USA > History > 2010 > Politics (II)

Steve Nease

Ontario

Cagle

4 November 2010

In Deal With G.O.P.,

Portent for Next 2 Years

December 6, 2010
The New York Times
By PETER BAKER

WASHINGTON — For President Obama, this is what bipartisanship looks like in the new era: messy, combustible and painful, brought on under the threat of even more unpalatable consequences and yet still deferring the ultimate resolution for another day.

For the first time since his party’s drubbing in last month’s election, and arguably for the first time on a major domestic policy since he took office, Mr. Obama forged a deal with the Republican opposition, swallowing hard to give up a central campaign promise while maneuvering to win enough other priorities to declare partial victory.

In that deal come the first clues to how he plans to govern for the next two years with a divided Congress, an anemic economy and his own re-election looming on the horizon. He made clear he was willing to alienate his liberal base in the interest of compromise, more interested in crafting measures that can pass to the benefit of the middle class than waging battle to the end over principle. And in the process, he is gambling he can convince the American people that he is the bridge-builder they thought he was.

“I know there’s some people in my own party and in the other party who would rather prolong this battle, even if we can’t reach a compromise,” Mr. Obama said in announcing the bipartisan agreement on tax cuts and unemployment benefits. “But I’m not willing to let working families across this country become collateral damage for political warfare here in Washington.”

This was not a compromise he could relish. Ending the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of households was a major theme of his campaign in 2008. But if he had to agree to a two-year extension, he exacted a price from Republicans in the form of extended unemployment benefits, a temporary payroll tax cut to help the working class and the continuation of tax breaks for parents and students.

Unlike with other issues, Mr. Obama and the Republicans had a powerful incentive to split the difference, an implacable end-of-the-year deadline that would have resulted in a tax increase for nearly every American. Moreover, he arguably just punted the issue into the 2012 campaign.

The White House was careful not to extrapolate too much from one deal. Still, after Mr. Obama got passage of sweeping economic stimulus, health care and financial regulation measures with virtually no Republican support, this represents something of a break, and centrists and Republicans saw hope for a more collaborative two years.

“This is the first in a series of painful deals that the president will have to cut if he is to move us forward for the next two years,” said Matt Bennett, vice president of Third Way, an advocacy group of moderate Democrats, and a veteran of Bill Clinton’s White House. “It is proof that he is governing as an adult, looking for opportunities to negotiate.”

Frank J. Donatelli, chairman of Gopac, a Republican group, and White House political director under Ronald Reagan, said the opposition would welcome the move. “It’s the first time he has ever defied his base, which is a small step in the right direction,” Mr. Donatelli said. “It will make him a better president to govern from the center.”

But to his base, this is just the latest and most outrageous betrayal in what it sees as a two-year cycle of caving to conservative pressure and Republican obstructionism. The litany from the left is now familiar: Mr. Obama was too modest in his stimulus package, too afraid to fight for a government-sponsored option in his health plan, too deferential to Wall Street in his financial reforms, too weak to stand up to the generals on Afghanistan.

“Obama may have just ensured that he’ll face a significant challenge to his renomination in 2012 from inside the Democratic Party,” said Norman Solomon, a leader of Progressive Democrats of America. “By giving away the store on such a momentous tax issue, he has now done huge damage to a large portion of the progressive base that helped to make him president.”

Mr. Solomon added, “If he thinks that won’t have major effects on his re-election chances, he’s been swallowed up by a delusional bubble.”

For the moment, no credible primary challenger to Mr. Obama has emerged. But the anger on Monday extended beyond party activists. Democratic Congressional leaders acutely remember being cut out of the action when Mr. Clinton “triangulated” with Republicans in the 1990s, and Mr. Obama’s tax deal may provoke an open revolt.

Tony Fratto, a White House official under George W. Bush, said Mr. Obama failed to lay the groundwork with his own party. “Although the outcome here was inevitable, it will have real consequences for the president’s relationship with Congressional Democrats and his base,” Mr. Fratto said.

Mr. Obama seemed to recognize that during his remarks on Monday evening and addressed disappointed supporters.

“Sympathetic as I am to those who prefer a fight over compromise, as much as the political wisdom may dictate fighting over solving problems, it would be the wrong thing to do,” he said. “The American people didn’t send us here to wage symbolic battles or win symbolic victories.”

In Deal With G.O.P., Portent for Next 2 Years,
NYT,
6.12.2010,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/us/politics/07assess.html

States Out of Balance

November 9, 2010
The New York Times

The Republican Party’s most visible triumph last week was in the House of Representatives, but the more lasting — and possibly more destructive — result was in statehouses across the country. Republicans won more than 690 new legislative seats, taking back at least 19 state chambers and 10 governor’s seats from Democrats. Republicans previously had been in full control of nine states; now they will fully control at least 20.

There is no way that these newly elected Republican lawmakers and governors can follow through on their promises to erase huge deficits without raising taxes — except by making irresponsibly draconian cuts in critical state services, particularly for the poor and for education.

The states, like the federal government, need to get control of spending. That may mean dealing with out-of-control pensions. It may mean careful cuts in services combined with, yes, higher taxes. But with millions of people out of work, this is the worst possible time for the states to try to solve all their problems by simply slashing health care spending, spending on higher and elementary education, and services for the elderly and the poor. It would lead to tens of thousands of layoffs and even lower state revenues.

State budget cuts over the last two years have already been deep and painful, the biggest declines in three decades. High-spending states like New York, New Jersey and California can still find waste and fraud in programs like Medicaid. They are among the states that must make an aggressive effort to bring spiraling pension costs down to earth.

Many other states have little left to cut in government services. Nonetheless, as Monica Davey and Michael Luo reported in The Times this week, many newly elected Republican governors say they will balance their budgets that way. In Texas, Gov. Rick Perry and several state lawmakers have even floated the idea of dropping out of the Medicaid program and creating a low-cost insurance program for the poor.

That is an irresponsible, and counterproductive, way to try to close the state’s $25 billion deficit. It would mean giving up the federal government’s 60 percent share of the Texas program’s $40 billion annual cost. And for nearly four million participants, it would reduce the level of health care far below a minimum standard.

No matter what the politicians have promised, there is no sound way to balance budgets, protect the most vulnerable people, and the states’ own economies, without some tax increases.

The Republicans’ big wins in Washington will make the states’ plight even worse. As part of their campaigns, Republican members of Congress have vowed to cut discretionary spending, much of which goes to state capitols. Meanwhile, federal stimulus money — decried by the Republicans — is drying up.

The changes in state government will have another long-term effect as states begin the redistricting process to comply with the population changes documented in the 2010 census. This means that Republicans will be in a position to consolidate this year’s gains by redrawing Congressional and state legislative district lines to their advantage.

These highly partisan exercises in self-aggrandizement go on every 10 years, but the unusually large number of states with both Republican legislatures and governorships will sharply reduce the ability of Democrats to bring a little balance to the process.

States have long been in the paradoxical position of being closer to the lives of voters than the federal government, while receiving far less scrutiny and attention. But if Republicans begin abusing the privilege they have been handed, imposing unconscionable cuts and claiming an unfair partisan advantage, they may find the public’s outrage turning back on them in a hurry.

    States Out of Balance, NYT, 9.11.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/10/opinion/10wed1.html

G.O.P. Plans to Use Purse Strings

to Fight Health Law

November 6, 2010
The New York Times
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON — As they seek to make good on their campaign promise to roll back President Obama’s health care overhaul, the incoming Republican leaders in the House say they intend to use their new muscle to cut off money for the law, setting up a series of partisan clashes and testing Democratic commitment to the legislation.

Republicans, who will control the House starting in January but will remain in the minority in the Senate, acknowledge that they do not have the votes for their ultimate goal of repealing the health law, the most polarizing of Mr. Obama’s signature initiatives.

But they said they hoped to use the power of the purse to challenge main elements of the law, forcing Democrats — especially those in the Senate who will be up for re-election in 2012 — into a series of votes to defend it.

Republican lawmakers said, for example, that they would propose limiting the money and personnel available to the Internal Revenue Service, so the agency could not aggressively enforce provisions that require people to obtain health insurance and employers to help pay for it. Under the law, individuals and employers who flout the requirements will face tax penalties.

Moreover, Republican leaders said, they plan to use spending bills to block federal insurance regulations to which they object. And they will try to limit access to government-subsidized private health plans that include coverage of abortion — one of the most contentious issues in Congressional debate over the legislation.

Those are just a few examples of the ways in which newly empowered House Republicans plan to use spending bills to pressure Mr. Obama and Senate Democrats to accept changes in the law.

Given their slim majority, Senate Democrats must stick together if they want to avoid sending Mr. Obama spending bills and other legislation that he would feel compelled to veto, setting up the prospect of a broader deadlock and, in an extreme situation, a government shutdown.

The House Republican whip, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, described the strategy this way: “If all of Obamacare cannot be immediately repealed, then it is my intention to begin repealing it piece by piece, blocking funding for its implementation and blocking the issuance of the regulations necessary to implement it.”

“In short,” Mr. Cantor said, “it is my intention to use every tool at our disposal to achieve full repeal of Obamacare.”

The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said he, too, wanted to shut off money for the new law.

Mr. Obama has made clear that he will fight to preserve all the fundamental elements of the law. When asked if the president would veto legislation to cut off money, his spokesman, Robert Gibbs said, “I don’t think we’ll get to that.”

Both sides said they were determined to avoid a government shutdown like the one in 1995 that, by many accounts, did political damage to House Republicans and Newt Gingrich, who was then speaker.

Anticipating the Republican assault, White House officials said Mr. Obama would emphasize how the law protects consumers and gives them more control of their insurance. Administration officials are working with Senate Democrats to arrange hearings at which consumers would explain how they have already benefited from the law.

One of the president’s strongest allies is Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, an architect of the law. Mr. Harkin said he would “fight any attempt to defund the law or repeal its consumer protections.” He is well placed to lead such resistance. He is chairman of the Senate’s health committee and of its Appropriations subcommittee responsible for health programs.

The number and variety of restrictions Congress can impose in spending bills is almost unlimited. A bill passed by the House last year, for example, stipulated that no federal money could be used to buy light bulbs unless they met certain energy efficiency standards. The same bill said, “No funds appropriated in this act may be used for the transportation of students or teachers in order to overcome racial imbalance in any school.”

House Republicans could easily pass similar provisos stating that no federal money could be used to carry out specific sections of the new health care law.

By attaching the restrictions to appropriations bills, House Republicans can force negotiations with the Senate. The Hyde amendment, restricting the use of federal money to pay for abortion, began as such a rider more than 30 years ago.

House Republicans said their efforts were inspired, in part, by the words of Senator Robert C. Byrd, the West Virginia Democrat who died this year. Mr. Byrd described the power of the purse as “one of the most effective bulwarks ever constructed” to shackle the hands of an overreaching executive.

Even if judges uphold the constitutionality of the law, federal officials will still need money to administer and enforce it. And that is where House Republicans see an opportunity to assert their influence, with a real possibility of a stalemate.

The White House has provided money to states to help them get ready — to scrutinize increases in insurance premiums and to set up regulated markets known as insurance exchanges. In addition, the law provided $1 billion for “federal administrative expenses.” But that is far less than will be required.

The Congressional Budget Office says the Internal Revenue Service will need $5 billion to $10 billion over 10 years to determine who is eligible for tax credits and other subsidies intended to make insurance affordable. The Department of Health and Human Services will need at least that much to carry out changes in Medicaid, Medicare and the private insurance market, the budget office said.

The law provided $11 billion for community health centers to serve 20 million more low-income people, including many expected to gain coverage under the law. Many Republicans, including President George W. Bush, have supported such clinics.

But Daniel R. Hawkins Jr., senior vice president of the National Association of Community Health Centers, said, “It’s unclear how we will fare in the new climate.”

The House Republicans’ campaign manifesto proposed “strict budget caps” that would cut spending for most domestic programs subject to annual appropriations.

The conflict over health care may be the biggest obstacle to cooperation between Mr. Obama and Republicans in Congress.

“House Republicans cannot enact legislation the president won’t sign,” said R. Scott Lilly, a former Democratic staff director of the House Appropriations Committee. “But the president cannot force them to appropriate money they don’t want to appropriate.”

G.O.P. Plans to Use Purse Strings to Fight Health Law, NYT, 6.11.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/health/policy/07health.html

The Focus Hocus-Pocus

November 4, 2010
The New York Times
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Democrats, declared Evan Bayh in an Op-Ed article on Wednesday in The Times, “overreached by focusing on health care rather than job creation during a severe recession.” Many others have been saying the same thing: the notion that the Obama administration erred by not focusing on the economy is hardening into conventional wisdom.

But I have no idea what, if anything, people mean when they say that. The whole focus on “focus” is, as I see it, an act of intellectual cowardice — a way to criticize President Obama’s record without explaining what you would have done differently.

After all, are people who say that Mr. Obama should have focused on the economy saying that he should have pursued a bigger stimulus package? Are they saying that he should have taken a tougher line with the banks? If not, what are they saying? That he should have walked around with furrowed brow muttering, “I’m focused, I’m focused”?

Mr. Obama’s problem wasn’t lack of focus; it was lack of audacity. At the start of his administration he settled for an economic plan that was far too weak. He compounded this original sin both by pretending that everything was on track and by adopting the rhetoric of his enemies.

The aftermath of major financial crises is almost always terrible: severe crises are typically followed by multiple years of very high unemployment. And when Mr. Obama took office, America had just suffered its worst financial crisis since the 1930s. What the nation needed, given this grim prospect, was a really ambitious recovery plan.

Could Mr. Obama actually have offered such a plan? He might not have been able to get a big plan through Congress, or at least not without using extraordinary political tactics. Still, he could have chosen to be bold — to make Plan A the passage of a truly adequate economic plan, with Plan B being to place blame for the economy’s troubles on Republicans if they succeeded in blocking such a plan.

But he chose a seemingly safer course: a medium-size stimulus package that was clearly not up to the task. And that’s not 20/20 hindsight. In early 2009, many economists, yours truly included, were more or less frantically warning that the administration’s proposals were nowhere near bold enough.

