Obama's first year: Happy Anniversary Barack!

[Mornac]

• Tweet

Barack Obama's one-year presidency?
 
By Toby Harnden
January 19th, 2010

It still seems unthinkable that the Democrats could lose a Senate seat in Massachusetts. Ever since everyone got it wrong in the Democratic primary in New Hampshire in January 2008 we’ve all been reluctant to call New England election races before the votes have been cast. But Barack Obama’s party is already forming a circular firing squad and engaging in a big-time blame game. So if Scott Brown does beat Martha Coakley what will it mean? Here are 10 suggestions:

1. Health care reform is dead. Even if there was (and it’s doubtful) some procedural way the Democrats could push it through, such a move would be political suicide.

2. Obama will have failed to achieve his signature reform despite Democrats having had a healthy majority in the House and a 60:40 advantage in the Senate. That is a huge blow and could render him not just a one-term President but a one-year President in terms of his political authority.

3. Obama’s will have failed to achieve his signature reform in such a way as to destroy any chances of fulfilling a signature pledge: to bring a new bipartisanship to Washington. By pushing through a bill on a party-line vote in the Senate, he left himself vulnerable to an electoral surprise or a death – it was a win-or-bust strategy.

4. Republicans, of course, played a major role in destroying health care reform. Democrats will ty to portray them as the rejectionist party of “No” – and any GOP jubilation will help play into that.

5. Just because Obama has failed, it doesn’t mean Republicans have succeeded. The party lacks a credible national figurehead or standard bearer for 2012. There’s time yet but having helped tear Obama down, the party needs to start building itself up and offering an alternative.

6. Look for many more embattled Democrats in the House and possibly even the Senate opt to not run in the November mid-terms. After all, if a Democrat can get beaten in Massachusetts how many Democrat incumbents in red states and districts that went for Obama in  ‘08 will be feeling secure?

7. Nothing will get done in Congress this year.

8. The stage is set for big Republican gains in November. The House will be in play and even the long-shot chance of taking the Senate becomes more feasible.

9. Posing nude in a soft porn magazine will no longer be a bar to political office

10. 2010 will become the year of populism.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyharnden/100022887/barack-obamas-one-year-presidency/

[lucy]

If we could just get hospitals to stop charging 25 bucks for every tissue sneezed into....(personal experience...I fought the bill)  or 10K to fix a broken arm or 3500 for a simple MRI procedure, we might start real health reform, but medicine in this country has become a racket/

[lucy]

And we could also ask the Federal Reserve to move their headquarters to England since that is where they seem to thrive the most/

After all, it is European banks that own the FR, not Americans....if they want a Federal Reserve printing their EU and demanding interest on what they print, fine. We need to have a national currency board that is based in the US again. I don't care if we did go bankrupt in 1875 and in 1910 and again in 1933...the owners have made trillions off their investment/ And we are, indeed, broke, because of it/

[makesenseplease]

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/01/20/obama.first.year/index.html?section=cnn_latest

[johnhp]

If we could just get hospitals to stop charging 25 bucks for every tissue sneezed into....(personal experience...I fought the bill)  or 10K to fix a broken arm or 3500 for a simple MRI procedure, we might start real health reform, but medicine in this country has become a racket/

You know what would fix that?  If we had a for profit health care system instead of system run by communists and their state monopoly....

[IM2]

Health Care does not have to die.

There is always reconciliation and that does not take 60 votes. If democrats want to play like republicans, they will use this andpas health care and not give a fuck what republicans think. Now if they wantot play Americans, then they do what they do now, which might kill the bill, but it continues the democratic process.

Secondly if the 60 vote rule did not exist there would not be any problem passing the health care bill. So then all it took for the health care bill to stall was a republican party totally determined to stop it by marching lock step into saying no.

So then if we are fool enough to let republicans run things again, the wasteland this nation becomes is our fault.

[johnhp]

Health Care does not have to die.

They need to force a filibuster.

[Mornac]

Health Care does not have to die.

There is always reconciliation and that does not take 60 votes. If democrats want to play like republicans, they will use this andpas health care and not give a fuck what republicans think. Now if they wantot play Americans, then they do what they do now, which might kill the bill, but it continues the democratic process.

Secondly if the 60 vote rule did not exist there would not be any problem passing the health care bill. So then all it took for the health care bill to stall was a republican party totally determined to stop it by marching lock step into saying no.

--IM2: It's over.

[johnhp]

Mornac

What, precisely, is over?

[IM2]

Mornac,

IM2: It's over.

Again, reconciliation is a tactic that can be used. Republicans used it constantly when they had the majority. So if democrats decided to play like republicans, then the election of a temporary republican senator from Massachusetts doesn't matter. And lets be real clear on this, the guy who got elected last night is up for re election in november. At that time he will probably be running against Ted Kennedy's wife, and that spells doom for any republican, much less this documented right wing wacko.

[johnhp]

IM

i say break out the mattresses and make them filibuster.  Then, in the next election show the electorate videos of these idiots reading from phone books on the floor of the Senate rather than doing the people's business.

[Mornac]

Mornac

What, precisely, is over?

--The attempted socialist healthcare coup.

[Mornac]

Mornac,

Again, reconciliation is a tactic that can be used. Republicans used it constantly when they had the majority. So if democrats decided to play like republicans, then the election of a temporary republican senator from Massachusetts doesn't matter. And lets be real clear on this, the guy who got elected last night is up for re election in november. At that time he will probably be running against Ted Kennedy's wife, and that spells doom for any republican, much less this documented right wing wacko.

--IM2: It's over.

[johnhp]

--The attempted socialist healthcare coup.

Name the specific provision that socialized healthcare.

[Observer]

Name the specific prevision that socialized healthcare.

What is a "prevision"?

Is that like precognition?