, Ray Fair’s model predicts that the Democrats should win 49.3% of all votes cast in Nov 2010(as of Jul30 data). His model does not predict seats. If the Dems win 47% of the vote, that means 2% of the electorate swung for the Tea Partiers. If the Dems win 51% of the vote it will mean that visceral disgust with Fox News et al overcame background effects.
I predict that the Democratic vote share will be closer to 49% than it is to 35-40%.
Of course this “Forsake the middle” stuff is nonsense. For example, health care reform didn’t simply extend Medicare to everyone as lefties wanted: instead Congress opted for a version of Romneycare. Obama and Congress cut middle class taxes: Republicans voted against that, as the plan lacked sufficient giveaways to their corpulent donor base. Heck the Republicans even blocked attempts to curb sexual assault on Americans serving in war zones, without offering coherent objection or amendment. Sorry Evil One but the extremist wackos are all on the Republican side of the aisle.
I still think the Tea Party will split the Repubs, at least in places.
This implies that the Dems may do better than expected in the Senate. But only a few House Republicans rise to the level of war Nazi reenactor Rich Iott of Ohio. Sure there are a lot of tea party crazies, but most of them don’t get any sort of airplay unless they are running for the Senate.
At any rate, most of the craziness is reflected in polling, which feeds into Nate Silver’s models at the 538 blog. Personally, I think if the Dems maintain control of 53 seats in the Senate or 212 seats in the House, that this would represent a resounding repudiation of Republican insanity.
I would substitute in “Conservative judicial activism in the form of Citizens United”, for “Black president”. Thanks to five extremists on the supreme court, monied interests can now buy a sizable chunk of this election.
The latest projection from Electoral-Vote.com is:
Senate: Dem 50, GOP 47, ties 3
House: Dem 202, GOP 203, ties 30
That word, I do not think it means what you think it does.
Nate Silver of 538 was on TV last night saying that since polls depend on land lines for polls, their counts are older. Most younger people use cell phones exclusively. He suggests the polls are about 5 percent off toward older, rebublicans types.
I used to like that site, but they still predicted Kerry would will by a landslide on November 2nd, 2004 (cite, via the wayback machine. You can see here it’s only later the same day that their prediction changed) so I’ve doubted their credibility since then.
The Democrats are going to get waxed this fall. I predict they will lose control of the House by about 20 seats or so and will only control the Senate by a very few seats.
The principle reason for this is that the insurance companies are going to be offering Medicare Advantage plans in fewer places this year. Couple this with the fact of no COLA for Social Security recipients and the elderly (especially those idiots who don’t want socialized medicine, but dont’ touch my medicare and give me an increase in Social Security) are going to vent their wrath on the Democrats.
Young people may have voted for Obama in 2008, but historically they don’t tend to turn out in large numbers in non-Presidential elections.
The Republicans expect Democrats to roll overif they retake Congress:
Sort of like the way Republicans did when they lost the last two elections? I don’t think so. I hope President Obama stands up to them, and makes them shut down the government… the same way Bill Clinton did.