Worse, there was no Plan B. By late 2009, it was already obvious that the worriers had been right, that the program was much too small. Mr. Obama could have gone to the nation and said, “My predecessor left the economy in even worse shape than we realized, and we need further action.” But he didn’t. Instead, he and his officials continued to claim that their original plan was just right, damaging their credibility even further as the economy continued to fall short.

Meanwhile, the administration’s bank-friendly policies and rhetoric — dictated by fear of hurting financial confidence — ended up fueling populist anger, to the benefit of even more bank-friendly Republicans. Mr. Obama added to his problems by effectively conceding the argument over the role of government in a depressed economy.

I felt a sense of despair during Mr. Obama’s first State of the Union address, in which he declared that “families across the country are tightening their belts and making tough decisions. The federal government should do the same.” Not only was this bad economics — right now the government must spend, because the private sector can’t or won’t — it was almost a verbatim repeat of what John Boehner, the soon-to-be House speaker, said when attacking the original stimulus. If the president won’t speak up for his own economic philosophy, who will?

So where, in this story, does “focus” come in? Lack of nerve? Yes. Lack of courage in one’s own convictions? Definitely. Lack of focus? No.

And why would failing to tackle health care have produced a better outcome? The focus people never explain.

Of course, there’s a subtext to the whole line that health reform was a mistake: namely, that Democrats should stop acting like Democrats and go back to being Republicans-lite. Parse what people like Mr. Bayh are saying, and it amounts to demanding that Mr. Obama spend the next two years cringing and admitting that conservatives were right.

There is an alternative: Mr. Obama can take a stand.

For one thing, he still has the ability to engineer significant relief to homeowners, one area where his administration completely dropped the ball during its first two years. Beyond that, Plan B is still available. He can propose real measures to create jobs and aid the unemployed and put Republicans on the spot for standing in the way of the help Americans need.

Would taking such a stand be politically risky? Yes, of course. But Mr. Obama’s economic policy ended up being a political disaster precisely because he tried to play it safe. It’s time for him to try something different.

    The Focus Hocus-Pocus, NYT, 4.11.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/05/opinion/05krugman.html

American Dreamland

November 4, 2010
The New York Times
By ROGER COHEN

TAMPA, FLORIDA — Watching Representative John Boehner, the likely House speaker-to-be, lose it as he celebrated the crushing Republican victory in mid-term elections was one of those weird experiences that are riveting even as they make you want to avert your eyes.

What set Boehner off was the American Dream. Here in his hour of triumph was the 60-year-old Ohio-born architect of the Republican recapture of the House of Representatives reduced to sobbing. His voice broke.

I felt for the guy, honestly. Boehner had just been talking about “the values that have made America, America: economic freedom, individual liberty and personal responsibility.” There was no hint of the waterworks to come. But then, as he turned to the themes of the Republican assault on President Barack Obama as somehow anti-American, breakdown came.

“I’ve spent my whole life chasing the American Dream,” he stammered. “I started out mopping floors, waiting tables, and tending bar at my dad’s tavern. I put myself through school working odd jobs and nightshifts. I poured my heart and soul into a small business.” Chants of “USA! USA!” filled a Washington hotel ballroom.

The United States is today in an emotional place of extreme political volatility. Some of Boehner’s speech — “The American people are demanding a new way forward in Washington” — could have come from Obama a couple of years back.

Nations have tipping-points. Move France too far toward the first word in its revolutionary rallying cry – “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” — at the expense of the other two and the nation will rise up. Tilt America too far from its lodestone of rugged individualism (always rugged), free markets and the liberty of the frontier, and this nation will rise in anger.

It doesn’t matter that Obama saved U.S. capitalism from meltdown through a massive bailout. It doesn’t matter that Wall Street has fared just fine. Somewhere in the past two years — and I’d place that moment in the midst of the agonizing passage of health care reform — the conviction gelled in wide swathes of an underemployed, over-indebted, war-sapped, anxious, aggrieved nation that Obama’s United States was crossing the bridge from American self-reliance to the “big government” of the European nanny state.

The nation, in other words, was losing its soul, what Benedict Anderson called the “imagined community” of nationhood — one, in the American case, that glorifies opportunity and grimaces at social safety nets portrayed as the refuge of the freeloader.

Enter the Tea Party movement, reminding people that the United States was born in rebellion against a European nation (but overlooking that America’s now much-invoked Constitution owed everything to the Church-State separating European Enlightenment). It has filled the political space with all the energy the Obama movement once had, and now, with Republican gains of at least 60 House seats, it has delivered.

The blow to Obama is devastating. If he did not mean it when he said he found the defeat “humbling” he can forget about 2012. To win back the independents who deserted him in droves, he must now deliver jobs. Period.

He will have to do that from the Clintonian center, building business leaders’ confidence, coaxing them to spend some of their cash hoards. Monetary stimulus is near exhausted; another big fiscal stimulus is now unthinkable. Obama has to stimulate something intangible: confidence. America is not Japan. It is hard-wired to risk and growth. That’s a big potential asset.

He has others. Defeat is also opportunity. The Tea Party has freeloaded on rhetoric; now comes the reality check. O.K., Obama can say, you loathe big government, so how about raising the eligibility age for Medicare, or cutting back on Social Security or raising the retirement age to 70? Then watch the writhing begin.

Here in Florida, a vital swing state come 2012, there are plenty of retirees dependent on Social Security. The state has lurched sharply rightward, electing the young Cuban-American “great right hope” Marco Rubio to the Senate, a Republican governor, Rick Scott, who once led a company that paid $1.7 billion in fines for defrauding Medicare, and adding seven new Republican House members.

The sweep was extraordinary but also full of contradictions. Local Tea Partiers are against immigrant labor, although the state’s agriculture depends on it; against globalization, although the port in Tampa is one of the linchpins of the economy; and against government, although it’s a main employer.

The Glenn Beck Program first aired in Tampa. But Glenn-Beck-style rightist ranting is one thing, elected office another. These contradictions will now come into sharp focus.

Boehner’s American Dreamland remains a potent idea. Obama got on the wrong side of it. But it’s also la-la land. As the votes were counted, I was listening to Lt. Gen. John Allen, deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, which is based in Tampa and oversees territory stretching from Egypt to Pakistan.

Allen was not talking about glorious military victories. He was talking about “the art of the possible” and trying to be “neither positive, nor negative, just pragmatic.” He was lauding “incrementalism.” Iraq and Afghanistan have been potent schools of the limits of the American idea.

Shed a tear, John.

    American Dreamland, NYT, 4.11.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/05/opinion/05iht-edcohen.html

Midwest at Dusk

November 4, 2010
The New York Times
By DAVID BROOKS

If Balzac were alive today, he would plant himself in that region of America that starts in central New York and Pennsylvania and then stretches out through Ohio and Indiana before spreading out to include Wisconsin and Arkansas. He’d plant himself in the working-class families in this area.

He’d do it because this is the beating center of American life — the place where the trajectory of American politics is being determined. If America can figure out how to build a decent future for the working-class people in this region, then the U.S. will remain a predominant power. If it can’t, it won’t.

It would take a Balzac to understand the perplexities and contradictions one finds in these neighborhoods. On the one hand, people are living with the daily grind of getting by on $40,000 a year, but they’re also living with Xboxes and smartphones. People in these places have traditional bourgeois values, but they live amid a decaying social fabric, with high divorce rates and skyrocketing single parenthood numbers.

Many people in these neighborhoods distrust government but still look to it for help. They disdain Wall Street but admire capitalism. They are intensely patriotic but accustomed to globalization. If you talk to people on the coasts about The Sixties, they often think of Woodstock. If you ask people in this region about The Sixties, they might remember the last time there were plenty of good jobs instead.

The Midwest has lost a manufacturing empire but hasn’t yet found a role. Working-class people in this region overwhelmingly backed George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004 but then lost faith in the Republican Party’s ability to solve their problems. By 2008, they were willing to take a flier on Barack Obama. He carried Ohio, Indiana and Iowa.

Over the past two years, these voters have watched government radically increase spending in an attempt to put people back to work. According to the Office of Management and Budget, federal spending increased from about 21 percent of G.D.P. in 2008 to nearly 26 percent of G.D.P. this year. There was an $800 billion stimulus package, along with auto bailouts aimed directly at the Midwest.

Economists are debating the effects of all this, but voters have reached a verdict. According to exit polls on Tuesday, two-thirds of the Americans who voted said that the stimulus package was either harmful to the American economy or made no difference whatsoever.

Between June and August of 2009, the working class became disillusioned with Democratic policies. Working-class voters used to move toward the Democrats in recessions; this time, they moved to the right, shifting attitudes on everything from global warming to gun control. In Tuesday’s exit polls, 56 percent of voters said government does too much, while only 38 percent said it should do more.

On Tuesday, the Democrats got destroyed in this region. They lost five House seats in Pennsylvania and another five in Ohio. They lost governorships in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa. Republicans gained control of both state legislative houses in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Indiana and Minnesota.

As Ronald Brownstein of the National Journal noted, “The stampede toward the GOP among blue collar whites was powerful almost everywhere.” Republicans captured at least 35 seats in the U.S. House in districts where the percentage of whites with college degrees lags behind the national average. The old industry towns in the Midwest were the epicenter of the disaster.

Some Democrats believe their policies have nothing to do with the debacle. It was the unemployment rate, they say. But it was Democratic economic policies that first repelled these voters. There’s been a sharp rise in the number of voters who think the Democrats are “too liberal.” Signature policy initiatives like health care remain gigantically unpopular. Republicans didn’t score gains everywhere unemployment was high (see California, for example). But they did score gains nearly everywhere where disapproval of President Obama and his policies was high.

When the successful Democratic Senate candidate in West Virginia takes a rifle and literally blows a hole in one of your major pieces of legislation in a campaign commercial, that is a sign that the voters are unhappy with your policies, not just the economy.

Democrats have, at least temporarily, blown the opportunity they were given to connect with the industrial Midwest. Voters in this region face structural problems, not cyclical ones. Intensely suspicious of government, they are nonetheless casting about for somebody, anybody, who can revive their towns and neighborhoods. Disillusioned with big spending and big debt, they at least want to see their government reflect their values of discipline, order and responsibility. Not only in America, but also in Germany, Sweden, France, Britain and across Europe, working-class voters these days are putting center-right governments in power.

American politics are volatile because nobody has an answer for these people. They will remain volatile until somebody finds one.

    Midwest at Dusk, NYT, 4.11.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/05/opinion/05brooks.html

Tea Party Flexes Muscle With Republicans

November 4, 2010
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

WASHINGTON — The incoming leadership of the new House Republican majority hardly had a chance to relish its dismantling of the Democrats before the Tea Party came calling in the form of Representative Michele Bachmann.

Ms. Bachmann, the Minnesota Republican and Tea Party heroine often seen exhorting conservative activists at rallies and on cable television, announced that she intended to seek the No. 4 position among House Republicans.

She said she could provide the viewpoint of a constitutional conservative, one she evidently sees lacking in Representatives John A. Boehner of Ohio, Eric Cantor of Virginia and Kevin McCarthy of California — the three likely leaders.

Mr. Cantor and other influential Republicans are rallying instead behind Representative Jeb Hensarling of Texas, a fiscal conservative, and Ms. Bachmann has only an outside shot at winning the race.

But her candidacy vividly illustrates the central tension facing Mr. Boehner and his team: balancing the demands of new lawmakers, some of whom ran against the Republican establishment and advocate a no-compromise stance toward the Obama administration and Democratic policies, against the need to deliver some accomplishments at a time of economic distress.

Ms. Bachmann is by no means the only Tea Party voice moving to exert influence over the new Congress.

In a draft of a confidential memo to be distributed to all incoming House Republican lawmakers, Dick Armey, a former Republican majority leader who is chairman of the conservative group FreedomWorks, and Matt Kibbe, its president, told lawmakers that a repeal of the Democrats’ health care law was “nonnegotiable” and warned that they would face a severe backlash from voters if they did not succeed in reversing the law.

“Politically speaking, your only choice is to get on offense and start moving boldly ahead to repeal, replace and defund Obamacare in 2011, or risk rejection by the voters in 2012,” Mr. Armey and Mr. Kibbe wrote.

House Republicans said they recognized the inherent conflicts, and the pressure that they would be under from the new majority-makers. But they also said they believed they could meet the challenge, given that veteran Republicans shared many of the newcomers’ goals.

When asked how the leadership planned to educate new members, particularly those who had never served in government, Representative Greg Walden of Oregon said, “My guess is these incoming freshmen are going to be giving us the training session.”

Mr. Walden, who is leading the Republican transition effort for the new majority, added: “They are coming with that energy, to bring that skill set and what they have heard in the heartland. They are going to be telling us.”

Flush with victory, top House Republicans and strategists said they saw little distinction between incumbent members and those who would be joining them as freshmen. They noted that both benefited from the Tea Party activism that helped them trounce Democrats and said that the support deserved to be rewarded.

“We are who we said we are, and we are ready to do what we said we would do,” said Brad Dayspring, a spokesman for Mr. Cantor. “We need to produce results for the people who spoke out so loudly on Tuesday.”

Mr. Boehner, the presumptive House speaker, has political views that make him attractive to Tea Party followers even though he has been in the House since 1991 and hardly qualifies as an outsider.

He has long opposed providing money for the home-state projects known as earmarks, even as his fellow Republicans have feasted on them, and he entered Congress as a rabble-rouser himself. He courted the Tea Party heavily during the campaign and has made repealing the health care law a priority.

Even as he and his fellow Republicans tried to chart a path forward, Mr. Boehner said Thursday that he was seeing signs that President Obama and Congressional Democrats failed to realize that Republican gains in Congress resulted from a potent backlash against the Democratic agenda.

“There seems to be some denial on the part of the president and other Democratic leaders of the message that was sent by the American people,” Mr. Boehner said in an interview with ABC News. “When you have the most historic election in over 60, 70 years, you would think the other party would understand that the American people have clearly repudiated the policies they’ve put forward in the last few years.”

Given the chance in the interview to agree with Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, that the party’s goal should be to make Mr. Obama a one-term president, Mr. Boehner responded only that this was Mr. McConnell’s opinion, suggesting that Mr. Boehner was interested in staying out of that particular fight right now.

