Blog

Robert Kuttner

Robert Kuttner
Co-Founder and Co-Editor of The American Prospect

We have just witnessed what could be a turning point in the Obama presidency. In many respects we can thank Scott Brown. For it took the humiliating loss of Ted Kennedy’s senate seat, and the even deeper incipient humiliation of lost health reform, for Obama to be reborn as a fighter. It remains to be seen whether he will match the resolve that he finally summoned on health reform with comparable leadership on all of the other challenges he yet faces.

But even those of us who were lukewarm on this bill should savor the moment and honor Obama’s odyssey. His Saturday speech was simply the greatest of his presidency. It reminded us of the inspirational figure in whom so many of us invested such hopes last summer and fall. If you have been on Jupiter and somehow missed the speech, you owe it to yourself to watch it.

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At long last, we saw this president leading, as only a president can. And we saw him leading as a progressive Democrat, finally admitting that no common ground with today’s Republicans is possible, narrating stories we all can recognize about the human tragedy that is our current health care system.

We saw him reminding Democratic congressmen and women why progress on health reform is good politics. We saw him using gentle ridicule on the Republicans, who have suddenly become oddly solicitous of the Democrats’ congressional majority.

I noticed that there’s been a lot of friendly advice offered all across town. (Laughter.) Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Karl Rove — they’re all warning you of the horrendous impact if you support this legislation. Now, it could be that they are suddenly having a change of heart and they are deeply concerned about their Democratic friends. (Laughter.) They are giving you the best possible advice in order to assure that Nancy Pelosi remains Speaker and Harry Reid remains Leader and that all of you keep your seats. That’s a possibility. (Laughter.)
But it may also be possible that they realize after health reform passes and I sign that legislation into law, that it’s going to be a little harder to mischaracterize what this effort has been all about.

We watched Obama master the mechanics of legislative politics, cobbling together a majority one vote at a time. And we observed the Republican right reduced to sputtering frustration.

What a splendid shift from the Obama who less than a month ago went imploringly to reason with the House Republican Caucus.

Until very recently, the press treated this battle as a symmetrical stand-off. Now, with the president at last regaining control of the narrative, the Republicans are revealed as pure obstructionists. As the bill takes effect and citizens actually experience benefits (and as Obama said, “Lo and behold, nobody is pulling the plug on Grandma,”) the Republicans will lose both as the party of No, and as a party that tried and failed to block a beneficial reform that citizens will come to value.

It has taken more than fourteen months for Obama to vindicate as president the leadership potential that we saw on the campaign trail; fourteen months to give up on the fantasy of bipartisanship; fourteen months to start truly inspiring ordinary people as he did as a candidate.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi deserves to share this moment. She never gave up on this legislation, and she kept after Obama and his aides to be tougher, smarter, and unapologetically partisan. She as much as Obama did the hard work of pulling together a majority, and kept Obama from caving in to Rahm Emanuel’s advice to seek a puny bill that the Republicans might support.

The media is notorious for exaggerating the ups and downs of a president. A few weeks ago, Obama and health reform were doomed and Obama was not up to the job. In the coming days, we will see a jubilant Obama on the cover of newsmagazines. He will be lionized as a giant-killer. His approval ratings will rise, both because more Americans are paying attention to the beneficial features of the bill as opposed to the Republican caricatures and because Americans love a winner.

Whether he continues to earn these accolades depends on what he does next, now that the long distraction of health reform is finally behind us. For this come-from behind victory is only the first step in a long road back to the presidency we thought we were getting when we voted for Barack Obama.

The financial system is setting itself up for a second collapse, as new speculative maneuvers make insiders rich and add risks to the rest of the system. The bill working its way through the Senate is far too weak to fix what is broken. We are inviting new scandals, even before we get to the bottom of what really happened at Lehman Brothers and at AIG.

Mortgage foreclosures continue to increase far faster than the Administration’s feeble program of subsidizing the banks can provide relief to homeowners. Credit is still very tight because of the administration’s strategy of putting Wall Street bank balance sheets ahead of recovery on Main Street.

