60 senate votes: What are you gonna do with them Obama?
If the purpose of running for office is to acquire power and if the purpose of acquiring power is to do some sort of lasting public good with it, then it would be fair of the American people to expect Pres. Barack Obama's report card to show significant accomplishments by the time the 2010 congressional elections roll in.
After today's announcement of Al Franken as the winner of last November's Minnesota Senate race, the Democrats now have 60 senate seats and 257 congressional seats, more than enough to push through the Democratic President's agenda. Any fears of a filibuster have now been eliminated. There is no longer a need to court Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins or any other so-called moderate Republican. The Democrats, if they only allow themselves to agree can now bring Americans single-payer Universal Healthcare, enact proper regulations of the financial industry, withdraw troops from Iraq, withdraw troops from a useless war in Afghanistan, confirm Sotomayor to the Supreme Court and much more...
But I suspect very few of those things will happen. Obama is a serial compromiser and Democrats and Progressives in general relish argument and debate even when it stands in the way of useful and valuable accomplishments. And that's probably going to be the Legacy of the 111th Congresss: immense possibilities but very few tangible results. I would love to eat my words in a few months but I don't think I will.
Unfortunately, he doesn't have 60 votes. He may have 60 democrats, or 58 + 2, but approximately 15 of those are prepared to oppose the president whenever their corporate masters dictate, no matter what the public wants.
60 votes will empower the obstructionists and force Obama to negotiate with his own party far more than he has ever had to do before. If only he had had the foresight to replace Harry Reid with a hardass he could depend on to advance his agenda, he wouldn't have this problem today. But Harry is a reliable steward of the Senatorial Club, nothing more. His first loyalty is to the institution of the Senate.
July 1, 2009 12:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am pretty sure the president does not get to name his own majority leader. If you can show me a precedent for that I'd love to see it. the stupidest thing a president can do is treat the Congress as if he is the prime minister and not the head of a co-equal branch.
Just by way of historical comparison, from 1963-1967 The democratic majority for Lyndon Johnson was 67-33 or 68-32. From 1965 -1967 Dems held a 295-140 majority in the House.
From 1935 to 1943, FDR never had less than 66 Senators from his party. The high was 75 from 1937-39.
July 1, 2009 3:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
A popular president can influence the selection. If he were to let it be known that he and Harry Reid might have some difficulty working together, there would have been a vote and a new majority leader would have taken over.
Precedent? George Bush never had a majority leader he couldn't work with, including Harry Reid and Tom Daschle.
July 1, 2009 3:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Of course, this assumes Obama has a problem with Harry. Sometimes I wonder. Sometimes I think Harry is the quintessential useful idiot.
July 1, 2009 3:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Obama is a serial compromiser..."
You say that as if it were a bad thing. You only need look back to the early Clinton years to see that an uncompromising approach usually results in - no results. It has been said that the reason the Clintons failed at healthcare reform was, in part, due to their my-way-or-the-highway approach. Let's wait to talk about what Obama's approach has or hasn't accomplished until after the 2010 mid-terms.
Consider this, what if Obama delivers real healthcare reform, green energy legislation, reversal of neocon foreign policies, immigration reform, financial industry regulatory reform, and stabilization of this bad recession all before completing his first 12-months in office, as it appears he will do? Think of the combined magnitude of those successes.
If Obama does, in fact, get his top campaign promises enacted that soon it would leave him with three whole years to his many other important, yet lower priority, objectives accomplished. That's why I feel that it's way too soon to condemn Obama on his commitment to gay rights and other governing issues, as some on the left have been doing.
July 1, 2009 2:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Obama's problem so far is that he compromises before negotiations begin. Anybody who has ever bought a used car knows you don't pay the sticker price. A 60-vote majority is the sticker price.
And waiting until after the 2010 elections may be too late, especially if Congressional ineptitude loses that 60-vote majority. The time to beginning pushing was Day One.
July 1, 2009 3:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not suggesting that Obama wait to push his agenda. To the contrary, I'm suggesting that he very much has and is pushing. While they may not be the kind of direct, clearly visible process which would make us viscerally feel the strength of Democratic electoral power, it may be more effective. What I'm suggesting is that Obama's strategy and tactics may, indeed, work where others have failed.
President Obama is, IMO, a pragmatic extreme-achiever. I've personally known only a couple such personalities and I can tell you that they get shit done that seems impossible to us ordinary folks. My observation is that they do so through hard-nosed prioritization of objectives, extreme mental focus and concentration of effort on that objective, and a rare level of self-discipline. Another public figure having such personality traits is Arnold Schwarzenegger. He was Mr. Olympia for multiple years, the top earning Hollywood movie star, and now is the Governor of our largest state. I don't place any achievement out of the reach of such people.
My suggestion of waiting to EVALUATE Obama's accomplishments until after the 2010 mid-terms is an arbitrary date. My point is that it's way too early to be judging what results will or won't be delivered. Obama has much cooking in the legislative pot and no one can say that he won't eventually serve it all up for supper.
July 2, 2009 9:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
Boy, you and I have two very different opinions about Arnold Schwarzenegger. Have you looked at California lately?
July 2, 2009 10:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
My point about Arnold is that he achieved all of his widely varying and towering personal objectives.
While I don't know the details of what's going on specifically in California, I do know that CA isn't the only state starring at bleak financial circumstances. There are broad systemic economic factors currently hurting the whole country.
July 2, 2009 12:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
BTW, I just saw this article at Salon.com regarding the troubles in CA. Seems like a very ugly situation about to boil-over there. Unfortunately, the article doesn't detail Schwarzenegger's role.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2009/07/02/california/
July 2, 2009 1:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Has he really reversed neocon foreign policy? Huge defense bills. Two wars still in progress. The financial regulation has been weak. Unemployment is still rising and all those poor folks Clinton reformed off of welfare are still poor. Democrats just refuse to see the poor. The poor are not centrist.
July 1, 2009 10:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, I think he has. At least, to the degree that a Brent Scowcroft realism school type foreign policy is a reversal of neocon type policy. Obama didn't begin either of the two wars, although, he does indicate that he would have gone after the Taliban. Two wars help make for huge defense bills.
This recession clearly had it's beginning and it's magnitude set in place under Bush. Whether you feel that improvement under Obama hasn't been fast enough or strong enough, his Keynesian economic approach can, IMO, only be regarded as having a positive or mitigating effect.
I agree with your insinuation that Democrats are not really concerned about the poor. There is no party of the left in the U.S., only a centrist Democratic party, and a right-wing reactionary Republican party. It is totally ludicrous for conservatives to call Obama a Marxist. Perhaps, conservatives should take a course in economics so that they can learn the actual meanings of the terms they so blithely toss around.
July 2, 2009 8:45 AM | Reply | Permalink