While the leadership team sees a chance to meld the Tea Party view into the House Republican ideology, there are bound to be conflicts. As the party now controlling the House, Republicans have to produce a budget, spending bills and other legislation that the 40 or so new lawmakers strongly allied to the Tea Party might balk at supporting, leaving the leadership scrambling for votes. Over all, there are at least 80 incoming Republican freshman, and the party is expected to control at least 239 seats. A vote next year on increasing the debt limit — an increase many Tea Party candidates could reject as a fundamental matter of principle — looms as a real test case.

And with the newly energized movement promising to watch closely, the incoming lawmakers will be very leery of seeming to be co-opted by the Congressional establishment, even if it is the leadership of their own party.

Ms. Bachmann’s candidacy suggests that while Republican leaders may face pressure from their Tea Party caucus, it could be manageable. Mr. Hensarling, while not as closely associated with the movement as Ms. Bachmann, is a popular lawmaker who headed the Republican Study Committee, a group of more than 100 conservatives. He has received praise from Tea Party leaders and Republican activists along with his leadership endorsements.

It is not clear if Ms. Bachmann can rally the incoming lawmakers to her side, though she has already won a few public supporters, including Representative John Kline, a fellow Minnesotan, and Representative Steve King, a conservative ally from Iowa.

Mr. Walden predicted that House Republicans would ultimately be able to band together.

“Remember, all of us just stood for election, all of us just faced the same voters in our own states,” he said. “All of us are coming back here understanding that voters want this place to change, and in a meaningful way.”

Kate Zernike contributed reporting from New York.

    Tea Party Flexes Muscle With Republicans, NYT, 4.11.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/05/us/politics/05repubs.html

For G.O.P., Big Ambitions Face Daunting Obstacles

The New York Times
November 4, 2010
By JACKIE CALMES

WASHINGTON — Republican leaders in Congress are preparing to take power in two months with ambitious and sometimes contradictory goals for economic and fiscal policies, leaving little common ground with President Obama and much uncertainty about the potential impact on the nation’s problems.

Republicans are standing by their campaign vows to slash spending for domestic programs immediately by at least one-fifth — $100 billion in a single year — even as many mainstream economists say such deep cuts could further strain the economy and should await its full recovery. Republicans also say they will try to deny money to put Mr. Obama’s new health care law into effect, though they have not made clear what they would do to make up the cost savings that would be lost if they succeeded in repealing the law.

In policy documents, including a blueprint this week from Representative Eric Cantor, the likely Republican majority leader in the new Congress, the party has made clear that its main proposals for creating jobs are to cut regulations and taxes — in particular to make the Bush-era tax cuts permanent for all incomes. Extending the tax cuts, however, would add nearly $4 trillion to the debt by 2020, and hundreds of billions more in interest owed for the additional government borrowing, greatly complicating another Republican goal: balancing the budget.

With the Bush tax rates due to expire Dec. 31, that fight between Republicans and Mr. Obama, who favors extending the rates only for income below $250,000, will play out in Congress’s lame-duck session this month. On Thursday, the White House served notice that Mr. Obama, who a day earlier signaled a willingness to compromise, would not sign on to any deal making permanent the lower rates for income above $250,000.

“The president does not believe, and I think would not accept, permanently extending the upper-end tax cuts,” said his press secretary, Robert Gibbs.

The two sides could settle for something less than a permanent extension of the top rates, Mr. Gibbs suggested. Democrats say they might agree to a one- or two-year increase, and longer for the middle-income rates.

But Republicans say they will insist that, whatever the duration, all rates must be extended in tandem — the easier to extend them together again in the future. Both sides recognize that, politically, Republicans would have a harder time in the future trying to extend only the rates that benefited the richest Americans, about 2 percent of taxpayers.

Republicans’ pledge to “defund” the health care law portends another battle. Mr. Obama could veto such legislation, though Republicans could package such moves in larger bills he wants, making a veto problematic. It is unclear whether federal agencies could perhaps reprogram money intended for other purposes to make up for any money blocked by Congress.

Mr. Obama and Republicans appear to agree on one thing: a continued moratorium on spending earmarks, which are the designations in each year’s budget bills for projects sought by individual lawmakers for their constituents or for special interests.

The blueprint circulated by Mr. Cantor, of Virginia, to incoming Republicans endorsed the moratorium. Mr. Obama quickly agreed on Wednesday, saying, “That’s something I think we can — we can work on together.”

But eliminating all earmarks would hardly dent annual deficits. In the 2006 fiscal year, when Republicans last controlled Congress, they approved nearly 10,000 earmarks, a record; the $29 billion cost was about 11 percent of the year’s deficit. But now deficits are much larger, swollen by the recession.

In Republicans’ overall policy statements, they have not specified exactly how they would fulfill the promise to cut more than $100 billion from the budget for domestic discretionary programs. That would be the largest reduction in such spending from one year to the next since it began to be tracked in 1962.

Once they take control of the House in January, however, Republicans will have to begin work on their alternative to the annual budget Mr. Obama will outline soon after Congress convenes, an exercise that will test Republicans’ unity once the scale of such reductions sinks in for them, for their allies among business lobbyists and for constituents back home.

“Neither party dealt with this in the campaign, particularly with asking the middle class to face up to what costs it may have to bear,” said C. Eugene Steuerle, an economist at the Urban Institute and a Treasury official in the Reagan administration.

Mr. Obama and Congressional Democrats also have promised to work to reduce projected deficits, lest they inflate the already high federal debt to an unsustainable level. But Democrats do not favor major spending reductions until the economy recovers, perhaps by 2012, and even then they would not consider anything near the $100 billion in one-year cuts that Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House speaker-in-waiting, has proposed.

“To have cuts that deep — cutting nondefense spending on average by a fifth — will require deep cuts in programs that most Americans think are very important,” said James R. Horney, the director of federal fiscal policy at the liberal-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Reductions inevitably would hit education, the national parks, health research and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, just to name a few, Mr. Horney said. “And if you start saying you’re going to protect certain popular programs,” he said, “then the cuts in everything else become really draconian.”

The cuts in discretionary programs would not apply to the so-called entitlement programs — chiefly Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — whose rising costs, along with inadequate tax revenues, are driving the deficit projections.

Domestic discretionary programs account for about 15 percent of the annual budget, a portion that is not growing. Entitlement programs are 40 percent and national security spending 23 percent; both are expanding.

Mr. Cantor, in his document to other Republicans this week, has acknowledged that the debt problem could not be solved without reining in the growth of the entitlement programs. But he said that would be hard to do because Mr. Obama and Congressional Democrats “have made it abundantly clear that they will attack anyone who puts forward a plan that even tries to begin a conversation about the tough choices that are needed.”

Yet Republicans have done the same. In campaigns this year, they assailed incumbent Democrats for voting to slash Medicare as part of the new health care law, though the projected reductions save money through insurance changes, not reductions in basic Medicare benefits.

Republicans have promised to offset any new spending with additional spending cuts. They have not said they would require such offsetting savings for new tax cuts. Mr. Obama signed a pay-as-you-go law that applies to new spending and tax cuts, but Republicans in Congress could seek a vote to waive it.

    For G.O.P., Big Ambitions Face Daunting Obstacles, NYT, 4.11.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/05/us/politics/05policy.html

Deep Rifts Divide Obama and Republicans

November 3, 2010
The New York Times
By PETER BAKER and CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON — President Obama and newly empowered Republican leaders professed a desire Wednesday to work together but yielded little ground on deep policy differences, foreshadowing the profound challenge of turning around a flagging economy under a divided government.

After what Mr. Obama described as an electoral “shellacking” for his party, the two sides gingerly explored the reshaped political terrain and sought to define Tuesday’s results. Republicans claimed a mandate to reverse Mr. Obama’s agenda while the president cast the vote as a cry of frustration that he has not moved fast enough.

“Over the last two years, we’ve made progress,” Mr. Obama said at a White House news conference intended to reassert his leadership as Republicans celebrated their capture of the House and gains in the Senate. “But, clearly, too many Americans haven’t felt that progress yet, and they told us that yesterday. And as president, I take responsibility for that.”

More conciliatory than contrite, Mr. Obama used that phrase, “take responsibility,” six times but rejected the suggestion that his policies were moving the country in the wrong direction. He conceded that legislation to limit greenhouse gases was dead and said he was “absolutely” willing to negotiate over the extension of tax cuts, including for the wealthy. But he drew the line at any major retreat from signature priorities, saying he would agree to “tweak” his health care program, not “relitigate arguments” over its central elements.

While Republicans also called for more cooperation, they suggested that Democrats might not have fully absorbed the lessons of their drubbing.

“Their view is that we haven’t cooperated enough,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican minority leader. “I think what the American people were saying yesterday is that they appreciated us saying no to the things that the American people indicated they were not in favor of.”

The trials awaiting a fractured capital could arrive swiftly when the departing Democratic-controlled Congress returns in lame-duck session this month with contentious issues like tax cuts, the federal debt limit, unemployment insurance, an arms control treaty with Russia and gay men and lesbians in the military all on the table.

As Washington awoke to the new order on Wednesday, Republicans had picked up at least 60 seats in the House, with 11 races undecided, the biggest swing since the 1948 elections under President Harry S. Truman. They took at least six seats in the Senate, falling short of control, with two races undecided.

In Colorado, Senator Michael Bennet, the Democrat, won, while in Washington Senator Patty Murray led her Republican challenger by one percentage point. In Alaska, Senator Lisa Murkowski, who ran as a write-in after losing the Republican primary, appeared poised to surpass both party nominees. If the incumbents hang onto their seats, The Democratic caucus will have a majority of 53 to 47.

The election results immediately played out on Capitol Hill as House Republicans began a leadership shuffle and Democrats awaited a decision by Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California on whether she intended to remain as her party’s leader in the minority. Ms. Pelosi told Diane Sawyer of ABC News that she would talk with her family “and pray over it” before deciding but added that she had “no regrets” and blamed the economy for her party’s losses.

“Nine and a half percent unemployment is a very eclipsing event,” she said. “If people don’t have a job, they’re not too interested in how you intend for them to have a job. They want to see results.”

Their rise to power means Republicans have more leadership positions to fill. With Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio slated to become speaker and Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia expected to become majority leader, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, who was active in recruiting candidates this year, announced he would seek the No. 3 job of majority whip.

Representative Jeb Hensarling of Texas, formerly leader of a bloc of House conservatives, is seeking the No. 4 slot, conference chairman. He could face a challenge from Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, a Tea Party favorite.

Making his debut as speaker in waiting, Mr. Boehner predicted that he would be able to work well with the incoming conservative class elected on Tuesday. “What unites us as Republicans will be the agenda of the American people,” he said. “And if we’re listening to the American people, I don’t see any problems incorporating members of the Tea Party, along with our party, in a quest that’s really the same.”

Mr. Boehner could find that unity tested, probably early next year, when the House must vote on raising the federal debt ceiling. Most Republicans in recent years have refused to support such increases, and many candidates this year ran on a platform opposing any increase in red ink. But as the party soon to be in charge of the House, Republicans run the risk of triggering a government default and a financial crisis should they refuse to increase federal borrowing power.

Mr. Boehner had no ready answer for how Republicans would handle the potentially explosive issue. “We’ll be working that out over the next couple of months,” he said.

Except for early in President George W. Bush’s tenure, when a party switch briefly handed control of the Senate to Democrats, this will be the first time Congress has been split between the parties since the 1986 election. The Senate may prove useful to Mr. Obama in killing Republican initiatives he opposes but it remains unclear whether he will be able to play off a Republican House heading into 2012 the way President Bill Clinton used a Republican-controlled Congress as a foil for his re-election in 1996.

The divide between the two chambers was evident as Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, having survived an election scare, emerged to argue that the lesson of the election was that voters want more cooperation from the parties. The onus, he said, is on Republicans.

“Republicans must take their responsibility to solve the problems of ordinary Americans,” Mr. Reid said in a conference call with reporters. “No is not the answer. It has to be yes. Not our yes, but a combined yes, something we work out, a consensus yes. The time for politics is over.”

Weakened by the election results, Mr. Obama sought Wednesday to occupy the public stage and take his punishment without surrendering stature. He announced no staff shuffle or new direction, as presidents sometimes do when they get in trouble. But he called the defeat “humbling” and said “it feels bad” to see so many allies go down for voting for his program.

“This is something that I think every president needs to go through,” he said. “In the rush of activity, sometimes we lose track of, you know, the ways that we connected with voters that got us here in the first place.”

Living in the White House, he said, “it is hard not to seem removed.”

But he quickly added, to laughter: “Now, I’m not recommending for every future president that they take a shellacking like I did last night. I’m sure there are easier ways to learn these lessons.”

Still, his analysis of that shellacking differed sharply from that of the Republicans and many independent strategists. He agreed that many voters felt government was growing too large and intrusive. But he maintained his were still the right policies.

“It would be hard to argue that we’re going backwards,” he said. “I think what you can argue is we’re stuck in neutral.”

Where he conceded a misstep was in failing to follow through on promises to reform the way Washington works out of a need to confront the economic crises he inherited: “We were in such a hurry to get things done that we didn’t change how things got done. And I think that frustrated people.”

Mr. Obama said he was “very eager to sit down” with Republicans and laid out “a whole bunch of areas where we can agree,” including job creation, deficit reduction, energy independence, education reform and infrastructure investment. While a carbon cap cannot pass “this year or next year or the year after,” he said, he suggested that he and Republicans could collaborate to promote natural gas, electric cars and nuclear energy.

He specifically embraced a proposal by Mr. Cantor to impose a moratorium on special Congressional spending items known as earmarks. Asked if there was anything in the Republicans’ Pledge to America campaign manifesto that he could support, he mentioned its promises to reform how Washington works.

“I do believe there is hope for civility,” he said. “I do believe there’s hope for progress.”

Megan Thee-Brenan, Michael Luo and Joseph Berger contributed reporting.

    Deep Rifts Divide Obama and Republicans, NYT, 3.11.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/04/us/politics/04elect.html

In Governor’s Races, Republicans Make Gains

November 3, 2010
The New York Times
By MONICA DAVEY

On an Election Day with one of the largest number of governors races in memory, Republicans gained governorships across the country, including those in the political battlegrounds of the industrial Midwest where Democrats have dominated in recent years.

In Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Republicans seized seats that had been held by Democrats. They also took seats now held by Democrats in other parts of the country, including Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Wyoming.

In Wisconsin, a beaming Scott Walker, a Republican, took to a stage and praised all the voters who, he said, had emerged from the woodwork to “take our state back.”

As in so many states, much of the campaign there had focused around job losses, financial woes and state budget troubles, and Mr. Walker, like several of his Republican colleagues, had pledged to cut government waste, reshape government and upend a system that he said had failed. Minutes after his victory became clear, Mr. Walker issued a release that declared: “Wisconsin is open for business!”

But around the nation, the outcomes are expected to have effects that reach beyond local economic policies or legislation drawn up in statehouses.

States are preparing to carry out their once-a-decade redrawing of political districts — for the House and state legislatures — based on United States census counts collected this year, and many of these new governors will have important roles in deciding what those maps look like.

Going into Election Day, Democrats held 26 governorships, while Republicans had 24. Following most midterm elections after the arrival of a new president, the party in power in the White House typically loses some governorships, but the changes on Tuesday appeared to go deeper.

With votes in many states still being counted on Tuesday night, Republicans were already holding on to many of the seats they currently hold — in Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Nebraska, Nevada, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas and Utah — as well anticipating significant gains.

“People are not happy with the direction of this country,” said Terry Branstad, a Republican and former governor who defeated Gov. Chet Culver of Iowa, another state where the economy seemed to overwhelm most other issues. “The status quo is not acceptable.”

Democrats were hoping that voters might turnout in high numbers and that efforts in the final weeks by President Obama and other Democratic leaders might lessen the damage.

There were certainly some indications of relief for Democrats, in states that included Arkansas, Colorado and California, where Jerry Brown, who has already been Governor, will return to the job having beaten Meg Whitman, the former chief executive of eBay who invested millions in the race.

In New York, too, Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo easily defeated the Republican, Carl P. Paladino, even though Republicans were expected to pick up seats in the state legislature and the Congressional delegation. In Massachusetts, Gov. Deval Patrick, a Democrat, beat Charles Baker Jr., a Republican and a former chief executive of one of the state’s largest health insurers. And in Maryland, Martin O’Malley, the Democratic governor, fought off a challenge from Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., a Republican who had once been governor. But the Republicans’ gains in the Midwest were daunting for Democrats, in part because of the size and scope of the shift.

In Wisconsin, Mr. Walker, the county executive of Milwaukee who has promised to shrink government, beat Tom Barrett, the Democratic mayor of Milwaukee. Mr. Walker equated electing Mr. Barrett with giving one more term to James E. Doyle, the current governor whose popularity ratings had become anemic.

In Michigan, where Jennifer M. Granholm, a Democrat, was barred from seeking re-election by term limits, Rick Snyder, a Republican who stunned the party establishment by beating better-known, more established candidates in a primary, defeated Virg Bernero, the Democratic mayor of Lansing. The issue in the state, which had suffered devastating economic losses even before the recession, was the same as everywhere: jobs and money.

Among the group of new Republican political leaders emerging on Tuesday: Nikki Haley, the nation’s first Indian-American female governor, a victor in South Carolina; Susana Martinez, a Republican district attorney who promised to end a pattern of corruption and to block illegal immigrants from getting driver’s licenses in New Mexico; and Mr. Snyder, the former head of Gateway Inc., who was elected governor of Michigan with a catch phrase, “one tough nerd.”

Of the 37 states voting for governor, 24 races were open seats from both parties, thanks to terms limits and to a climate that seemed to discourage some incumbents from seeking re-election.

From Maine to Hawaii, the governors’ races had been hard fought, with clear indications, leaders from both parties said, of the same broad national climate that was testing the survival of Democrats — and incumbents — for the House and Senate.

In another indication of how voters seemed in search of something, anything, entirely different from the status quo, third-party candidates had a particularly pronounced effect on governors races in at least five states. And in Rhode Island, Lincoln D. Chafee, a former Republican senator who ran for governor as an independent, won on Tuesday.

While much of the attention this season has focused on who will control Washington, the outcomes in these governors’ races were drawing particular notice because of redistricting.

The shapes of the political maps can carry lasting effects for partisan victories and losses in all sorts of offices. Governors in at least 36 states get a say in shaping Congressional maps, and governors in 39 states have a place in redrawing state legislative districts.

“This is the most important governors’ election in 20 years,” said Nathan Daschle, executive director of the Democratic Governors Association, which devoted $50 million to races this year, three times the amount the group spent four years ago, in the last comparable election. The Republican Governors Association spent $102 million on this year’s races.

Katharine Q. Seelye contributed reporting from Middleton, Wis., A. G. Sulzberger from Des Moines and Emma Graves Fitzsimmons from Chicago.

    In Governor’s Races, Republicans Make Gains, NYT, 3.11.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/us/politics/03govs.html

In Iowa, Voters Oust Judges Over Marriage Issue

November 3, 2010
The New York Times
By A.G. SULZBERGER

DES MOINES — In a rebuke of the state supreme court with implications for judicial elections across the country, voters here removed three justices who participated in a ruling last year that made the state the first in the Midwest to permit same-sex marriage.

The close vote concluded an unusually aggressive ouster campaign in the typically sleepy state judicial retention elections that pitted concerns about judicial overreaching against concerns about judicial independence. Years of grumbling about “robed masters,” conservatives demonstrated their ability to target and remove judges who issue opinions they disagree with.

Each of the three judges received about 45-46 percent support with 91 percent of precincts reporting, according to The Associated Press, marking the first time members of Iowa’s high court had been rejected by voters. Under the system used here, judges face no opponents and simply need to win more yes votes than no votes to win another eight-year term.

Financed largely by out-of-state organizations opposed to gay marriage, those pushing against the judges were successful in turning the vote into a referendum on the divisive issue.

“I think it will send a message across the country that the power resides with the people,” Bob Vander Plaats, a Republican who led the campaign after losing the republican nomination for governor, told a crowd of cheering supporters at an election night party peppered with red signs declaring “No Activist Judges.” “It’s we the people, not we the courts.”

Though the Iowa election was the most prominent, similar ouster campaigns were launched in other states against state supreme court justices running unopposed in retention elections whose rulings on matters involving abortion, taxes, tort reform and health care had upset conservatives.

Together they marked the rapid politicization of judicial races that had been specifically designed to be free of intrigue. Over the last decade, just $2 million was spent on advertising in retention elections, less than 1 percent of total campaign spending on judicial elections in that period, according to data compiled in a recent report released in part by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School. More than $3 million was spent on retention election races this year, easily eclipsing the figure for the previous decade, according to the Brennan Center.

The defeat was a bitter disappointment to much of the legal community here, which rallied behind the three justices arguing that judicial standards require judges to follow their interpretation of the law and not their reading of public opinion. They had urged voters to consider issues like competence and temperament rather than a single issue when casting ballots.

The three justices — Marsha K. Ternus, the chief justice; Michael J. Streit; and David L. Baker — did not raise money to campaign and only toward the end of the election did they make public appearances to defend themselves.

“We wish to thank all of the Iowans who voted to retain us for another term,” the judges said in a statement. “Your support shows that many Iowans value fair and impartial courts. We also want to acknowledge and thank all the Iowans, from across the political spectrum and from different walks of life, who worked tirelessly over the past few months to defend Iowa’s high-caliber court system against an unprecedented attack by out-of-state special interest groups.

“Finally, we hope Iowans will continue to support Iowa’s merit selection system for appointing judges. This system helps ensure that judges base their decisions on the law and the Constitution and nothing else. Ultimately, however, the preservation of our state’s fair and impartial courts will require more than the integrity and fortitude of individual judges, it will require the steadfast support of the people.”

Though several groups formed to support their retention, they were significantly outspent by the organizations that bankrolled the ouster effort, including the National Organization for Marriage and the American Family Association.

“We’re concerned about the precedent this has set tonight and what it means for the influence of money and politics on the judicial system,” said Dan Moore, co-chair of Fair Courts for Us, which supported the judges.

The judicial races were perhaps the most hotly anticipated item on the ballot this year, a dramatic contrast from years past in which the election were so low profile that more than a third of those who cast ballots left the section blank. “That’s the main reason I came out,” said Michelle Kramer, 36, a college student from Des Moines. “People can do what they want to do, they can love who they want to love.”

Her friend and neighbor Cathy Hackett, 38, took the opposite view. “I voted no for every single one of them,” said Ms. Hackett, a customer sales representative who described herself as a conservative Christian. “I’m not anti-gay. I love everybody. But I believe that if two people are going to marry they should be a man and a woman.”

The outcome will have no affect on the ruling that triggered the campaign, a 7-to-0 decision that found that a law defining marriage as between a man and a woman represented unlawful discrimination under the state constitution.

But those who led the ouster campaign said they were more focused on highlighting to judges elsewhere, including those on the U.S. Supreme Court, the risks associated with leapfrogging public opinion on the issue of same-sex marriage. They noted same-sex marriage has been initially approved by supreme courts in four states and by legislators in only three.

Jeff Mullen, lead pastor at the Point of Grace Church, who helped organize religious leaders in opposition to the judges, said the vote should send a message to judges nationwide. “They weren’t supposed to legislate from the bench,” he said. “They did. They’re out of a job.”

Depending on the speed with which new candidates are nominated the replacement justices could be appointed either by Gov. Chet Culver, a democrat who lost reelection on Tuesday, or Terry Branstad, a republican who previously served as governor. Each appointed one of the departing justices to the Supreme Court and Mr. Branstad appointed Ms. Ternus to a lower court. Mr. Branstad has called for changing the selection system.

    In Iowa, Voters Oust Judges Over Marriage Issue, NYT, 3.11.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/us/politics/03judges.html

Cuomo Cruises to Win in New York Governor’s Race

November 2, 2010
The New York Times
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE

Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, completing a painstakingly plotted comeback from political ruin nearly a decade ago, won a resounding victory on Tuesday in the race for governor of New York, easily beating his Republican rival, Carl P. Paladino.

Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, triumphed with the help of independent voters, suburbanites and city dwellers from all corners of the state, a broad sweep that stood out as his party suffered setbacks in Congress and other statehouse races around the country.

The rise of Mr. Cuomo, 52, fulfills the restoration of a political dynasty and marks the first time a son of a New York governor has been elected to that office. Mario M. Cuomo was elected in 1982 and served three terms.

“The people of the state of New York want a government that they can trust, a government that they can be proud of once again, the government that they deserve — and they are going to get it,” Mr. Cuomo told a cheering crowd at a Midtown Manhattan hotel.

Mr. Cuomo’s campaign was aided by the virtual implosion of Mr. Paladino, a Buffalo real estate developer whose blunt manner and fiery rhetoric thrilled some disaffected voters, but ultimately thrust him into so many controversies that it forced him off his message of major tax and spending cuts.

Mr. Cuomo rolled up impressive tallies not only in Democratic strongholds like New York City, where early exit polls showed him collecting 8 in 10 votes, but also in the counties surrounding the city. Even upstate, he either outpolled or ran even with Mr. Paladino.

Mr. Cuomo’s margin was especially lopsided among women and African-Americans, suggesting that some of Mr. Paladino’s more incendiary behavior, like forwarding racially tinged and pornographic e-mails, had alienated those groups. Over all, Mr. Cuomo won by more than 20 points.

Mr. Cuomo drew support from more than 90 percent of blacks, according to the exit polling, conducted by Edison Research for the National Election Pool. He attracted the votes of two-thirds of women, 9 in 10 liberals and 7 in 10 moderates. White men were closely divided; Mr. Paladino ran best among less-educated whites and conservatives, who backed him three to one.

“He was done the first time he said, ‘I want to take a baseball bat to Albany,’ ” said Mark Sanna, 51, of Orchard Park, a suburb south of Buffalo, who works in sales. “You can’t negotiate with people when you come at them saying, ‘You’re just going to do what I say!’ ”

Mr. Paladino sought to channel voters’ anger and paint Mr. Cuomo as part of a discredited establishment. But Mr. Cuomo said that anger was not enough, and that his experience in government best equipped him to fix it.

“The people have spoken tonight and they have been loud and clear,” Mr. Cuomo said in his victory speech. “They are angry that they are paying for an economic recession that they didn’t cause. They are frustrated when they look at the dysfunction and degradation of Albany. They’re disgusted — and they are right. And what they are saying today is they want reform and they want that government in Albany changed. And that’s what they’re going to get.”

Mr. Cuomo, who will be New York’s 56th governor, did not mention his opponent by name, and bitterness between the candidates had become obvious in the final stretch of the campaign.

The two men did not speak before their respective speeches on Tuesday night. In Buffalo, Mr. Paladino brandished his trademark baseball bat, telling Mr. Cuomo that it represented the will of New Yorkers and suggesting that he bring it to Albany. If he did not, Mr. Paladino warned, Mr. Cuomo had not “heard the last of Carl Paladino.” He added, “Keep our pitchforks at the ready and never surrender.”

Mr. Cuomo has made clear in recent interviews that he was already preparing for an even more arduous campaign: breaking the grip of labor unions and other special interests over Albany, dragging state government out of severe financial problems and restoring public faith in a political system plagued by corruption and scandal.

Mr. Cuomo significantly outspent Mr. Paladino, who entered the race vowing to spend $10 million on his own campaign but appeared on track to come in about $2 million below that.

As of his most recent campaign finance report, Mr. Cuomo had already spent more than $20 million, much of it raised from the same lobbyists, unions and business interests that typically finance elections in New York.

Mr. Cuomo shuns public introspection and dismisses much of what is written about him as tedious psychoanalysis, but his victory on Tuesday represented the culmination of a personal quest.

He endured a humiliating withdrawal from the 2002 Democratic primary for governor, a period when many party elders viewed him as brash and overambitious. But four years later, after mending fences and setting his sights slightly lower, he won election as attorney general and embarked on crusades against health insurers and student loan companies, emerging as one of the most popular elected officials in the state.

Yet while the father was a lion of his party’s liberal wing, the son has positioned himself as a moderate and technocrat, pledging to rein in spending and hold the line on taxes. And while the last Governor Cuomo presided over a historic expansion of New York’s government, the future Governor Cuomo has promised to shrink it.