Last week’s signing ceremony in the Rose Garden for a pitifully small jobs bill was enough to wilt the roses. It was a relic of what we get when we strive for bipartisanship. With the economy short at least eleven million jobs, Obama himself has appointed a bipartisan deficit-reduction commission stacked with members who are almost certain to call for massive cuts in social investment that America needs.

And the health bill itself only begins the long task of wresting control of the health care system from callous insurance and drug companies. We still have to fight for a real public option that is the first step towards national health insurance.

But in the springtime of March 2010, we have seen a president who evidently has learned how to lead, who relishes winning, and who is primed to become a more effective progressive. For that we should be grateful. It should whet his appetite as a fighter — and ours.

***

Robert Kuttner’s new book is A Presidency in Peril. He is co-editor of The American Prospect and a senior fellow at Demos. In addition, he is the author Obama’s Challenge.

By Robert L. Borosage
Co-Director of the Campaign for America’s Future

“Yesterday, we took a step, a strong first step toward putting Americans back to work, but … it’s a first step. This is the beginning, not the end,” Senate Majority Leaded Harry Reid said, hailing the pending passage of a $15 billion jobs bill, as five Republican Senators, led by newly elected Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown, joined to break the reflexive Republican filibuster.

The Christian Science Monitor suggested Reid had discovered “the secret for moving legislation” — proceed in piecemeal fashion, focusing on measures that have broad popularity. Next up, a thirty day extension of unemployment insurance, and then a second jobs bill focused on “a tourism promotion bill, a series of measures to help small businesses, and a package of popular tax-credit extensions, including an extension of unemployment benefits.”

Is this the measure of bipartisan success — passing legislation that scarcely measures up to a gesture? Next, they’ll celebrate bipartisan cooperation in creating jobs by joining together to expand the presidential libraries of Bill Clinton and George Bush (well, maybe not).

Democrats are currently bedeviled. With control of the White House and both houses of Congress, they are expected to produce. And most Americans, the polls suggest, want the parties to work together to solve the country’s staggering problems. So every politician — left, right and center — pays at least rhetorical tribute to bipartisan cooperation. This week, Washington is awash in bipartisan treacle — from Evan Bayh’s parting complaints, to Thursday’s White House Showtime on health care.

But there is a small problem. We’re in the midst of a pitched battle about direction.
Republicans — reduced to an overwhelmingly conservative, largely Southern caucus — are more ideologically unified than ever, and wedded to tax cuts, domestic spending cuts, and deregulation. Now despite the recession, they proclaim a politically convenient reborn belief in balanced budgets. Their conservative base is aroused. They see the Obama program as a nefarious attempt to transform America into a “socialist” — read social democratic — country. Their natural congressional strategy has been one of obstruction: just say no to whatever Obama says, and use the filibuster and the hold and other arcane Senate rules that empower the minority to block progress.

This strategy is enforced by conservative activists and corporate lobbies. Thus, every Republican pre-presidential candidate appearing at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference celebrated the “Party of No” strategy against Obama, while arguing that bipartisan cooperation could take place only on their terms. Want a bipartisan dialogue on health care? Scrap the plans that passed the House and Senate and start over. Want a bipartisan dialogue on financial reform? Torpedo any hint of an independent agency to protect consumers. Want progress on energy? Drill, baby, drill.

This strategy has been surprisingly effective. After Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts, Republicans are salivating about big gains in the fall. They aren’t about to change strategy.

So what are Democrats to do? The latest gambit is to try bite sized legislation, defined largely on conservative terms. The $15 billion “jobs” bill is a perfect example. It won’t add much to the deficit and is composed almost entirely of corporate tax cuts.

