Obviously we are not privy to every conversation, but the feeling among Democrats here in DC that I have spoken with is quite poor. Obama was a great candidate, and even Democrats like myself who did not vote for him in the primary, came around his campaign, we understood the stakes. A brief word on the stakes here, for me it was always health care reform, I truly believe that a much more comprehensive plan than is proposed is needed, that it is the central tool by which we can battle spiraling deficits, and is a moral imperative of our nation to each citizen. More then anything else this was what I wanted accomplished most. Followed in second by an aggressive infrastructure campaign that we haven’t seen since the heyday of the Cold War.

And to his great credit, he provided the rhetoric and leadership during those months that made it a pleasure to say I supported him. Even as President Elect he took and announced bold steps that helped to build confidence in Wall Street and to a lesser extent Main Street, that help was going to come.

And, the real shame here, is that legislatively, Obama does have a good number of victories to point out. But the complete lack of message from the White House has left those victories as though they never even happened. Obama and others decided that they not only had the political capital and will to pass health care reform, but also a great enough concentration of the two to make it the center-piece of Obama’s first year in office. Early on he spelled out his plan for Reform. It has dominated the airwaves and media since he put his weight behind it, from the Joint Congressional address, to his televised press conferences, the President put all of his chips on red. Failure to enact health care reform, could very likely, in my mind certainly, mean an effective end to his Presidency, barring god forbid some great national crisis, or hopefully for us all, a spectacular economic recovery and growth period.

Both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, in my estimation, have failed to articulate any leadership. Obama has gone to the Hill a few times, meets with Congressional leaders, but has so far been unable to persuade them to move in his direction, or has not tried hard enough.

When Obama began to make his statements in the Presidential campaign and early in his administration about what he wanted from health care, I was puzzled. I understood that Obama was not going to persue a plan as radical as I’d like, but from the start he hedged what the bill would seek to do, stripped himself of measures he would seek. All the while, from a political standpoint, literally cutting fingers off of his hand. It’s not hard to see why before you negotiate you bring everything to the table, and then work out what can stay and what has to go, you don’t remove those potentially objectionable elements for your opposition before you even begin.

Maybe in some way, this is a validation, that Obama in sincere when he says we need to move past partisanship, and that he is serious about pragmatic solutions that both parties can get behind. But it’s a validation without victory, and validation without a chance of success.

I’ve been thinking to myself if I were working for the GOP what is the best lesson from this special election? To delay and block, and prevent health care reform from passing for just 5-6 more months. Because if we approach summer, with no bill signed by the President, the GOP can take advantage not just of growing sentiments that lean in the direction, but general disillusionment with the Democratic party, and probable low turnout for Democrats nationwide.

2008 was not a realignment, I thought that 2010 could be, and maybe it can be salvaged; but right now many people are voting in anger. We’d be foolish to not attribute Obama’s victory in large part to the great anger American’s had over the state of the economy, and John McCain’s inability to develop a credible voice on the matter. Going into early September, pre-Lehman, the polls were very tight. So it’s not surprise that until conditions improve, until people associate the Democratic party with fixing the economy and more importantly legislative success, we are headed for failure in November.

Now as we head into the week where the President will give his State of the Union, what will he do? Earlier it seemed like the natural course, would be to persuade House members to pass the Senate version of the bill, and work out the sticky details this spring and summer during budget reconciliation. But the President has already spoken on this topic: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/he-wasnt-the-one-weve-been-waiting-for/

“I would advise that we try to move quickly to coalesce around those elements of the package that people agree on. We know that we need insurance reform, that the health insurance companies are taking advantage of people. We know that we have to have some form of cost containment because if we don’t, then our budgets are going to blow up and we know that small businesses are going to need help so that they can provide health insurance to their families. Those are the core, some of the core elements of, to this bill. Now I think there’s some things in there that people don’t like and legitimately don’t like.”

Now what does he even say, to me this would have been the ideal moment to celebrate the passage of health care reform, and turn without delay to a forceful populist-style speech on what the President is doing for the economy. In fact, that is likely to be the major point, but how feasible is it to propose a serious legislative agenda for financial reform–when the centerpiece of the President’s first legislative year remains in doubt.

Domestically, politically, Democrats are facing a huge leadership deficit, they want to talk about what Teddy would have thought, I think in this instance anger, betrayal, and bewilderment that the Democratic leadership has been unwilling to do what is necessary to advance legislation. For example, Reid should have threatened the nuclear option on filibusters, and force some kind of compromise agreement like what was done during the Bush judicial appointments. (For what it’s worth I think the filibuster as used, primarily since the rule change that President Wilson pushed for, is pretty abhorrent to democracy anyway.) If they loose their seats, at least they can do so for having passed something that people truly hate, instead of losing a seat over failure to act, only able to point a finger at 41 Republicans and ask them to stop calling them names.

“No matter how hard we work, not matter how hard we try, the House of Representatives is going home tomorrow,” Reid said yesterday. “We have to face reality.” Which begs the question: what did this session of Congress do exactly? They made a lot of noise and did nothing. It began as an emergency sessions to put a “down payment” on the to come Obama package. Instead we have had some Washington style fighting about TARP and the auto industry.

Now, sure, Oil is below $50 a barrel. That might sounds like a good thing, but it also might means possible deflation, and there has definitely been a huge decrease in consumption. As the Times says “The speed of the falloff is a testimony to the world’s dire economic straits” and what has Congress done–nothing. I’m not saying that should do anything about Oil prices (although this may lead to the periodic disregard for environment issues), but that we’re in serious economic times and they’ve done nothing.