Mr. Cuomo’s decisive victory came after he ran one of the most secretive and cautious election campaigns in recent New York history, one that seemed built not around inspiring passion but on preserving his political standing in a treacherous election year much like the one that forced his father from office in 1994.

Even with the election over, Mr. Cuomo remains in some ways a remote figure to many voters, respected and admired for his work as attorney general but little known otherwise.

Rudolph B. Steward, Jr., 60, of Yonkers, a veteran on disability, said he would vote for Mr. Cuomo largely because he feared what would happen if Mr. Paladino won. “There was nothing about Cuomo that made me vote for him,” Mr. Steward said. “I just did it to fight the policies of the Republicans.”

Mr. Cuomo led in the polls throughout the race, but received something of a scare in the days after Mr. Paladino’s upset victory in the Republican primary, in September. The emergence of Mr. Paladino seemed to rattle the Cuomo campaign, which had been preparing to face Rick A. Lazio, a former congressman who had difficulty stirring enthusiasm among Republican voters.

But Mr. Paladino repeatedly found himself mired in controversy. He nearly came to blows with a reporter who questioned him aggressively and later opined that children should not be “brainwashed” into viewing homosexuality as acceptable.

As the campaign drew to a close, polls showed that large numbers of New Yorkers had deemed Mr. Paladino unfit to be governor.

Mr. Cuomo suggested in his speech that Mr. Paladino was part of a polarizing movement that persuaded voters elsewhere but failed to sway New Yorkers.

“The people of this state today say you’re not going to divide us, you’re not going to separate us, you can try it somewhere else but you’re not going to sell that in New York,” he said.

Elizabeth A. Harris and Nate Schweber contributed reporting.

    Cuomo Cruises to Win in New York Governor’s Race, NYT, 2.11.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/nyregion/03nygov.html

How Obama Saved Capitalism and Lost the Midterms

November 2, 2010
11:59 pm
The New York Times
By TIMOTHY EGAN

Timothy Egan on American politics and life, as seen from the West.

If I were one of the big corporate donors who bankrolled the Republican tide that carried into office more than 50 new Republicans in the House, I would be wary of what you just bought.

For no matter your view of President Obama, he effectively saved capitalism. And for that, he paid a terrible political price.

Suppose you had $100,000 to invest on the day Barack Obama was inaugurated. Why bet on a liberal Democrat? Here’s why: the presidency of George W. Bush produced the worst stock market decline of any president in history. The net worth of American households collapsed as Bush slipped away. And if you needed a loan to buy a house or stay in business, private sector borrowing was dead when he handed over power.

As of election day, Nov. 2, 2010, your $100,000 was worth about $177,000 if invested strictly in the NASDAQ average for the entirety of the Obama administration, and $148,000 if bet on the Standard & Poors 500 major companies. This works out to returns of 77 percent and 48 percent.

But markets, though forward-looking, are not considered accurate measurements of the economy, and the Great Recession skewed the Bush numbers. O.K. How about looking at the big financial institutions that keep the motors of capitalism running — banks and auto companies?

The banking system was resuscitated by $700 billion in bailouts started by Bush (a fact unknown by a majority of Americans), and finished by Obama, with help from the Federal Reserve. It worked. The government is expected to break even on a risky bet to stabilize the global free market system. Had Obama followed the populist instincts of many in his party, the underpinnings of big capitalism could have collapsed. He did this without nationalizing banks, as other Democrats had urged.

Saving the American auto industry, which has been a huge drag on Obama’s political capital, is a monumental achievement that few appreciate, unless you live in Michigan. After getting their taxpayer lifeline from Obama, both General Motors and Chrysler are now making money by making cars. New plants are even scheduled to open. More than 1 million jobs would have disappeared had the domestic auto sector been liquidated.

“An apology is due Barack Obama,” wrote The Economist, which had opposed the $86 billion auto bailout. As for Government Motors: after emerging from bankruptcy, it will go public with a new stock offering in just a few weeks, and the United States government, with its 60 percent share of common stock, stands to make a profit. Yes, an industry was saved, and the government will probably make money on the deal — one of Obama’s signature economic successes.

Interest rates are at record lows. Corporate profits are lighting up boardrooms; it is one of the best years for earnings in a decade.

All of the above is good for capitalism, and should end any serious-minded discussion about Obama the socialist. But more than anything, the fact that the president took on the structural flaws of a broken free enterprise system instead of focusing on things that the average voter could understand explains why his party was routed on Tuesday. Obama got on the wrong side of voter anxiety in a decade of diminished fortunes.

“We have done things that people don’t even know about,” Obama told Jon Stewart. Certainly. The three signature accomplishments of his first two years — a health care law that will make life easier for millions of people, financial reform that attempts to level the playing field with Wall Street, and the $814 billion stimulus package — have all been recast as big government blunders, rejected by the emerging majority.

But each of them, in its way, should strengthen the system. The health law will hold costs down, while giving millions the chance at getting care, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Financial reform seeks to prevent the kind of meltdown that caused the global economic collapse. And the stimulus, though it drastically raised the deficit, saved about 3 million jobs, again according to the CBO. It also gave a majority of taxpayers a one-time cut — even if 90 percent of Americans don’t know that, either.

Of course, nobody gets credit for preventing a plane crash. “It could have been much worse!” is not a rallying cry. And, more telling, despite a meager uptick in job growth this year, the unemployment rate rose from 7.6 percent in the month Obama took office to 9.6 today.

Billions of profits, windfalls in the stock market, a stable banking system — but no jobs.

Of course, the big money interests who benefited from Obama’s initiatives have shown no appreciation. Obama, as a senator, voted against the initial bailout of AIG, the reckless insurance giant. As president, he extended them treasury loans at a time when economists said he must — or risk further meltdown. Their response was to give themselves $165 million in executive bonuses, and funnel money to Republicans this year.

Money flows one way, to power, now held by the party that promises tax cuts and deregulation — which should please big business even more.

President Franklin Roosevelt also saved capitalism, in part by a bank “holiday” in 1933, at a time when the free enterprise system had failed. Unlike Obama, he was rewarded with midterm gains for his own party because a majority liked where he was taking the country. The bank holiday was incidental to a larger public works campaign.

Obama can recast himself as the consumer’s best friend, and welcome the animus of Wall Street. He should hector the companies sitting on piles of cash but not hiring new workers. For those who do hire, and create new jobs, he can offer tax incentives. He should finger the financial giants for refusing to clean up their own mess in the foreclosure crisis. He should point to the long overdue protections for credit card holders that came with reform.

And he should veto, veto, veto any bill that attempts to roll back some of the basic protections for people against the institutions that have so much control over their lives – insurance companies, Wall Street and big oil.

They will whine a fierce storm, the manipulators of great wealth. A war on business, they will claim. Not even close. Obama saved them, and the biggest cost was to him.

    How Obama Saved Capitalism and Lost the Midterms, NYT, 2.11.2010, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/02/how-obama-saved-capitalism-and-lost-the-midterms/

Where Do Democrats Go Next?

November 2, 2010
The New York Times
By EVAN BAYH

Indianapolis

DEMOCRATS can recover from the disappointments of this election and set the stage for success in 2012. But to do so we must learn from Tuesday’s results.

Many of our problems were foreseeable. A public unhappy about the economy will take it out on the party in power, even if the problems began under previous management. What’s more, when one party controls everything — the House, the Senate, the White House — disgruntled voters have only one target for their ire. And the president’s party almost always loses seats in midterm elections.

Nonetheless, recurring patterns of history, broad economic forces and the laws of politics don’t entirely account for the Democrats’ predicament. To a degree we are authors of our own misfortune, and we must chart a better path forward.

It is clear that Democrats over-interpreted our mandate. Talk of a “political realignment” and a “new progressive era” proved wishful thinking. Exit polls in 2008 showed that 22 percent of voters identified themselves as liberals, 32 percent as conservatives and 44 percent as moderates. An electorate that is 76 percent moderate to conservative was not crying out for a move to the left.

We also overreached by focusing on health care rather than job creation during a severe recession. It was a noble aspiration, but $1 trillion in new spending and a major entitlement expansion are best attempted when the Treasury is flush and the economy strong, hardly our situation today.

And we were too deferential to our most zealous supporters. During election season, Congress sought to placate those on the extreme left and motivate the base — but that meant that our final efforts before the election focused on trying to allow gays in the military, change our immigration system and repeal the George W. Bush-era tax cuts. These are legitimate issues but unlikely to resonate with moderate swing voters in a season of economic discontent.

With these lessons in mind, Democrats can begin to rebuild. Where to start?

First, we have more than a communications problem — the public heard us but disagreed with our approach. Democrats need not reassess our goals for America, but we need to seriously rethink how to reach them.

Second, don’t blame the voters. They aren’t stupid or addled by fear. They are skeptical about government efficacy, worried about the deficit and angry that Democrats placed other priorities above their main concern: economic growth.

So, in the near term, every policy must be viewed through a single prism: does it help the economy grow?

A good place to start would be tax reform. Get rates down to make American businesses globally competitive. Reward savings and investment. Simplify the code to reduce compliance costs and broaden the base. In 1986, this approach attracted bipartisan support and fostered growth.

The stereotype of Democrats as wild-eyed spenders and taxers has been resurrected. To regain our political footing, we must prove to moderates that Democrats can make tough choices. Democrats should ban earmarks until the budget is balanced. The amount saved would be modest — but with ordinary Americans sacrificing so much, the symbolic power of politicians cutting their own perks is huge.

Democrats should support a freeze on federal hiring and pay increases. Government isn’t a privileged class and cannot be immune to the times.

The most important area for spending restraint is entitlement reform. Democrats should offer changes to the system that would save hundreds of billions of dollars while preserving the safety net for our neediest. For instance, we could introduce “progressive indexation,” which would provide lower cost-of-living increases for more affluent Social Security recipients, or devise a more accurate measure of inflation’s effects on all recipients’ income.

Democrats should also improve legislation already enacted. Health care reform, financial regulation and other initiatives were first attempts at solving complex problems, not holy writ. The administration’s grant of sensible exemptions to the health care bill, permitting some employers to offer only basic coverage, is an example of common-sense, results-oriented fine-tuning.

If President Obama and Congressional Democrats were to take these and other moderate steps on tax reform, deficit reduction and energy security, they would confront Republicans with a quandary: cooperate to make America more prosperous and financially stable, running the risk that the president would likely receive the credit, or obstruct what voters perceive as sensible solutions.

Having seen so many moderates go down to defeat in this year’s primaries, few Republicans in Congress will be likely to collaborate. And as the Republicans — including the party’s 2012 presidential candidates — genuflect before the Tea Party and other elements of the newly empowered right wing, President Obama can seize the center.

I’m betting the president and his advisers understand much of this. If so, assuming the economy recovers, President Obama can win re-election; Democrats can set the stage for historic achievements in a second term. The extremes of both parties will be disappointed. But the vast center yearning for progress will applaud, and the country will benefit.

Evan Bayh, a Democratic senator from Indiana, is retiring from the Senate in January.

    Where Do Democrats Go Next?, NYT, 2.11.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/opinion/03bayh.html

Election 2010

November 2, 2010
The New York Times

Voters in Tuesday’s elections sent President Obama a loud message: They don’t like how he’s doing his job, they’re even angrier at Congressional Democrats and they gave the House back to the Republicans. The Republicans spent months fanning Americans’ anger over the economy and fear of “big government,” while offering few ideas of their own. Exit polls indicated that they had succeeded in turning out their base, and that the Democrats had failed to rally their own.

Americans who voted described themselves as far more conservative than they did in 2006 and 2008 — and than the population as a whole. More than 4 in 10 said that they supported the Tea Party movement. But more than half of the conservatives said they have an unfavorable view of the Republican Party.

The question is: Will either side draw the right lessons from this midterm election?

Mr. Obama, and his party, have to do a far better job of explaining their vision and their policies. Mr. Obama needs to break his habits of neglecting his base voters and of sitting on the sidelines and allowing others to shape the debate. He needs to do a much better job of stiffening the spines of his own party’s leaders.

He has made it far too easy for his opponents to spin and distort what Americans should see as genuine progress in very tough times: a historic health care reform, a stimulus that headed off an even deeper recession, financial reform to avoid another meltdown.

Mr. Obama has a lot of difficult work ahead of him. The politics in Washington will likely get even nastier. Before he can hope to build the minimal bipartisan consensus needed to move ahead, Mr. Obama will have to rally more Americans to the logic of his policies.

The question for the Republicans now is whether they are going to bask in triumphalism or get down to the real work of governing. It is one thing to pander and obstruct when you are out of power. With a divided government, it won’t take long for voters to demand that they explain their plans.

John Boehner, the likely speaker of the House, has not provided a clue of how his party will begin to cut the deficit, which Republicans say is their top priority. One of the few specific promises he has made would dig an even deeper hole: extending all of the Bush-era tax cuts.

And exit polls suggested that even these more conservative voters get what the Republican Party leadership still doesn’t: that there is no way to tackle the deficit and slash taxes at the same time. Only 19 percent said cutting taxes was the top priority for the next Congress.

Anticipating a big win on Tuesday, leading Republicans haven’t been talking about substance, only more obstructionism. Mr. Boehner said the other day that the president was welcome to support Republican programs. But as for Mr. Obama’s agenda, he said, “We’re going to do everything — and I mean everything we can do — to kill it, stop it, slow it down, whatever we can.”

Mike Pence, the No. 3 Republican, said there would be “no compromise” on repealing the health care reform law and permanently extending all Bush-era tax cuts, including for the wealthiest Americans.

A Republican majority in the House of Representatives should pursue Republican priorities. But what we have been hearing sounds disturbingly like what we heard after the 1994 election, when Newt Gingrich, then the speaker-to-be, announced that there would be no compromising on his agenda.

The result was gridlock. The Republicans shut down the government, which ultimately cost Mr. Gingrich his job and the Republicans their majority.

One thing is very clear from all the polls and all the voting: Americans are fed up with that sort of gamesmanship. It’s bad for the country.