It only suffers from one flaw. It can pass, but it won’t matter much. The US now has some 25 million people unemployed or underemployed. Long-term unemployment is at record levels. In urban areas, the level of unemployment among the young reaches towards one in two. States and localities are facing brutal fiscal crises that will require further layoffs of teachers, police, fire fighters and other state workers and contractors. Americans, reeling from the loss of $13 trillion in assets, are reducing debts and tightening their belts. Consumers and companies are paying down debt, not spending or investing. Banks are raking in record profits, but are cutting lending to the real economy. The first Recovery Plan staunched the collapse of the economy, but simply was not sufficient. In response, the House passed a $150 billion jobs bill in December. Obama sought a $250 billion package, largely for corporate tax cuts, infrastructure, and aid to the unemployed. Even that was probably inadequate to the task.

In comparison, the $15 billion “jobs” bill doesn’t merit the name. It consists primarily of tax breaks for businesses — waiving the employers’ payroll tax for a year for the hire of someone unemployed over 60 days. If the employee is kept on the payroll for a year, the company can earn a $1000 tax credit.

The CBO generously estimates this might create 250,000 jobs — not even a dent in the jobs shortage. But the real number is likely to be far less. Even in a recession, some employers are hiring while more are laying off folks. The tax credit will go almost entirely to reward employers who are hiring people that they would hire anyway. And the rest is likely to reward employers who game the system (close down a union plant in Michigan and open a non-union one in Mississippi and collect the tax credit along the way).

If this lands on the president’s desk, it will be celebrated as an example of bipartisan cooperation. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is committed to holding a series of votes on various bite-sized elements of a jobs program to see if he can gain the handful of Republican votes needed to get by the inevitable Republican filibuster.

But Reid’s strategy is likely to end up with both bad policy and bad politics. Bite sized bills on conservative terms won’t begin to address the challenges we face. They aren’t likely to be viewed as a success by Americans — who are far less interested in process than in results. Reid’s strategy may well succeed in letting Republicans look cooperative and Democrats look ineffective.

At the end of the day, Americans must be presented with the real choices we face. The crisis is too severe for the argument to be ducked. Democrats would be well advised to force votes on a real jobs program, a serious measure to curb the banks, comprehensive health care. Republicans will obstruct. Democrats should make them filibuster, expose the corporate interests that are behind them, and lay out their alternatives. Then move as much as possible by majority rule, and take the argument to the American people. Mobilize progressives rather than dismaying them. Americans deserve a choice. And Democrats are likely to fare better by making it a clear one.

***

Robert Borosage and Campaign for America’s Future Co-Director Roger Hickey are co-editors of the book, The Next Agenda: Blueprint for a New Progressive Movement.

Robert Borosage

By Robert L. Borosage
Co-Director of the Campaign for America’s Future

“Yesterday, we took a step, a strong first step toward putting Americans back to work, but … it’s a first step. This is the beginning, not the end,” Senate Majority Leaded Harry Reid said, hailing the pending passage of a $15 billion jobs bill, as five Republican Senators, led by newly elected Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown, joined to break the reflexive Republican filibuster.

The Christian Science Monitor suggested Reid had discovered “the secret for moving legislation” — proceed in piecemeal fashion, focusing on measures that have broad popularity. Next up, a thirty day extension of unemployment insurance, and then a second jobs bill focused on “a tourism promotion bill, a series of measures to help small businesses, and a package of popular tax-credit extensions, including an extension of unemployment benefits.”

Is this the measure of bipartisan success — passing legislation that scarcely measures up to a gesture? Next, they’ll celebrate bipartisan cooperation in creating jobs by joining together to expand the presidential libraries of Bill Clinton and George Bush (well, maybe not).

Democrats are currently bedeviled. With control of the White House and both houses of Congress, they are expected to produce. And most Americans, the polls suggest, want the parties to work together to solve the country’s staggering problems. So every politician — left, right and center — pays at least rhetorical tribute to bipartisan cooperation. This week, Washington is awash in bipartisan treacle — from Evan Bayh’s parting complaints, to Thursday’s White House Showtime on health care.

