There Is No Plan

Obama was forceful enough tonight to make it clear that the GOP has to make a choice. Putting aside the details of the plan – which could have been more focused – If the GOP in Congress block the Obama jobs plan, Obama will do his best to tar them with ownership of the crisis. If they don’t, they’re handing the President a victory, and an election boost next year. What they’ll probably do is to employ a version of their standard “accept with unacceptable conditions”. That could muddy the waters just enough to parry Obama’s otherwise quality political move.

There’s one other problem here. The President is going head to head with a GOP House majority that revels in its lack of national popularity, whereas the President requires national popularity to be reelected. It’s an unfair fight in that respect, because the GOP’s Presidential candidates escape with little if any collateral damage.

Rick Perry is in the process of dismantling Mitt Romney. He’s sucked the air out of the race, and made it very hard for anyone else to get traction. Bachmann’s initial mo has stalled, Huntsman is finding it hard to get any purchase at all, and Palin would find it very hard to dislodge Perry from front-runner status if she decided – belatedly – to run. She had her chance before he declared, but now he’s in, it’s going to be very heavy sledding (pardon the pun) for her to take a winning bite out of a very restive GOP primary base. Ron Paul is only considered electable by that GOP base, Gingrich is on life-support, and rest of the line-up right now are seat fillers at best.

Of course, it’s early days, and the race hasn’t even begun in earnest, but Thereisnoplan regards Perry as a very, very major threat to Obama. He’s playing dumb for the primaries to help lock up the knuckle-draggers, and has already courted the Evangelical vote with his “The Response” lam-o prayer meeting at an echoing, half-empty Houston Texans Stadium. He’s working the tough Texan BS for the primaries, but my suspicion is you’ll see a much more polished and thoroughly All-American Perry if he gets the nod. His ability to adjust on the fly suggests he’s no fool, and as a cliched American foil to the polyglot professorial Obama, he’ll be very effective. He’s also eminently capable of walking back some of his more outrageous statements about Medicare and Social Security, along with his hints about Secession. He might even turn those switches to his advantage. He can ‘pivot’ to ‘compassionate conservatism’ with ease because of his (totally fake) Evangelical credentials. In short, while he’s got weaknesses, which could lay him low, he’s also got many, many weapons in his arsenal.

And there’s another string to Perry’s bow too. He’s white, which – because he’s facing an African-American President – means he needs a woman or a minority candidate on his ticket. The only two practical choices among women are Palin and Bachmann, both of whom are very bad fits for Perry, which means he’ll go minority, which means he’s almost certain to choose Marco Rubio.

Rubio brings huge power to a Perry led ticket. He’s the young, clean-cut, acceptable face of right-wing lunacy, likely to play a classic protege to the “wise” Perry. He’ll also have naive Latino voters nationwide voting for him in droves, ignoring their own economic and social interests to vote for a guy who speaks Spanish and will play up his heritage every chance he gets. Florida will be a lock, Nevada and the Four Corner states will almost certainly go Red, and even California will be in play, drawing big resources from Obama’s campaign that will have to focus on the North East in the eye of a major economic meltdown.

The threat of a Perry-Rubio ticket highlights a critical issue. It’s become clear that all the attempts to talk the Economy into a recovery have failed, so Obama is now vulnerable from a mainstream GOP candidate, who has the power to reach the center. There are others too. George Allen, Jeb Bush, and Chris Christie, are all bad news Republicans with the potential to appeal to Independents. It’s not just Huntsman and Romney who could give Obama a run for his money now.

Obama needs to find his mojo fast, and his Independent direction is the only sure way to go – as distasteful and essentially useless as it is to all sensible supporters of the New Left. Obama’s bloodless, professorial approach to government has proved to be a problem. Just being the only “adult in the room” is not enough to get you elected in America. You need some fire in your belly too, and it’s not certain that the low-energy President hasn’t had it shaken right out of him by the sheer enormity of the task he’s faced over the last two and a half years.