    Election 2010, NYT, 2.11.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/opinion/03wed-1.html

Another Election, Another Wave

November 2, 2010
The New York Times
By MATT BAI

WASHINGTON

Two years ago this week, triumphant Democrats were throwing around the word “realignment,” as in the kind of Democratic majority that could endure for a generation or more. Wednesday morning, those same Democrats awoke to find that their majority had not lasted for even another election cycle.

The question that will dominate the conversation among Democrats in the days ahead is how it came to this, especially since Republicans offered little to voters beyond an emphatic rejection of the president’s policies. Some Democrats believe they fell victim to the inevitable tide of midterm elections. Others blame the economy, plain and simple, while a growing chorus accuses Mr. Obama of failing to communicate the party’s successes.

The truth is that all these explanations probably played some role in the unraveling — though, in the case of Mr. Obama’s message, the failure may have deeper roots than his critics assume.

Start with the issue of inevitability. It’s fair to say that Democrats set themselves up for something of a letdown in 2010 by performing beyond any reasonable standard in 2006 and 2008. Democratic candidates in those back-to-back “wave elections” picked up dozens of House seats that had generally trended Republican, including some in states like Indiana and Virginia.

Democrats were bound to lose a significant number of those vulnerable seats during the subsequent midterm cycle, when voters, having had their catharsis, generally feel some buyer’s remorse about the incumbent president’s party.

Then there’s the sluggish economy and its attendant unemployment. As recently as last summer, White House aides were gamely hoping that voters would feel some momentum in the months leading up to the elections. Absent that, the administration was forced to argue a negative — that is, to claim that the stimulus spending and bank bailouts of 2009 had saved many jobs that otherwise would have been lost.

That brings us to the question of whether Mr. Obama stumbled in making a case for his proposals to right the economy and remake the health care system. The answer may be yes, but if Mr. Obama failed to communicate the urgency of his agenda to the voters, then that failure may have less to do with anything he did in 2010 than with his strategy in 2008.

Mr. Obama ran his presidential campaign much like Republicans ran this one, as a referendum on the status quo. Sure, there was what Sarah Palin calls the “hopey, changey stuff,” and plenty of standard talk about affordable health care and clean energy, both of which candidate Obama was for. What there wasn’t was much mention of what change would entail, in terms of taxation or deficits. Ending the war in Iraq and rolling back tax cuts for the wealthy, Democrats said, would pay for everything.

No doubt Mr. Obama’s team believed there would be plenty of time to make more complicated arguments after the election, when Mr. Obama would be able to reassure and cajole the nation from behind the presidential lectern. But then a couple of things happened to derail that plan.

First, the same wave that carried Mr. Obama to a resounding victory also brought in the largest Democratic majorities in Congress since the 1970s. Suddenly, Democrats, especially in the House, were giddily talking of a liberal renaissance in the land, and they were confident that the electorate had issued a blanket endorsement for whatever new investments they might see fit to make. They weren’t inclined to sit around while Mr. Obama went to the voters and asked permission again.

Second, the economic crisis that greeted Mr. Obama was deeper and more jolting than anyone had anticipated, and the White House thought it had little choice but to offer major spending proposals immediately aimed at heading off a depression, even without the benefit of a long public hearing. Mr. Obama’s advisers believed that voters would thank them for the hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending once the economy began to rebound, as it inevitably would.

But the economy didn’t rebound, and Mr. Obama, beset by crises and absorbed in negotiations on Capitol Hill, never did get around to making a sustained public argument for his most divisive policy choices. The independent voters who had sided with Mr. Obama by a margin of eight points over Senator John McCain, according to exit polls in 2008, drifted inexorably into the Republican camp.

It may be the case, as a lot of Democrats now contend, that Mr. Obama offered an inconsistent pitch over these last several weeks, jumping from a critique of the Bush years (how Republicans drove the national car into a ditch, and so on) to an indictment of campaign cash from outside groups. But it’s probably also the case that, by that point, public opinion had hardened. Some 62 percent of voters in exit polls Tuesday said the country was on the wrong track.

If there is a lesson in all this for both parties, perhaps it’s that merely piling up votes on Election Day doesn’t confer on you a mandate for any ambitious agenda — unless you have presented the voters with the difficult choices you intend to make. For Republicans, this argues against overinterpreting the meaning of Tuesday’s gains. For Mr. Obama, it probably means that the campaign for the next agenda begins right now.

    Another Election, Another Wave, NYT, 2.11.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/us/politics/03bai.html

Tea Party Comes to Power on an Unclear Mandate

November 2, 2010
The New York Times
By KATE ZERNIKE

The Tea Party movement set the agenda in its first midterms, its energy propelling the Republican sweep in the House and capturing the mood of a significant chunk of the electorate, with a remarkable 4 in 10 voters in exit polls expressing support for the movement.

But in the Senate, the effect was exactly what establishment Republicans had feared: While Tea Party energy powered some victories, concerns about Tea Party extremism also cost them what could have been easy gains — most notably in Nevada, where the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid, survived a challenge from Sharron Angle, a Tea Party favorite.

Now, as it tries to make the transition from a protest movement to a power on Capitol Hill, the Tea Party faces the challenge of channeling the energy it brought to the election into a governing agenda when it has no clear mandate, a stated distaste for the inevitable compromises of legislating, and a wary relationship with Republican leaders in Congress.

For many voters the Tea Party has been a blank screen on which they have projected all kinds of hopes and frustrations — not always compatible or realistic.

To many in the movement, the singular goal is to stop an expanding government in its tracks, to “hold the line at all hazards,” as Jennifer Stefano, a Tea Party leader in Pennsylvania, put it.

But the movement is also animated by a belief that the entire political system has become disconnected from the practical needs and values of Americans, suggesting that its voting power stemmed as much from a populist sense of outrage in a tough economic moment as it did from ideology. What many of its adherents want as much as anything is for the two parties to come together to solve problems.

That sometimes conflicting mandate was neatly captured by two interviews in Searchlight, Nev., hometown of Mr. Reid, who became the Tea Party’s biggest target. “I want to see gridlock,” said Ronald Hanvey, who supported Ms. Angle. “I don’t want to see any more laws.”

A few months earlier on nearly the same spot, Jeff Church, arriving at a Tea Party rally against Mr. Reid, complained equally about the state’s Republican senator, John Ensign, and yearned for bipartisanship. “Why can’t they get along and make some common-sense solutions?” Mr. Church asked.

In the Senate, the Tea Party carried to victory Marco Rubio in Florida and Rand Paul in Kentucky. Still, it cost the Republicans some seats that they had once counted as solid, including one in Delaware, where Christine O’Donnell, who beat an establishment candidate in the primary thanks to strong Tea Party support, lost to Chris Coons, a Democrat once considered a long shot.

Even more painful for Republicans was the result in Nevada. Mr. Reid, once considered the most vulnerable Democrat, fought off Ms. Angle, who had made headlines for her controversial and sometimes eccentric remarks.

House races showed the same win-loss effect.

Looking ahead, the immediate focus for the movement will be on the big legislative issues facing Congress. But as attention inevitably shifts to 2012, the Tea Party will also have the chance to exert potentially substantial influence on the race for the Republican presidential nomination, with a variety of potential candidates, including Sarah Palin and Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, maneuvering to lead it into the next election.

For the Republican Congressional leaders, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the question is whether the passion of the Tea Party translates into an agenda that can drive legislative progress in a divided capital, or whether it becomes a prod to block Mr. Obama and his party at every turn. They want to keep the movement’s energy alive through the next presidential election — but not fall captive to it.

A year spent observing the contours of Tea Party America revealed an uneasy alliance within it, between those who came to the movement with unswerving ideology, generally libertarian, and those who say they came to it more out of frustration and a desire to feel that they were doing something to move forward when the country seemed stuck.

The much-mocked sign at a health care town hall last summer, “Keep your government hands off my Medicare,” suggested how many Tea Party supporters had come to the movement without thinking through the specifics. While the more ideological Tea Party supporters embrace ideas like phasing out Social Security and Medicare in favor of private savings accounts, most do not.

And just as Tea Party supporters do not always agree on what the agenda is, most Americans disagree with many of the goals proclaimed by Tea Party candidates.

While incoming Tea Party lawmakers like Mr. Paul have advocated sharp across-the-board cuts in federal spending, a Pew Research Center poll last week found that a plurality of Americans disapproved of a proposal to freeze all government spending except the part that goes to national security. A majority disapproved of permanently extending the Bush-era tax cuts on incomes greater than $250,000.

A New York Times/CBS News poll last month similarly found opposition to raising the retirement age or reducing Social Security or Medicare benefits for future retirees. And a plurality of voters disagreed with what is perhaps the Tea Party movement’s most widely supported goal: repealing the health care overhaul passed in March.

Even where the public agrees on parts of the Republican-Tea Party agenda, there are important qualifiers. A slight majority in the Pew poll approved of changing Social Security to allow private accounts, but only by the same margin as when President George W. Bush advanced the cause in 2005, only to see it fail when people read the fine print.

The most ardent Tea Party activists expect Republicans to hew to their desires.

Even before polls closed Tuesday, FreedomWorks, the libertarian advocacy group that has helped shape the movement from its earliest hours, put out a press release declaring, “The success of the G.O.P. will not merely benefit from the Tea Party vote, it will depend on it.”

David Adams, a Tea Party activist in Kentucky who ran Mr. Paul’s primary campaign, said, “I’m hoping for a lot of fireworks in Washington over who takes control of who.

“If Republican leaders think for a minute that they’re going to suck us in and continue business as usual,” he said, “they’re wrong.”

Like many other Tea Party supporters, Mr. Adams said the biggest goals are to balance the budget and reduce the national debt. And on those, it was unclear where he was willing to compromise. He expects lawmakers like Mr. Paul who campaigned on a promise to balance the federal budget within a year and pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution to put forward proposals to do so. It would not be enough, Mr. Adams said, to reach an agreement to, say, balance the budget over five years.

Mr. Adams’s list also includes changing Social Security and Medicare, cutting the military budget, replacing the income tax with a flat tax — all ideas that have been raised and voted down, firmly, before. As for repealing the health care legislation? “I can’t imagine much compromise there,” he said.

“You look at what the Tea Party has done over the course of this last year, we’ve changed the shape of the debate,” he said. “We have major candidates who are winning races by large margins by talking about making government smaller. We’re getting very, very close to put-up-or-shut-up time.”

There was not much room for compromise on Ms. Stefano’s list, either. She wants the health care bill and the estate tax to be repealed, and the Bush-era tax cuts to be made permanent.

She warned Republicans not to read too much into the Tea Party support for Republicans. “They should not see it as a mandate for their agenda,” she said. “It is a repudiation of the president and Nancy Pelosi’s view of America. As far as I’m concerned, as of Nov. 3, the Republicans are on probation.”

But as much as the Tea Party allowed the Republicans to win in enthusiasm, it will still have a relatively small caucus in the House and the Senate. With control of Congress split, Republicans will have to work with Democrats to get things done. Tea Party lawmakers who refuse to go along may find they become irrelevant — certainly not the goal of all the noise and passion of the last two years.

    Tea Party Comes to Power on an Unclear Mandate, NYT, 2.11.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/us/politics/03repubs.html

Tea Partiers and Republican Faithful Share Exuberant Celebrations

November 3, 2010
The New York Times
By MARK LEIBOVICH and ASHLEY PARKER

WASHINGTON — This is what a red wave looks like here, at least in election night party terms, circa 2010: hugging, high-fiving, Heineken-toasting Tea Party insurgents (in “Don’t Tread on Me” garb) and establishment Republican types (“business casual”) united and rejoicing in a night of Democratic pain.

Returns rolled in across the city via giant televisions, tiny BlackBerry screens and flashing Twitter messages that created a multimedia sensation of a stadium wave, excitement building as the night wore on. First came news of Rand Paul, the Republican senator-elect in Kentucky, then Rob Portman, the next Republican senator from Ohio, then Florida’s Marco Rubio. Vulnerable House Democrats fell like dominos (Rick Boucher and Tom Perriello in Virginia, Suzanne M. Kosmas and Alan Grayson in Florida).

“We are about to do the one thing that the American people want done, and that is to fire Pelosi,” said Michael Steele, the Republican National Committee chairman, referring to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat. He was standing before a large screen featuring three scrolling Twitter feeds at a Republican victory party at the Grand Hyatt hotel here, and his claim became official shortly thereafter, when the networks began projecting what had seemed inevitable for a few hours, if not a few weeks:

Republicans had taken back the House, and Ms. Pelosi, in a manner of speaking, had in fact been “fired.”

While the political pundits have dubbed the elections of 2006, 2008 and now 2010 as “change elections,” election nights in Washington have tended to follow similar patterns and are observed in familiar venues, with each side playing predictable roles. In other words, the more things change, the more they don’t — and a lot of people will drink a lot on both sides, regardless of how the voting goes.

On Tuesday night, people on both sides wore goofy hats and partisan buttons. Conservatives claimed to be “taking their country back” (after being forced to relinquish their country two and four Novembers ago), while liberals vowed a renewed effort to take it back for themselves next time.

Beyond the standard rituals of D’s and R’s standing around nursing drinks and looking up at TV sets in search of returns, some gatherings did prove distinctive to 2010.

To wit: the Tea Party movement — nonexistent two years ago — put on its own gala offerings, some of which even included beverages considerably stronger than tea. The Tea Party Patriots convened for a twilight rally on the west lawn of the Capitol before joining their insurgent brethren down the street for a celebration at the Hyatt Capitol Hill, where Ms. Pelosi and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, joined their triumphant fists in victory four years ago. The Capitol rally-goers spoke of victory well before the polls even closed in some states.

“Today the American people admitted the mistakes they made two years ago,” said Jenny Beth Martin, one of co-founders of the Tea Party Patriots, which coordinates chapters around the country. “But this is not about a single election. This is about returning to our Constitution.” And, then, as if Ms. Martin could feel the outstretched Republican hand eager to rejoice in victories Tea Partiers helped secure, she offered a cool reminder: “This is not a Republican victory.”

But it sure did feel like it.

“Y’all have fun tonight,” Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi urged a young throng not long after Mr. Steele. They sipped $9 glasses of wine and held plastic cups of Lays potato chips, and their cheers grew louder as the returns came in and speeches wore on. “Get ready for a big ride,” said Mr. Barbour, the Republican chairman during the party’s House takeover of 1994 and a possible presidential candidate in 2012.