But there is a small problem. We’re in the midst of a pitched battle about direction.
Republicans — reduced to an overwhelmingly conservative, largely Southern caucus — are more ideologically unified than ever, and wedded to tax cuts, domestic spending cuts, and deregulation. Now despite the recession, they proclaim a politically convenient reborn belief in balanced budgets. Their conservative base is aroused. They see the Obama program as a nefarious attempt to transform America into a “socialist” — read social democratic — country. Their natural congressional strategy has been one of obstruction: just say no to whatever Obama says, and use the filibuster and the hold and other arcane Senate rules that empower the minority to block progress.

This strategy is enforced by conservative activists and corporate lobbies. Thus, every Republican pre-presidential candidate appearing at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference celebrated the “Party of No” strategy against Obama, while arguing that bipartisan cooperation could take place only on their terms. Want a bipartisan dialogue on health care? Scrap the plans that passed the House and Senate and start over. Want a bipartisan dialogue on financial reform? Torpedo any hint of an independent agency to protect consumers. Want progress on energy? Drill, baby, drill.

This strategy has been surprisingly effective. After Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts, Republicans are salivating about big gains in the fall. They aren’t about to change strategy.

So what are Democrats to do? The latest gambit is to try bite sized legislation, defined largely on conservative terms. The $15 billion “jobs” bill is a perfect example. It won’t add much to the deficit and is composed almost entirely of corporate tax cuts.

It only suffers from one flaw. It can pass, but it won’t matter much. The US now has some 25 million people unemployed or underemployed. Long-term unemployment is at record levels. In urban areas, the level of unemployment among the young reaches towards one in two. States and localities are facing brutal fiscal crises that will require further layoffs of teachers, police, fire fighters and other state workers and contractors. Americans, reeling from the loss of $13 trillion in assets, are reducing debts and tightening their belts. Consumers and companies are paying down debt, not spending or investing. Banks are raking in record profits, but are cutting lending to the real economy. The first Recovery Plan staunched the collapse of the economy, but simply was not sufficient. In response, the House passed a $150 billion jobs bill in December. Obama sought a $250 billion package, largely for corporate tax cuts, infrastructure, and aid to the unemployed. Even that was probably inadequate to the task.

In comparison, the $15 billion “jobs” bill doesn’t merit the name. It consists primarily of tax breaks for businesses — waiving the employers’ payroll tax for a year for the hire of someone unemployed over 60 days. If the employee is kept on the payroll for a year, the company can earn a $1000 tax credit.

The CBO generously estimates this might create 250,000 jobs — not even a dent in the jobs shortage. But the real number is likely to be far less. Even in a recession, some employers are hiring while more are laying off folks. The tax credit will go almost entirely to reward employers who are hiring people that they would hire anyway. And the rest is likely to reward employers who game the system (close down a union plant in Michigan and open a non-union one in Mississippi and collect the tax credit along the way).

If this lands on the president’s desk, it will be celebrated as an example of bipartisan cooperation. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is committed to holding a series of votes on various bite-sized elements of a jobs program to see if he can gain the handful of Republican votes needed to get by the inevitable Republican filibuster.

But Reid’s strategy is likely to end up with both bad policy and bad politics. Bite sized bills on conservative terms won’t begin to address the challenges we face. They aren’t likely to be viewed as a success by Americans — who are far less interested in process than in results. Reid’s strategy may well succeed in letting Republicans look cooperative and Democrats look ineffective.

At the end of the day, Americans must be presented with the real choices we face. The crisis is too severe for the argument to be ducked. Democrats would be well advised to force votes on a real jobs program, a serious measure to curb the banks, comprehensive health care. Republicans will obstruct. Democrats should make them filibuster, expose the corporate interests that are behind them, and lay out their alternatives. Then move as much as possible by majority rule, and take the argument to the American people. Mobilize progressives rather than dismaying them. Americans deserve a choice. And Democrats are likely to fare better by making it a clear one.

***

Robert Borosage and Campaign for America’s Future Co-Director Roger Hickey are co-editors of the book, The Next Agenda: Blueprint for a New Progressive Movement.

Robert Borosage

 Robert L. Borosage
Co-Director of the Campaign for America’s Future

Health care reform suffered the torments of partisan obstruction. Now gird yourself for financial reform and the perils of bipartisan blight.

