Republicans have a nine-point edge among those considered likely voters, plus a near 20-point lead among those expressing the highest amount of interest in the midterms.
Among all registered voters, however, both parties are tied on the generic ballot, 43 percent to 43 percent, suggesting that Democrats could potentially blunt GOP gains in November with high turnout at the polls.
Of course [Obama] deserves criticism. But what we must not do -- both as a generation and as a nation -- is to let our disillusion devolve into pessimism and laziness. What we now face is a moral challenge from which we cannot back down.
I was afraid that in your skepticism you had lost faith and given up -- you have to admit that the radicalism of your generation never quite lived up to its potential. You always say that politics is "the art of the possible": but if we could turn our anger into positive action, then surely the possible becomes a whole lot more probable.
Pessimism and laziness have been fed here by angry rhetoric and some especially nasty personal attacks. I haven't been around much for various reasons, but I have looked in from time to time and have been appalled at the ad hominem attacks leveled against people who don't agree with the café's conventional wisdom and the vicious criticism of opposing views and even writing styles. For all the lip service paid to free speech amongst us, to speak up here puts you at risk of being ripped verbally from end to end. The ugliness extends toward our president and perhaps flows from our disillusionment with him.
I was as starry eyed about the candidate Obama as the most idealistic of you and my disappointment in the president Obama is as great as any of yours. Looking back, though, I can see now that candidate Obama was exactly the same as President Obama. I ran to TPM for comfort and encouragement when candidate Obama's fight was flagging. I didn't understand his sporadic fading from the scene then, but I thought it was probably a function of the campaign and would be different when he was president. I was disappointed when he voted for telecom immunity, but rationalized that he would be different as president. He was running on Change, after all.
What we saw in the campaign is what we got in the president. Those of us who are most disappointed just didn't recognize what we were seeing. We are responsible to a large extent for our own disillusionment. We elected him and expected something from him that he never promised. It's time we recognize our own culpability. It's also time we recognized that both houses of Congress, but especially the Senate, bear an enormous responsibility for what has and has not been accomplished. President Obama does not govern in a vacuum.
Yes, President Obama deserves criticism. So does the Senate. But criticism doesn't get us any closer to our goals if it feeds our cynicism, pessimism and disillusionment; neither, especially, does voting for Green Party candidates. The two main parties have way more in common than I would like to see, but anyone who truly believes there's no difference between them has not been paying attention.
The one lesson we should have learned this past year is that liberals can't get the change we want by starting at the top. Nor can one man change things even if he is so inclined. Watching the dysfunction in Washington drove home to me the critical importance of politics at the local level. That's where the silent majority and then the moral majority and then the Christian Coalition started decades ago and the local level is where liberal activists need to concentrate today.
I bid bye-bye to Oklahoma last fall (YAY!) and I now live in
a purple state. It's a definite
improvement, but the cons are lurking like coyotes ready to pounce on the Dem incumbents. I
fully expect that the state will follow California down the drain If the cons
win and start cutting taxes and services.
So the local level is where I intend to be for the duration. I don't expect to see the change we want in
my life time, but I can do my part in getting it here eventually.
In the meantime, part of our moral challenge it seems to me is to keep out of the bog of despair and keep trying. Can we change our anger into positive action to make the possible into the probable? Or do we keep playing the blame game? What do you see as our moral challenge?
Tony Judt is the Professor in European Studies at New York University and Director of NYU's Erich Maria Remarque Institute. He suffers from ALS, Lou Gehrigs disease.
]]>In the late 1990s, Bill Clinton and
Newt Gingrich plotted planned to save Social Security and go down together
as heroes in the history books. Clinton appointed Erskine Bowles, his
chief of staff, to head the Clinton deficit commission (do I hear an
echo?). Bowles, who was trusted by both Clinton and Gingrich then became
the liaison between the two political rivals. As it turns out the real
hero was a heroine and her name was Monica Lewinsky. After le
affaire, came le impeachment and any
cooperation between the Clinton administration and the right, including the
conservadems was not going to happen. The
changes to Social Security were tabled, at least until the next Democratic
administration.
The tale is told in a new book by Steven Gillon: The Pact: Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and the Rivalry that Defined a Generation Read about it at firedoglake. Gillon answers questions in the comments.
What did Clinton have in mind for us? Brad DeLong says: (h/t Jane Hamsher)
As I understand Spratt's position now and back in 1997 and as I understand Clinton's position back in 1997, it is that:
1. Congress enacts option (1) above: if and when Social Security taxes are not sufficient to pay traditional Social Security benefits, traditional benefits will be cut so that they can be paid by taxes.
2. Some of the Social Security trust fund will be invested in the stock market in hope of getting a higher rate of return--but the Treasury will guarantee to make the Social Security trust fund whole if and when its stock market investments ever turn out to be net losses.
3. Congress also raises Social Security taxes--only it calls them "contributions" to "private accounts."
4. Social Security taxpayers get some choice as to how to invest their "private account" "contributions"--accepting more risk in the hope of higher return, or not.
5. Any gains or losses from investments in "private accounts" stay with the taxpayer in whose name the investments were made.
This deal would allow (1) Democrats to say that they have no allowed the diversion of a single dollar of Social Security taxes away from the current system; (2) Democrats to say that they have strengthened the Social Security system as a whole by reinforcing its finances and raising its financial resources; (3) Republicans to say that they have kept the Democrats from throwing more money down the well that is the unsustainable and outmoded twentieth-century Social Security system; (4) Republicans to say that they have created private accounts for every American.
Any changes going forward may or may not affect those of us who already receive SS, but all you youngsters better keep on top of it. Clinton's agenda will very likely become Obama's agenda now that O has assumed the neodem mantle.
]]>And as a senior citizen with a limited fixed income, I am extremely concerned about the Medicare cuts Obama has instituted. The cuts may save the government money, but will either shift the cost to me, or degrade the care I get. I have heard nothing to assure me that what we, young or old, get will be an improvement over what we have now. On the contrary, I believe what we get from this so-called reform will significantly lower the quality of care for most of us in this country.
I supported Obama like I have never supported another candidate in
my almost 50 years of voting. I am disheartened and angry to find that
I have elected a republican wrapped in democratic party platitudes. I never thought I would see a day when I agreed with the recent
conservative demonstrators, but that day is here. To this government I say - Keep your hands off my health insurance!