Thursday, November 4, 2010

Reactions to 2010 Political Campaigns and Elections

There's no doubt the Tea Partyists and Republicans, as well as the owners of the TV stations, did extremely well in this year's political cycle, highlighted by results of the elections on November 2nd, and President Obama, as he acknowledged, took a "shellacking". The Republicans gained solid control of the House of Representatives, narrowed the majority held by Democrats in the Senate, and gained many more state governorships and legislatures under their control. With nearly an incredible $4 billion in campaign spending, a record for midterm elections, much of it on television advertising, the TV station owners must have had a great year.

However, with Obama in office for at least two more years, and having the powerful bill veto power, and with 53 colleagues and allies in the Senate compared to 47 for Republicans, the Democrats still have substantial leverage. It's also some comfort for Obama that like opinion polls for the Democratic Party, the Republican Party is not very popular either. Of major concern for the Democrats going forward, though, for the next ten years until the 2020 census, is the material advantage Republicans will have in congressional redistricting, optimizing their prospects for keeping control of the House of Representatives.

I think most analysts and commentators agree that the Republican successes were primarily due to understandable anger, frustrations, and serious anxiety of voters at their personal economic situations caused by joblessness, underemployment, decline in home values, foreclosures, concern about potential upcoming cuts to Social Security and Medicare, and how all of these would likely affect their standard of living and ability to retire in any kind of comfort. Since the Democrats controlled Congress and held the White House, voters with some justification placed most of the blame on Obama, Senate Majority Leader Reid and Speaker Pelosi.

While the policies followed by Obama and the Democrats have been strongly criticized by the Republican leadership, especially by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, I'm not convinced the policies generally were wrong, given the precarious state of the deep recession and our fragile financial system at the time. However, it appears evident that Obama's Administration and Democrats in Congress did not focus enough on jobs creation, probably could have been more attentive to the needs of American businesses, especially smaller businesses, and no doubt were not as willing as they should have been to incorporate prudent input offered by Republicans on major legislation such as healthcare and financial regulatory reform.

Now just a few comments on the campaigns. As I believe I've commented on in earlier posts, in my view the campaigns go on for far too long, there's far too much negative advertising, far too much money is spent, voters too often don't even get a clear where idea where candidates really stand on many important issues, and it's embarrassing and sad that such a relatively small percentage of eligible voters actually show up to vote. Many reforms are needed, but unfortunately few will probably be approved and implemented, in part due to our Constitution's Bill of Rights, because the media doesn't do their job adequately, and because too many voters are cynical about politics, apathetic and lazy.

Well, what happens now? Democrats and Republicans will quickly be discussing and fine tuning what their objectives, priorities and strategies will be for the remainder of the year. Obama has apparently invited their political leaders to dinner at the White House on November 18th to talk about how they can cooperate in improving the economy and job opportunities for unemployed and underemployed Americans. Presumably McConnell won't use this opportunity to repeat his rather clumsy and overtly partisan statement that making sure Obama is only a one term president is his very top priority. Both sides are reluctant to compromise, but possibly willing to go ahead if it's not a very major issue, and/or they get enough in return. Hopefully there will be some general agreement on the directions we need to go on the economy, jobs, cutting the budget deficit and managing our public debt more prudently.

There are several areas where cooperation and compromise can and should be achieved. The most obvious one is on extending the President Bush tax cuts scheduled to expire on December 31st. Obama will no doubt be willing to compromise and include extension for households earning more than $250,000 as the Republicans are demanding, although it will likely add to our budget deficit until economic growth picks up. The question is the period of extension and if the $250,000 will be increased to $500,000 or even $1 million. Other areas of potential cooperation includes international trade and foreign policies. I doubt very much else of serious substance will happen legislatively before January 2nd when the new Congress convenes.

In 2011 I'd expect there will be serious political pressures to make at least some changes to the health care law passed this year that will be more acceptable to businesses, that will more convincingly reduce overall costs and that will serve to somehow limit expected federal spending obligations. We can also expect legislation on immigration reform, energy and public education reforms, and possibly some tinkering with the recently enacted financial regulatory reform law to make it more acceptable to Republicans.

It's rather obvious that both political parties will focus a great deal in 2011 on doing things that will please and solidify their respective bases, impress the increasingly influential political Independents, and position themselves favorably for the critical 2012 presidential and congressional elections, in addition to doing what they consider in the best interests of their party and the country.

Obama is a smart pragmatist and clearly recognizes he needs Republican support for the next two years and, as a result, will quite likely move more to the center and a little bit right, depending on the issues under consideration. The key person for him to try to work with on a bipartisan basis is Speaker-elect Boehner who has just emphasized that his agenda is the "public's agenda". We know it relates to job creation, limiting federal spending, keeping taxes low, and reducing our budget deficits. But what specifically? I guess we'll find out in the next few months.

It will also be very interesting to hear who among Republicans will move to the front as the leading candidate to oppose Obama in 2012. I can't believe it will turn out to be Sarah Palin, though Obama probably would hope it might be her, and suspect it will be one of the more moderate Republican governors. We'll likely know by summer next year.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Please let me know if you're looking for a article author for your blog. You have some really good posts and I think I would be a good asset. If you ever want to take some of the load off, I'd love to write
some content for your blog in exchange for a link back to mine.
Please send me an e-mail if interested. Regards!


My web blog: Bellagenix skin care reviews

Anonymous said...

Ahaa, its nice dialogue on the topic of this post at this place at this weblog, I have read all that, so
at this time me also commenting at this place.

Take a look at my page - Coffee Pure Cleanse Reviews

Anonymous said...

It's impressive that you are getting ideas from this article as well as from our dialogue made here.

how to earn $1000 a month from home

Anonymous said...

I am regular visitor, how are you everybody?

This paragraph posted at this web page is really
nice.

my page; Slim XS Weight Loss Supplement

Anonymous said...

Hmm it looks like your blog ate my first comment
(it was extremely long) so I guess I'll just sum it up what I submitted and say, I'm thoroughly enjoying
your blog. I as well am an aspiring blog blogger but I'm still new to everything. Do you have any tips and hints for inexperienced blog writers? I'd
really appreciate it.

Feel free to visit my weblog - Green coffee cleanse reviews

Anonymous said...

Good article! We are linking to this particularly great post on our site.
Keep up the good writing.

Here is my web blog ... No2 maximus

Anonymous said...

Heya i am for the primary time here. I came across this board and I to find It really helpful & it helped me out a lot.
I hope to offer something again and aid others such as you helped me.


Feel free to surf to my webpage :: Lipo Slim Reviews ()