In health care, lockstep Republican opposition caused months of delay, and empowered the likes of Connecticut’s embittered Senator Joe Lieberman and Nebraska’s compromised Ben Nelson to exact cankerous concessions to forge a super-majority.

So Washington pundits rail against bitter partisanship. Republican Senator John McCain charges that Obama is to blame for the partisan divide, even though the President wasted months while Max Baucus courted coy Republicans. Senator John Cornyn, the most rabid of Republican obstructionists, damns the partisan process as a reason to oppose the health care bill. This is akin to a gang of thieves lamenting crime in the streets.

Next year, assuming that this health care bill, like a large kidney stone, must eventually be passed, the Congress will turn to financial reform. In the House, Republicans remain in lockstep opposition, providing not one vote for a measure that would take the first steps towards limiting the ability of banks to fleece us again. But in the Senate, we may well witness not the price of partisan rancor, but the blight of bipartisan cooperation.

Senate Banking Committee Chair Chris Dodd put forth a strong legislative proposal, one far better than the administration’s plan. When the Committee’s senior Republican, Alabama’s Richard Shelby, scorned that in an extended rant, Dodd decided to pair up Democrats and Republicans on the committee to come up with bipartisan solutions. And now reports suggest that a bipartisan plan may well be unveiled in January, with Dodd pushing for an early vote.

Hold onto your wallets. We don’t yet know what is in the bipartisan bill, but we do know what has been kicked to the curb. Shelby announced one price for his cooperation: no new agency to protect consumers from financial fraud or abuse. Want Republican cooperation? Then the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency – with a mandate to police everything from mortgage fraud to preposterous bank overdraft charges – is verboten. Grateful banking lobbyists will insure him a lucrative retirement.

We continue to suffer a pandemic of bank fraud and abuse. In the housing bubble, mortgage companies rewarded brokers for peddling exotic mortgages to customers that the brokers knew couldn’t afford them and didn’t understand them. Now, banks are raking in record sums from overdraft charges, credit card fees, and preposterous ATM charges. Payday lenders are pocketing the equivalent of 1000% interest from the poorest working people.

The White House has sensibly championed a new agency devoted not to the health of the banks but to the protection of consumers. Already the banking lobby succeeded in weakening the proposal in the partisan House, exempting auto dealers – hell, we know they are honest, right? – and over 90% of all lending institutions, and eliminating the mandate to offer “wonder bread” or plain vanilla loans along with the exotica banks prefer to peddle.

But that was with House Republicans in opposition. In the Senate, the price of bipartisanship is to trash the whole concept. Caveat emptor, baby.

The bipartisan blight is not limited to banking reform. A bipartisan majority is now lining up in the Senate to confirm Ben Bernanke to a second term as head of the Federal Reserve, without demanding an audit of the Fed’s books to review the terms and conditions of the deals he made in shoveling literally trillions in public subsidies and guarantees and swaps to private financial institutions – here and abroad.

Similarly, bipartisan support will be arranged – although with Republicans supplying most of the votes – for the $50 billion supplemental to support the escalation in Afghanistan.

And most pernicious, Senators in both parties are lining up colleagues to support a bipartisan Commission to provide cover for cutting Social Security and Medicare.

Why is bipartisan blight so toxic? Because it generally means that more conservative Democrats will have made common cause with the less rabid reactionaries in the Republican Party. At best, the result reflects the views of powerful entrenched interests that buy into both parties. At worst, it reflects both parties seeking to avoid responsibility for undertaking measures the establishment wants and the vast majority of Americans oppose. The bank bailout stays secreted, while Bernanke gets confirmed. Consumers get ditched. The war gets funded. Seniors take a hit.

Partisan rancor is debilitating; stalemate fatal. But bipartisan accord is too often more affliction than antidote. We’d be far better off getting rid of the Senate filibuster and allowing majorities to rule. Hold them accountable if they fail; re-elect them if they deliver. But don’t give a minority the power either to obstruct or to set the price of bipartisan accord.