Defiant Democrats were unwilling to concede anything early in the evening. At the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s “Election Watch Reception” across town, Ms. Pelosi made an appearance during what could be her last hours as a non-lame-duck speaker of the House. Wearing a pearl-colored blazer, Ms. Pelosi took the stage to 30 seconds of loud applause, finally quieting the crowd by saying that she was going to keep her remarks brief because she needed to get back on the phone to reach voters in states where polling places remained open.

“People all over the country are not going to be told by people in Washington how this election will turn out,” she said. “They will speak for themselves.”

Ms. Pelosi urged the Democrats in the ballroom to “continue to fight for great Democratic victory.” And for a while at least, those gathered there were keeping up the appearances of a victory party. Miniature plastic donkeys in neon colors were scattered atop the cash bar like confetti, the 312 Goose Island beer (a favorite of the Chicago crowd) had been shipped in from the Windy City, and the young, loud crowd was drinking and laughing.

But the election returns flashing across the giant projection machines kept messing up the blue party vibe.

“The Rand Paul election was disappointing,” said Patrick Hughes, 25, a Democratic activist, referring to the Tea Party favorite who landed Kentucky’s Senate seat in the Republican category shortly after that state’s polls closed. “It’s bittersweet. The last four years were great, and now reality is sort of setting in a little.”

Even as Ms. Pelosi reminded everyone that this election would not be decided by “the Washington crowd,” this particular Washington crowd — of Democratic revelers — had soon dwindled. By just after 10 p.m., the ballroom had mostly emptied, except for a few dozen stragglers and an abandoned platter of half-eaten cheese.

Janie Lorber and Will Storey contributed reporting.

    Tea Partiers and Republican Faithful Share Exuberant Celebrations, NYT, 3.11.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/us/politics/03scene.html

G.O.P. Captures House, but Not Senate

November 2, 2010
The New York Times
By JEFF ZELENY

Republicans captured control of the House of Representatives on Tuesday and expanded their voice in the Senate, riding a wave of voter discontent as they dealt a setback to President Obama just two years after his triumphal victory.

A Republican resurgence, propelled by deep economic worries and a forceful opposition to the Democratic agenda of health care and government spending, delivered defeats to House Democrats from the Northeast to the South and across the Midwest. The tide swept aside dozens of lawmakers, regardless of their seniority or their voting records, upending the balance of power for the second half of Mr. Obama’s term.

But Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, narrowly prevailed and his party hung onto control by winning hard-fought contests in California, Delaware, Connecticut and West Virginia. Republicans picked up at least six Democratic seats, including the one formerly held by Mr. Obama, and the party will welcome Marco Rubio of Florida and Rand Paul of Kentucky to their ranks, two candidates who were initially shunned by the establishment but beloved by the Tea Party movement.

“The American people’s voice was heard at the ballot box,” said Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, who is positioned to become the next speaker of the House. “We have real work to do, and this is not the time for celebration.”

The president, who watched the election returns with a small set of advisers at the White House, called Mr. Boehner shortly after midnight to offer his congratulations and to talk about the way forward as Washington prepares for divided government. Republicans won at least 56 seats, not including those from some Western states where ballots were still being counted, surpassing the 52 seats the party won in the sweep of 1994.

The most expensive midterm election campaign in the nation’s history, fueled by a raft of contributions from outside interest groups and millions in donations to candidates in both parties, played out across a wide battleground that stretched from Alaska to Maine. The Republican tide swept into statehouse races, too, with Democrats poised to lose the majority of governorships, particularly those in key presidential swing states, like Ohio, where Gov. Ted Strickland was defeated.

One after another, once-unassailable Democrats like Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, Representatives Ike Skelton of Missouri, John Spratt of South Carolina, Rick Boucher of Virginia and Chet Edwards of Texas fell to little-known Republican challengers.

“Voters sent a message that change has not happened fast enough,” said Tim Kaine, chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

Republicans did not achieve a perfect evening, losing races in several states they had once hoped to win, including the Senate contests in Delaware and Connecticut, because some candidates supported by the Tea Party movement knocked out establishment candidates to win their nominations. But they did score notable victories in some tight races, like Pat Toomey’s Senate run in Pennsylvania.

Senator Reid said in a speech that he was “more determined than ever” after his victory. “I know what it’s like to get back on your feet.”

The outcome on Tuesday was nothing short of a remarkable comeback for Republicans two years after they suffered a crushing defeat in the White House and four years after Democrats swept control of the House and Senate. It places the party back in the driver’s seat in terms of policy, posing new challenges to Mr. Obama as he faces a tough two years in his term, but also for Republicans — led by Mr. Boehner — as he suddenly finds himself in a position of responsibility, rather than being simply the outsider.

In the House, Republicans found victories in most corners of the country, including five seats in Pennsylvania, five in Ohio, at least three in Florida, Illinois and Virginia and two in Georgia. Democrats braced for the prospect of historic defeats, more than the 39 seats the Republicans needed to win control. Republicans reached their majority by taking seats east of the Mississippi even before late results flowed in from farther West.

Throughout the evening, in race after race, Republican challengers defeated Democratic incumbents, despite being at significant fund-raising disadvantages. Republican-oriented independent groups invariably came to the rescue, helping level of the playing field, including in Florida’s 24th Congressional District, in which Sandy Adams defeated Representative Suzanne Kosmas; Virginia’s 9th Congressional District, where Mr. Boucher, a 14-term incumbent, lost to Morgan Griffith; and Texas’s 17th Congressional District, in which Mr. Edwards, who was seeking his 11th term, succumbed to Bill Flores.

Democrats argued that the Republican triumph was far from complete, particularly in the Senate, pointing to the preservation of Mr. Reid and other races. In Delaware, Chris Coons defeated Christine O’Donnell, whose candidacy became a symbol of the unorthodox political candidates swept onto the ballot in Republican primary contests. In West Virginia, Gov. Joe Manchin III, a Democrat, triumphed over an insurgent Republican rival to fill the seat held for a half-century by Senator Robert C. Byrd. And in California, Senator Barbara Boxer overcame a vigorous challenge from Carly Fiorina, a Republican.

But Democrats conceded that their plans to increase voter turnout did not meet expectations, party strategists said, and extraordinary efforts that Mr. Obama made in the final days of the campaign appeared to have borne little fruit.

The president flew to Charlottesville, Va., on Friday evening, for instance, in hopes of rallying Democrats to support Representative Tom Perriello, a freshman who supported every piece of the administration’s agenda, but he was defeated despite the president’s appeals to Democrats in a state that he carried two years ago.

In governors’ races, Republicans won several contests in the nation’s middle. They held onto governorships in Texas, Nebraska and South Dakota, and had seized seats now occupied by Democrats in Tennessee, Michigan and Kansas. Sam Brownback, a United States Senator and Republican, easily took the Kansas post that Mark Parkinson, a former Republican turned Democrat, is leaving behind.

Though Democrats, who before the election held 26 governors’ seats compared to 24 for the Republicans, were expected to face losses, there were also bright spots. In New York, Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo easily defeated the Republican, Carl P. Paladino, even as Republicans were expected to pick up seats in the state legislature and the congressional delegation. In Massachusetts, Gov. Deval Patrick won a second term.

As the election results rolled in, with Republicans picking up victories shortly after polls closed in states across the South, East and the Midwest, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and other party leaders made urgent appeals through television interviews that there was still time for voters in other states to cast their ballots.

But the mood in Democratic quarters was glum, with few early signs of optimism in House or Senate races that were called early in the evening. Surveys that were conducted with voters across the country also provided little sense of hope for Democrats, with Republicans gaining a majority of independents, college-educated people and suburbanites — all groups that were part of the coalition of voters who supported Mr. Obama two years ago.

“We’ve come to take our government back,” Mr. Paul told cheering supporters who gathered in Bowling Green, Ky. “They say that the U.S. Senate is the world’s most deliberative body. I’m going to ask them to deliberate on this: The American people are unhappy with what’s going on in Washington.”

The election was a referendum on President Obama and the Democratic agenda, according to interviews with voters that were conducted for the National Election Pool, a consortium of television networks and The Associated Press, with a wide majority of the electorate saying that the country was seriously off track. Nearly nine in 10 voters said they were worried about the economy and about 4 in 10 said their family’s situation had worsened in the last two years.

The surveys found that voters were even more dissatisfied with Congress now than they were in 2006, when Democrats reclaimed control from the Republicans. Preliminary results also indicated an electorate far more conservative than four years ago, a sign of stronger turnout by people leaning toward Republicans.

Most voters said they believed Mr. Obama’s policies would hurt the country in the long run, rather than help it, and a large share of voters said they supported the Tea Party movement, which has backed insurgent candidates all across the country.

The Republican winds began blowing back in January when Democrats lost the seat long held by Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, with the victory of Scott P. Brown serving as a motivating force for the budding Tea Party movement and a burst of inspiration for Republican candidates across the country to step forward and challenge Democrats everywhere.

On Tuesday, the president did not leave the grounds of the White House, taking a respite from days of campaigning across the country, so he could meet with a circle of top advisers to plot a way forward for his administration and his own looming re-election campaign. The White House said Mr. Obama would hold a news conference on Wednesday to address the governing challenges that await the new Congress.

“My hope is that I can cooperate with Republicans,” Mr. Obama said in a radio interview on Tuesday. “But obviously, the kinds of compromises that will be made depends on what Capitol Hill looks like — who’s in charge.”

But even as the president was poised to offer a fresh commitment to bipartisanship, he spent the final hours of the midterm campaign trying to persuade Democrats in key states to take time to vote. From the Oval Office, Mr. Obama conducted one radio interview after another, urging black voters in particular to help preserve the party’s majority and his agenda.

“How well I’m able to move my agenda forward over the next couple of years is going to depend on folks back home having my back,” Mr. Obama said in an interview with the Chicago radio station WGCI, in which he made an unsuccessful appeal for voters to keep his former Senate seat in Democratic hands.

There was little Democratic terrain across the country that seemed immune to Republican encroachment, with many of the most competitive races being waged in states that Mr. Obama carried strongly only two years ago. From the president’s home state of Illinois to neighboring Iowa, Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio — all places that were kind to the Democratic ticket in 2008 — Republicans worked aggressively to find new opportunities.

For all the drama surrounding the final day of the midterm campaign, more than 19 million Americans had voted before Tuesday, a trend that has grown with each election cycle over the last decade, as 32 states now offer a way for voters to practice democracy in far more convenient ways than simply waiting in line on Election Day.

Megan Thee-Brenan, David M. Herszenhorn and Michael Luo contributed reporting.

    G.O.P. Captures House, but Not Senate, NYT, 2.11.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/us/politics/03elect.html

Vote

November 1, 2010
The New York Times

Times are tough, and Americans are understandably worried and angry. This year’s campaign has only made things worse. Billions of dollars have been spent to destroy character rather than debate serious ideas. Still, there is no excuse for staying home on Election Day.

There are critically important decisions to be made about whether the country moves ahead with confidence or moves backward and becomes even more polarized.

Voting in Republican primaries and special elections showed what happens when moderate Americans stay home or react to the barrages of fear and intolerance. We end up with fringe candidates like Christine O’Donnell in Delaware and Sharron Angle in Nevada. Establishment candidates then spout the same disturbing ideas. (Witness Representative John Boehner, the House minority leader, trying to act like an outsider after 18 years in the Washington power elite.)

Democrats have been far too timid to argue the case, but they, and President Obama, have done many important things in the last two years.

Most important, the stimulus — which Republicans made sure was smaller than it should have been — saved the country from a deeper, more destructive recession. That is not a lot of comfort for the millions of unemployed Americans, but it would have been far worse if the Republicans had had their way. They have even opposed extending federal unemployment benefits.

American troops are coming home from Iraq. For the first time, troops in Afghanistan have the full backing of the White House and Pentagon. The United States is regaining the respect of allies around the world.

The Republicans have been rewriting history. They claim Mr. Obama’s economic policies are a failure and hope Americans will forget that it was President George W. Bush who turned big budget surpluses into huge deficits and whose contempt for regulation ultimately brought us to the brink of financial collapse. The Republicans want to go back to more tax cuts for the rich and more free passes for Wall Street and big corporations.

Tea Party candidates are particularly worrisome. Some want to privatize Social Security. Others want to eliminate Medicare. Betting on the Republican establishment to temper these excesses is a bad bet.

Here are some things to bear in mind on Tuesday:

• Since Mr. Obama was elected, millions of poor children who did not have health insurance got it. A reform law was passed that already allows young people to be on their parents’ plan until they are 26, bars insurers from dropping coverage after a beneficiary becomes sick, and removes lifetime caps on coverage. In 2014, many more benefits will kick in.

Republicans are determined to undo that progress. It would be a disaster. The law is the best chance in years to provide health insurance to the rapidly rising numbers of uninsured and to begin trying to slow cost growth in medical care and insurance.

• The country needs tax reform that is fair and doesn’t get us even deeper in the red. Republicans are interested only in one thing: permanently extending tax cuts for the rich, adding $700 billion to the deficit over the next 10 years.

• The country needs jobs and to be globally competitive. Republicans are determined to block Mr. Obama’s sensible proposals to create good jobs by rebuilding fraying infrastructure or creating new energy industries.

• The country needs sound regulation. If there is any doubt about that look at the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Or the bank bailout that — despite what the Republicans are saying — happened on Mr. Bush’s watch. The Republicans want more heedless deregulation.

• With very few exceptions, Republican candidates are hostile to the administration’s efforts to address climate change and reduce the nation’s dependence on fossil fuels. There has already been talk on Capitol Hill of stripping the Environmental Protection Agency of its authority to regulate greenhouse gases.

•

We urge all Americans to think carefully and then vote, especially young voters who voted for the first time in 2008. Sitting on their hands is voting for Republicans, none of whom will protect these voters’ interests. There are clear choices to be made.

    Vote, NYT, 1.11.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/02/opinion/02tue1.html

The Second Marriage

November 1, 2010
The New York Times
By DAVID BROOKS

The heavens rejoiced. Two years ago as Democrats cruised to power, Washingtonians felt a jolt of electricity in the air. News organizations published picture books celebrating the dawning of a new age. I distinctly remember seeing angels and cherubs drunk at the bar of the Old Ebbitt Grill near the White House.