All but dead are the real stimulus proposals—assistance to states in the form of higher federal Medicaid payouts, money for infrastructure projects etc. Many observers are saying we need a stimulus package, and a big one to boot (Krugman says we should run a trillion dollar deficit), but neither Senate Democrats nor Republicans gave a $100 billion package much consideration on Monday.

So as the Economist put is “So, lots of deadlock, acrimony and short-sighted bickering. I can’t think of a more suitable way for the 110th Congress to end.”

I find it highly unlikely that Liebs will be reelected, which means that he has 4 years to find a new job. Let him angrily caucus with the GOP. At least he has friends there. He’s spewing bs now. He says that keeping him is in Obama’s spirit of bipartisanship. But if he has never said a kind word about Obama and now just wants his job, is he someone to keep?

I might agree with Nate Silver that Obama is likely to blame, but when he says:

So how you feel about Lieberman should ultimately hinge on how you feel about Obama, and how you feel about Obama should ultimately hinge on your opinion about whether he is liable to put that political capital to good use. If you believe Dean’s implication that Obama is going to use that political capital to pass both significant climate change reform and significant health care reform within the first two years of his presidency, you probably ought to give him the benefit of the doubt. If, on the other hand, you see Obama as someone more concerned with the accumulation of power toward ambiguous, uncertain, or incorrect ends, this is liable to be the first of a long line of displeasing decisions, and you had better get used to pushing back against the White House.

I disagree. I disagree with Obama on Lieberman because I think that allowing flagrant disloyalty to go unpunished is a dangerous precedent to set. I think you send a message, maybe for a generation of senators, that you can’t do what he did and then stay in the caucus you attack. Might it have been a distraction, sure? But would distraction have scuttled the Obama ship or does my opposition to Obama on this point mean that I will disagree with how Obama uses his political capital generally? No.

On a similar vein, despite routing for, voting for and fighting for Obama, I feel bad for McCain. Similarly to above, I don’t feel bad that he lost, but that he gave up so much of his reputation in the process. He’ll go down in history, if senators ever really go down in history at all, as a man who lost almost everything in the race. His actions, rhetoric, tone, and sudden policy switches will overshadow his genuine and often brave service to country. I can’t say that I agree with him on much of anything, but he’ll never be thought of as a above-the-fray politician again.

The recount started in Minnesota today. All I know is that December 5 is a long time a way, and we might get daily stories about 28 vote increases.

According to the Hotline and the Union Leader, Sununu, a major target for Democrats in 2008, is the only member of the NH delegation who is against the position. As a very vulnerable target, he seems the most likely candidate for Democrats and activists to lean on to gain 67.

What remains to be seen now is when the vote to override will take place. If I were involved in strategy discussions I would wait until after Labor Day, and turn this into a wedge issue against conservatives as people finally start tuning into the primary races.

I personally don’t have the same tax payer penchant to see the death of earmarks and if people would realize those evil earmarks have built plenty of the things in their states they would calm down as well. That being said, I do think the process should require MoCs to disclose their earmarks. This adds transparency to the process and requires candidates to respond to questions from voters about money they are requesting. I see no reason why this, or any act of Congress with the exception of the most sensitive national security issues should not be revealed to the public.

Without going in to great detail, I mostly agree with the President and the Senate bill on this matter despite my above issue.

Not much else to say, there. On a related note, though–our administration apparently thinks that the Constitution ought to mean today exactly what it did at its creation. How come they think the Geneva Conventions can change their meaning over time, or through outdatedness? Are these two different theories of the rule of law, or do they actually have a coherent theory?

His GOP challenger, former mayer of Cranston, RI, Steve Laffey, and Dem challenger Matt Brown, have each levied attacks on Linc for being a “flip-flopper”: Laffey said that Linc has an “inability to make a firm decision, which once again made him irrelevant to the process in the Senate.” As a very conservative Republican, Laffey’s future prospects in the Senate seem especially irrelevant. On the other hand, if Laffey can wrest the GOP nomination away from Chafee because of local Republican disillusionment with Chafee’s moderate voting record (National Journal says his social policy votes are more liberal than 60% of Senators).

If the “no” vote against Alito does hand Laffey the GOP nod this fall, it “could kill the GOP’s chance of holding a seat in liberal Rhode Island,” because a Laffey candidacy would almost certainly be too conservative to win in Rhode Island.

Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia said Monday he doesn’t expect Democrats to filibuster the nomination of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, but he still chastised Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist for threatening to stop any such effort through a drastic parliamentary effort that has been dubbed the “nuclear option.”

“If he ever tries to exercise that, he’s going to see a real filibuster if I’m living and able to stand on my feet or sit in my seat,” Byrd said in a Senate debate with Frist, R-Tenn.

“If the senator wants a fight, let him try it,” said Byrd, the Senate’s senior Democrat. “I’m 88 years old, but I can still fight, and fight I will for freedom of speech. I haven’t been here for 47 years to see that freedom of speech whittled away and undermined. ”

and another part of the debate from Think Progress

BYRD: And the Constitution says that the Senate has the power of advice and consent. It doesn’t say how that consent would be measured. It doesn’t say it has to be an up or down. Nothing in the history, nothing in the Constitution says that. Yes, you can point that out in the Constitution to me, where it says a nominee shall have the right to an up or down vote. Can the Senator point that out in the Constitution to me? Can the Senator point that out in the Constitution to me?

FRIST: If the distinguished Senator from West Virginia would let me answer, I would be happy to.

BYRD: Yes.

FRIST: It’s not in the Constitution that a United States Senator specifically has the up or down “ the right for an up or down vote.