***

Robert Borosage and Campaign for America’s Future Co-Director Roger Hickey are co-editors of the book, The Next Agenda: Blueprint for a New Progressive Movement.

Robert Reich

By Robert Reich
Former U.S. Secretary of Labor, Professor at Berkeley

First there was Medicare for all 300 million of us. But that was a non-starter because private insurers and Big Pharma wouldn’t hear of it, and Republicans and “centrists” thought it was too much like what they have up in Canada — which, by the way, cost Canadians only 10 percent of their GDP and covers every Canadian. (Our current system of private for-profit insurers costs 16 percent of GDP and leaves out 45 million people.)

So the compromise was to give all Americans the option of buying into a “Medicare-like plan” that competed with private insurers. Who could be against freedom of choice? Fully 70 percent of Americans polled supported the idea. Open to all Americans, such a plan would have the scale and authority to negotiate low prices with drug companies and other providers, and force private insurers to provide better service at lower costs. But private insurers and Big Pharma wouldn’t hear of it, and Republicans and “centrists” thought it would end up too much like what they have up in Canada.

So the compromise was to give the public option only to Americans who wouldn’t be covered either by their employers or by Medicaid. And give them coverage pegged to Medicare rates. But private insurers and … you know the rest.

So the compromise that ended up in the House bill is to have a mere public option, open only to the 6 million Americans not otherwise covered. The Congressional Budget Office warns this shrunken public option will have no real bargaining leverage and would attract mainly people who need lots of medical care to begin with. So it will actually cost more than it saves.

But even the House’s shrunken and costly little public option is too much private insurers, Big Pharma, Republicans, and “centrists” in the Senate. So Harry Reid has proposed an even tinier public option, which states can decide not to offer their citizens. According to the CBO, it would attract no more than 4 million Americans.

It’s a token public option, an ersatz public option, a fleeting gesture toward the idea of a public option, so small and desiccated as to be barely worth mentioning except for the fact that it still (gasp) contains the word “public.”

And yet Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson mumble darkly that they may not even vote to allow debate on the floor of the Senate about the bill if it contains this paltry public option. And Republicans predict a “holy war.”

But what more can possibly be compromised? Take away the word “public?” Make it available to only twelve people?

Our private, for-profit health insurance system, designed to fatten the profits of private health insurers and Big Pharma, is about to be turned over to … our private, for-profit health care system. Except that now private health insurers and Big Pharma will be getting some 30 million additional customers, paid for by the rest of us.

Upbeat policy wonks and political spinners who tend to see only portions of cups that are full will point out some good things: no pre-existing conditions, insurance exchanges, 30 million more Americans covered. But in reality, the cup is 90 percent empty. Most of us will remain stuck with little or no choice — dependent on private insurers who care only about the bottom line, who deny our claims, who charge us more and more for co-payments and deductibles, who bury us in forms, who don’t take our calls.

I’m still not giving up. I want every Senator who’s not in the pocket of the private insurers or Big Pharma to introduce and vote for a “Ted Kennedy Medicare for All” amendment to whatever bill Reid takes to the floor. And if this fails, a “Ted Kennedy Real Public Option for All” amendment. Let every Senate Democratic who doesn’t have the guts to vote for either of them be known and counted.

***

Cross-posted from Robert Reich’s Blog

***

Robert Reich served as the nation’s 22nd Secretary of Labor and now is a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley. His latest book, “Supercapitalism,” is out in paperback. For copies of his articles, books, and public radio commentaries, go to www.robertreich.org.

Leo W. Gerard

By Leo W. Gerard
International President

“He’s a real nowhere Man,
Sitting in his Nowhere Land,
Making all his nowhere plans
For nobody.”

These lyrics to “Nowhere Man,” written and recorded in 1965 by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, describe the Republican Party of 2009. Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter rejected that party and returned to his Democratic roots because, even at the age of 79, he’s got plans that go somewhere.

