So, yes, Dobbs may run for the presidency. But as a warm up, as it were, he might run for senate against Menendez.
Admittedly, Dobbs v. Menendez would have some iconic oomph in the Dobbs Universe, with the whole white guy taking a job back from a Hispanic angle. But there is the problem of Menendez being up for reelection in 2012 rather than 2010. So I'm not sure how that's an intermediate step for running against Obama in 2012. Or maybe I just don't understand the math.
In any case, please don't tell me I'm the only one who remembers Dobbs and Space.com. In case you don't, this isn't the first time Dobbs left CNN. He left in 1999 to found and run internet start-up Space.com. Alas, like so many boom era ventures, Space.com had a fiery reentry when the dot.com market collapsed. And Dobbs was back at CNN a year or so later.
All of which tells me that the night is still young. If this politics thing doesn't work out, Dobbs could be back at CNN by 2011.
]]>The topic was budget deficits and the stimulus plan; and the anchor was Stuart Varney, a one-time financial news reporter for CNN. Varney was berating some hapless guest about how the Stimulus had "failed" because the jobless rate is higher now than it was when the bill passed. And thus the money should never even have been spent.
]]> Now, we're no strangers to hearing that the stimulus 'failed'. But that's usually from Republican politicians. And from them it's more understandable. First, because an opposition party has no percentage doing anything but saying the in-party's policies have failed. And even though no one thought that unemployment wouldn't keep going up, the current 10% unemployment rate is just too big a political target not to hit. Second, because Republican politicians simply have a more developed group propensity for lying.But Varney is at least supposed to be a financial reporter, not a politician or GOP spin-meister. And it is astonishing to think that there are people who actually think -- or more likely in this case pretend on TV -- that we'd be in better shape today if we did nothing to create off-setting demand in the economy or better yet, cut spending across the board to force our way into a Great Depression.
This isn't to say that the stimulus was perfect. It probably should have been larger, something I suspect even the people at the White House would concede. And it certainly could have been structured differently. But the idea that it's a failure because unemployment didn't stop rising as soon as the bill past or even long after is just crazy.
There's no getting around the irony that President Obama's approval numbers are now weighed down by a combination of a) the profound discontent at the economic condition of the country which was already pretty much foreordained when he came into office in the midst of a historic economic crisis and b) dissatisfaction with his policy responses which have only blunted rather than prevented or fixed the financial carnage.
Life's hard and he asked for the job. But it's scary to think how many people either don't get or are paid to pretend not to get that we probably avoided a financial collapse of vastly greater proportions than the protracted recession we're now in.
]]>Got that? Justin hops into the Gaubatz rabbit hole for the latest on the story.
]]>Meanwhile, on the 'reality, what a concept' front, I'd totally missed this. But HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today released a state by state breakdown of what the Senate bill would mean in different states -- how many more people could get insurance, how many would qualify for subsidies and tax credits to purchase insurance, etc. Worth a look.
]]>I am a political scientist who has studied the Senate filibuster. As much as I'd like to agree with JB's post, it misses the mark in important ways -- leading people to blame Obama and Reid for what is really way beyond their control. (Note: that is not to say that Reid hasn't made mistakes or Obama has not made mistakes -- but that is a separate question).]]> Here is the issue: JB writes: "If this had not been the case, legislation like the 1986 Tax Reform Act (which overhauled the entire federal tax code), the Goldwater-Nichols bill of that year restructuring the Pentagon, and the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments could never have been enacted." Here is the problem: all of those pieces of legislation passed with overwhelming majorities voting yes -- far more than 60 votes. For example, the Senate passed Golwater Nichols with 95 or 96 yea votes; Clean Air Act passed 89-11. Even if a few yes votes would've rather seen the bill fail, this is no way comparable to health care today. In other words, filibusters could not succeed in the Tax Reform, Goldwater-Nichols, Clean Air Act cases etc because if someone filibustered, more than 60 senators would genuinely want to end the filibuster so that the bill would pass. Today, there are not 60 senators who want the bill to pass, as it currently stands. That is lousy, but it is not something that Harry Reid could change by being a better legislative strategist. JB is right that it was not always this way: before the 1970s, it was pretty common for major, controversial bills to pass the Senate absent a filibuster-proof supportive majority. But since then, the filibuster has become so widely accepted (and so costless) that it is a real veto (except when reconciliation is an option -- which is not so feasible here) absent 60 votes. Note also: the idea of citing the southern Democrats as at all restrained on civil rights opposition is laughable. The only reason the 1964 Civil Rights Act could pass is that LBJ and the Democrats made enough concessions to Dirksen to get enough GOP votes to have 67 for cloture (which was the threshold back then). Fortunately, Dirksen was not anywhere near as conservative as today's Republicans, so the concessions were not as substantial as would be required to get GOPers on board today for any liberal legislation.
I think both readers have good points here. But, thinking back, there's no question that as recently as the 1990s filibusters (or using whatever obstructive measures to force 60 vote majorities) were much less common than they are today. Today it is treated as a given; 60 votes is the default. That simply did not used to be the case.
Some of it is a change in standards, a breakdown of informal rules, as JB suggested. But I think we're also deluding ourselves if we do not figure in a large role for larger structural changes in our politics. Simply put, the broader climate of political polarization in the country -- a socio-political reality that transcends parliamentary rules -- creates pressures for party coherence and party discipline that makes the resort to these tactics more and more the norm.
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