Today, the atmosphere is different. Republicans may win the House, but everyone is writing about anger, not inspiration. (Memo to young journalists: Democratic victories are always ascribed to hope; Republican ones to rage.)

The biggest change is in the camp of the potential victors. Two years ago, Democrats waxed romantic. This year, the Republicans seem modest and cautious. I haven’t seen this many sober Republicans since America lost the Ryder Cup.

We have to be careful not to get carried away, says Lamar Alexander, the third-ranking Republican in the Senate. “I was thinking about putting photos of Nancy Pelosi and Henry Waxman in the Republican cloakroom to remind us not to overreach,” he told me on Monday.

We have to beware of unrealistic expectations, emphasized Senator Jon Kyl, the second-ranking Republican. Republicans can’t accomplish big things without Democratic help. They can’t defund Obamacare on their own or pass a new tax law.

Many Americans are still skeptical about us, acknowledged Eric Cantor, the No. 2 Republican in the House. We can’t do anything that might unsettle them, like shutting down the government. Instead, Republicans need to offer reassurance. Businesses should be able to predict what their tax costs will be, what their health costs will be and what their regulatory burdens will be.

In 1994, Newt Gingrich talked about a Republican Revolution, but these Republicans are still suffering from the hangover. Gingrich concentrated power in the speaker’s office, weakened the committee chairmen and built his machine for speed. Today’s Republican leader, John Boehner, vows to do the opposite — to weaken the speaker’s office, decentralize authority and move step by step.

Many Republicans figure the age of permanent majorities is over. Democrats once held the House for 40 years, but now control will likely flip back and forth with the tides. So lasting change has to be firmly implanted and gradually absorbed.

The Republican theory about how to revive economic growth, is best expressed by Alexander: “We have to make it easier and cheaper to create private sector jobs.” Week by week, Republicans hope to issue a string of bills designed to reduce uncertainty, public spending and the cost of hiring.

Some of the measures will attempt to repeal parts of Obamacare. For example, the new health care law has a provision that forces companies to file a 1099 form to the I.R.S. every time they pay more than $600 a year for goods or services from any individual or corporation. If you’re a freelancer and you buy a laptop from an Apple store, you have to file a 1099. If you spend more than $600 per year with FedEx, you have to file a 1099. Republicans are going to make this an early target — an example of the law’s expensive interference in business life.

Republican leaders are also prepared to take what they can get, even if it’s not always what they would like. Republicans would like to extend all the Bush tax cuts until the sun fizzles out. They’re willing to take a compromise extension of two or three years. Republicans are under intense pressure from the business lobbies to compromise with Democrats to get certain things done: more infrastructure spending and tax breaks for energy innovation.

The predictable response to all this gradualism is that the Republican leaders may want this, but there is no way the fire-breathing Tea Party-types are going to cooperate. There’s some truth to this. Rank-and-file Republicans are more hostile to earmarks than the chairmen (who say that without earmarks spending, decisions will just get made by bureaucrats).

There will also be clashes over budgets, raising the debt limit and doctors’ reimbursements. (Democrats are talking about leaving behind legislative traps to maximize G.O.P. discomfort.)

But this leadership-versus-the-crazies storyline is overblown. The new Republicans may distrust government, but this will be a Republican class with enormous legislative experience. Tea Party hype notwithstanding, most leading G.O.P. candidates either served in state legislatures or previously in Washington. The No Compromise stalwarts like Senator Jim DeMint have a big megaphone but few actual followers within the Senate.

Over all, if it is won, a Republican House majority will be like a second marriage. Less ecstasy, more realism. The party could have used a few more years to develop plans about the big things, like tax and entitlement reform. But if a party is going to do well in an election, it should at least be a party that has developed a sense of modesty.

    The Second Marriage, NYT, 1.11.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/02/opinion/02brooks.html

Get Bold, Barack

November 1, 2010
The New York Times
By ROGER COHEN

WASHINGTON — I was among the early and strong supporters of Barack Obama. America was stuck and it seemed to me he could take the country forward into the 21st century, which began so tragically in downtown New York and here in the nation’s capital. Like many, at midterm, I’m struggling with my disappointment.

I’ve asked myself: Would Hillary Clinton, experienced and attuned to blue-collar America, have been stronger and more capable of lifting the national mood? I’ve thought to myself: Is it unfair to feel this disillusionment given the scale of Obama’s inherited problems? And I’ve wondered, given the visceral disrespect for the president from the Tea Party — a foul scorn full of innuendo that skirts the boundaries of racism — whether Obama could have done anything to reach across the aisle?

To all these questions, at different times, I’ve had different answers. No, says one voice, get over it, he’s doing the best he could to lift America from the double whammy of war and economic meltdown. He’s smart and curious — and, anyway, just consider the mystical-nationalist-insular alternative.

Oh yeah, says another, he’s too cool a customer, a beguiling construct more than flesh and blood, an empty vessel for a misplaced idealism, a politician averse to pressing the flesh (and what else is politics?), a man who — not for nothing — tilts his chin upward when he speaks.

Back and forth go the voices, but there’s no getting away from the disappointment. This president feels flat — and somehow not quite genuine. He should place above his bed the words of Jonathan Alter: “Logic can convince but only emotion can motivate.”

On arriving in New York from London, I went to a party on the Upper East Side. It was a well-heeled crowd, almost all Obama supporters a couple of years back. “The guy’s a phony,” one guest said. “We need a Bloomberg, somebody who can manage,” said another, referring to the billionaire mayor of New York. “All this Clinton nostalgia, it’s because Obama is a loner, not interested in people,” said a third.

I was a struck by how people aren’t sure where Obama’s headed. There’s no narrative to the presidency. It was about believable change. Now the president seems less a passionate change agent than a careful calculator unsure of his core beliefs. In London, you know what Prime Minister David Cameron is about: rowing back the state and slashing the deficit. Agree or disagree, there’s a narrative. It helps.

Another foreign leader came to mind, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, now about to leave office after an extraordinary presidency. Here are two outsider politicians with lullaby-like names and the kinds of faces not previously seen on their nations’ banknotes, breaking molds of race or class. But there the resemblance ends.

Lula proved all of a piece — one of eight children from the impoverished far north of Brazil, a former steelworker who repaired social fracture in one of the world’s most unequal societies. Obama has so far failed that critical authenticity test.

There was an anti-establishment frisson to Obama, the black man who battled to overcome prejudice and America’s “original sin” to win the nation’s highest office. Yet he has revealed himself as an elite product of America’s elite schools, a politician who built his image with great intelligence but shows little taste for the nitty-gritty. Bipartisanship, when it’s not just oratory, begins with small gestures.

I was talking to a Democratic Party donor, a Kansas City businessman. He said he’s given over $30,000 to Obama — and not a word of thanks. He was irritated. Lots of people think this president is too smug to write thank-you notes or make quick courtesy calls.

After the inevitable midterm defeat, Obama needs to make some decisions. He’s stuck on the 20-yard line in domestic and foreign policy. The facile attacks on “fat-cat bankers” have to end. They don’t convince the left and they infuriate the right. Prosecute, by all means, but don’t rail. And remember that Americans get good housekeeping in the end. One $787 billion fiscal injection is enough.

Americans are trying to de-leverage. They’ll follow a president who says extending tax cuts for the rich is madness. They might buy a consumption tax. But the president has to lead.

Obama is confronting an international conviction that he’s hesitant. The agonizing review that led to the Afghan surge left an impression of uncertainty. In the end we got what some have called the Groucho Marx Hello, I Must be Going! plan, a brief reinforcement to be reversed in time for the 2012 campaign. In the Middle East, too, domestic politics have trumped change, with resulting equivocation and familiar paralysis.

Boldness characterized Obama’s campaign; only that will get him re-elected in 2012. He needs to invigorate his team with doers rather than thinkers. He needs to become serious about balancing the budget. He needs a foreign policy that reflects a changed world not a churlish Congress.

And he must admit to himself that perhaps the disappointed are not misguided but rational, even scientific — words he likes.

    Get Bold, Barack, NYT, 1.11.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/02/opinion/02iht-edcohen.html

Finding Clues to the Future in Flood of Midterm Data

November 1, 2010
The New York Times
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR

WASHINGTON — Even for a nation that is, by now, used to drinking in political news through a fire hose, election night on Tuesday could be a difficult one to absorb.

More than 500 House, Senate and governor’s races will be decided, if not by the end of the night, then over the course of the nail-biting days ahead as write-in ballots are counted and recounts are requested.

Beyond the individual results, the nation will be looking at the returns for answers to bigger questions: Was this election about President Obama? How powerful a phenomenon is the Tea Party movement? How will the new Congress address the still-weak economy? What will it mean for the crop of likely 2012 Republican presidential candidates? Did anonymous campaign money sway the outcome?

Democrats made their last-minute appeals Monday. Michelle Obama headed to Las Vegas and Philadelphia as Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. traveled to Vermont and former President Bill Clinton raced up and down the East Coast. Mr. Obama hunkered down in the White House, conducting a few radio interviews and bracing for a rebuke that most pundits predict could be historic in its breadth.

On the eve of an election that could make him speaker of the House, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the minority leader, rallied Republicans in Cincinnati, praising as “patriots” the voters who have the “audacity to speak up in defense of freedom, the Constitution and the values of limited government,” according to excerpts released by his office.

Here is a guide to some of the trends to watch for as the results come in.

EARLY DECISIONS Polls close in Kentucky first, at 6 p.m. Eastern time, so look to the races there for an early clue to how the evening is going. In the state’s Senate race, Rand Paul, the Republican and a Tea Party favorite, has been pulling ahead of Jack Conway, the Democrat. Also watch Representative Ben Chandler, a Democrat who won re-election easily in 2006 and 2008, but is fighting to survive in Kentucky’s Sixth Congressional District.

In Virginia, Mr. Obama and his political team will be nervously watching the returns in the Fifth Congressional District, where Representative Tom Perriello, a freshman Democrat who voted for the health care bill and Mr. Obama’s other major initiatives, is seeking to hold on in a conservative part of the state.

In Ohio, five close races could help decide whether Republicans can quickly claim to have retaken the House from Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats. Keep an eye on seats held by Representatives Charlie Wilson, Zack Space and John Boccieri, each of whom is in a tough fight with his Republican challenger.

Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania, a Democrat, said he would be watching returns to see how Democratic turnout compared to 2008. “If there is a dramatic falloff, Democrats are cooked,” Mr. Rendell said.
 

THE TEA PARTY An analysis by The New York Times last month found that 138 candidates for the House and Senate claimed support from the Tea Party movement, and dozens of them could find themselves part of a Congressional Tea Party caucus on Wednesday and in a position to exert substantial influence on the Republican Party.

But assessing the movement’s success will not be a simple numbers game. If big-name Tea Party favorites lose to Democrats in places like Alaska, Colorado, Delaware or Nevada, the Republican Party could be left with a decidedly mixed impression of the movement and a renewed debate over whether Tea Party fervor made it harder — not easier — for Republicans to seize control of the Senate.

The outcome of those contests will also help determine the political strength of former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, the self-described godmother of the Tea Party, who has actively backed many candidates. Ms. Palin has sought to rescue the faltering campaign of Joe Miller, who won an insurgent campaign for the Republican Senate nomination in Alaska but is in a close race with the write-in campaign of the woman he beat in the primary, Senator Lisa Murkowski. Democrats have some hope that they could snatch the seat if Republicans split their vote.

THE OBAMA MAP As the night wears on, one thing may become clearer: the extent to which Mr. Obama faces a new political reality as he begins to think about re-election in 2012.

Among the most telling indicators will be the outcomes of a handful of races for governor in important states Mr. Obama won in his 2008 campaign against Senator John McCain of Arizona. Those include Colorado, Florida, New Mexico and Ohio.

In Florida, the contest between Alex Sink, the Democrat, and Rick Scott, the Republican, drew to a tie in polling in the waning days before the election. A victory for Mr. Scott would put a crucial swing state under the control of Republicans.

The same can be said for Ohio, where Mr. Obama made a late visit on Sunday to bolster the chances of Gov. Ted Strickland. The Democratic Party is bracing for losses across the Midwest, so a victory by Mr. Strickland in Ohio would give the White House a bit of good news in that region heading into next year.

In the end, though, Mr. Obama’s future may be determined by his ability to once again win a handful of Western states. Two races to watch: campaigns for governor in Colorado, which appears likely to be a solid Democratic victory, and New Mexico, which is leaning Republican.

THE MONEY As the tide turned decidedly against the Democrats this fall, Mr. Obama and his allies took aim at a flood of money outside groups were spending on behalf of Congressional Republicans. They argued that the money would corrupt the process and provide an unfair advantage to their rivals.

That thesis will be tested Tuesday across the country in races like the one in Iowa’s First District, where outside conservative groups poured in close to $1 million to help defeat Representative Bruce Braley, a Democrat. In North Dakota’s at-large House seat, outside groups spent more than $2.4 million in a state where that much buys plenty of ads.

Outside groups, including American Crossroads, a group the Republican strategist Karl Rove helped start, put more money into Colorado’s Senate race than any other in the country — a total of $25 million. If Senator Michael Bennet, the Democrat, loses there, Mr. Obama and his allies will no doubt point to Colorado as the prime example of their frustration about special-interest money in politics.

THE BLUE DOGS Conservative Democrats in the South won big in 2006 and 2008, edging out their Republican rivals in House districts that could have easily tilted either way. If they lose this time around, Republicans could solidify their grasp on the region.

Look for the outcomes in races like Representative Heath Shuler’s re-election bid in North Carolina’s 11th District. A loss by Mr. Shuler would indicate that even the most conservative Democrats are having a hard time this time around.

In Georgia, Representative Jim Marshall, a Democrat, is seeking to remain in office in part by promising not to support Ms. Pelosi for speaker.

Kitty Bennett, Carl Hulse and Jeff Zeleny contributed reporting.

    Finding Clues to the Future in Flood of Midterm Data, NYT, 1.11.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/02/us/politics/02campaign.html