The GOP’s leaders and their inactions have placed the party at the corner of Unpopular and Nowhere. GOP voter registration fell in every western state in 2008, including Colorado where it dropped a whopping 9 percent. That year, the Pew Research Center found that voters calling themselves Republicans declined six points over four years, for the lowest percentage of self-identified Republican voters in 16 years of Pew polling.

Pennsylvania voters, not always in step, were this time. More than 200,000 Republicans switched registration to Democrat in 2008. Arlen Specter, who was a Democrat the first 16 years of his adult life, this spring joined those fellow Pennsylvania Republicans and returned to his Democratic roots.

The Republican response typifies why voters continue to convert the GOP to D on their party membership cards. The Republican National Committee posted on its web site nasty automatic e-mails to Specter that can be sent with the click of a mouse. Mean spirited is bad enough, but these lack a certain introspection.

One is supposed to be the White House teleprompter welcoming Specter to the Democratic Party. The text says, “Welcome to the Democrats. I look forward to working together to borrow more money from China.” Another is supposed to be a welcome from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, saying, “You’ll love how much we can spend taxpayer money.” Both are blind to a fact that taxpayers clearly see – Republican majorities during the Bush administration spent so much that they created the largest budget deficits known to man or nation, compelling excessive borrowing from China.

He’s as blind as he can be,
Just sees what he wants to see,
Nowhere Man can you see me at all? – Nowhere Man

The leader of Specter’s new party – President Barack Obama – stood before the American people on his 100^th day in office, assessing progress and promising to press forward to aid people in need during the worst recession since the Great Depression.

He spoke of accomplishments, such as the stimulus bill that will create or save 3.5 million jobs, the extension of health insurance for 11 million children whose parents work full-time, and a measure to help homeowners refinance their mortgages. He talked of changing the tone of foreign policy from threats to diplomacy, forbidding torture and closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay.

This Democrat has his sights set on the next hundreds and hundreds of days and pledged to continue working on priorities he established during his campaign, including health care reform and clean energy development.

Even those who disagree with him know he’s got plans. He’s going places.  This guy’s definitely not at the corner of Unpopular and Nowhere.

He has offered to bring Republicans along with him, to negotiate with them, to include them in the process. But they’ve smacked him down at every turn. They’re not just fighting with him, either. They’re also bickering among themselves. And it isn’t pretty.

There was the infamous back and forth between GOP mouthpiece Rush Limbaugh who is calling for the president of his country to fail, and GOP chairman Michael Steele, who made himself famous by promising an “off the hook” public relations blitz “to uptick our image with everyone, including one-armed midgets.”  After Obama’s chief of staff said Limbaugh was the representative of the GOP, Steele shot back saying he was the head of the party, adding that Limbaugh was incendiary and “ugly.” Limbaugh responded with a rant on radio that Steele was unfit to lead, to which Steele responded by crawling on his belly to apologize to the “ugly” one.  There’s some inspiring leaders for you!

Now a group of Republicans has split from the RNC, calling itself the National Council for a New America. They contend they are upset that the GOP has failed to provide alternatives to the Democrats’ plans. The group includes former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. “It’s no secret that we’re in a seriously troubling time for the Republicans,” said Mike Murphy, a strategist who has advised Romney and Sen. John McCain.

It’s also seriously troubling that this new cabal, supposedly trying to solve the old group’s problems, called itself National Council for a New America. Clearly they are not satisfied with the current America, the America that is rejecting Republicans. So their plan is to remake America rather than to remake themselves.  Good luck with that.

Actually, there’s a much easier option. Obama described it to Republicans during the press conference on his 100^th day in office. Even with Specter in the Democratic fold and the potential of a 60-vote supermajority for Democrats in the Senate, the President said he would like to work with Republicans. He said the majority will likely rule on core issues. But there are many matters on which Republicans could exert influence if they would come to the table and negotiate in good faith.

Republicans can continue to simply vote NO on everything. They can bicker among themselves and look ridiculous to the American people. They can get nothing done and be the party of “I’m-in-control-NO-I’m-in-control” nonsense. They can continue to lose members and statesmen like Specter. Obama suggested that would be an unwise strategy.

That would be a nowhere strategy.