The problem is that a non-ideological centrism is hardly the stuff of whistle-stop fire-branding across America. By definition it’s kind of boring. As much of a contradiction in terms as it might seem, Democrats will have to push hard to claim and hold the centrist ground that seems, more than slightly, to be slipping away. One, shocking and rather distasteful way for bi-partisan obsessed Obama to do that would be to outflank the GOP by putting a Republican on the ticket. Biden has to go. He can’t stand as a presidential candidate in ’16, which means the Democrats would be losing an incumbent advantage should Obama win next year. Biden’s old, he’s regarded poorly, and he’s not ambitious. He should be asked to step aside and will likely accept. That opens the way to an aggressive centrist choice by Obama. The obvious two names are Scott Brown and Jon Huntsman. The only Democrat who comes close to having the same impact would be Jim Webb, but with a GOP guy as Veep, Obama would have no problem establishing his centrist bona-fides, and his choice of running mate could insulate him against what are likely to be vicious “socialist” attacks from the right.

At this point, with the current against the Dems economically and politically, and with the House and Senate likely to stay or go Red next year, regardless of our own brand of Democratic politics, we simply have to hold on to the veto pen, which would be the only thing between America and the serious beginning of the end of its social contract. Thereisnoplan has come to realize that Obama’s dull, technocratic centrism is a far, far better alternative to what the hyenas have in store for us. It’s also the only game in town right now.

Left and Center must unite. We’re fighting a rear-guard action. Little Round Top.  20th Maine. Hold the line or die.

The time to trash the President for his failures is over.

Donate to Obama 2012.

Cool it, Cassandra.

So let me get this straight.

The President and a bunch o’ pundits said that if we defaulted on the debt ceiling we would have been downgraded, and cried catastophe whenever they got the chance, with Geithner,  Goldman Sachs’ favorite bagman, leading the chorus of Cassandras.

Putting aside the fact that the debt ceiling was a technicality and that our bills would have continued to be paid over time, we didn’t miss out on the debt ceiling – and we were still downgraded.

So the President’s Debtageddon scenario came to pass.

And what happened?

The markets plummeted – mainly because of some bad economic numbers and the Euro Debt Crisis – and then bounced right up again. Stocks are pretty much where they were. And most importantly – the yield on a 10 year note hit its lowest point in history, as everyone flooded into ‘downgraded’ treasuries.

Moody’s and Fitch’s Rating Agencies ‘shrugged off’ what their buddies at S+Poorhouse decided to do, which is bad news for S+P, who now look like outliers (with the accent on the ‘liars’).

It’s becoming increasingly clear that there would have been no debtageddon, and the President’s use of the threat totally backfired. Read the rest of this entry »

Bring Back Da Man

The wheels are coming off the wagon of the Obama presidency.

He needs to get a grip quick or he’s going to be painted with the Carter curse – that horrible, contagious sense people get that the President is essentially a powerless passenger, lacking will, lacking a decisive, well, plan.

The latest and most strategically crucial mistake he has made was simple and profound. By essentially buying into the false narrative that America is facing a fiscal crisis – which it isn’t – Obama is accepting an impossible task as being decisive in whether he’s re-elected. His job is to pump-up America and explain why we’re not in trouble, not to swallow the GOP narrative that we are.

The view that he’s pathologically wedded to compromise, or a Wall Street stooged are all true but played out. It’s too late to worry about them now. The truth is, he’s the President. And the President has a pen that can at the very least keep the insanity at bay. Yes, he missed a huge opportunity to be the change agent he promised to be.  But what he ‘should’ have done is now a moot point.

We need to get this guy re-elected.  Read the rest of this entry »

Sarah Palin had plenty of opportunity to jump into the ring, and make hay in Iowa at the expense of her lookalike Michelle Bachmann. But with the Iowa Straw Poll this Sunday in Ames, IA, it looks like she’s gonna continue to be a no-show in this race, despite the fact that poor Barack just can’t seem to catch a break, and Sarah is running second without running at all. It’s beginning to look like she’s not stepping up.

Thereisnoplan is surprised. Not because she’s missing a golden opportunity to show us the ‘real’ Sarah Palin, but because this campaign was a great big BP fastball for a rampant egotist like Palin, and the consequences of not running might seem to be too horrific to imagine for someone like the ‘cuda. A retreat to post-celebrity status for an ego like that would seem to be fate worse than death.

We’re going to have to make do with Bachmann, it seems. But at least we have her outrageously not gay husband to keep us all amused in the coming months.

I'm in, Y'all.

Things are getting a little desparate in the GOP presidential field when people are bemoaning the departure of Mitch Daniels from the running. Widely regarded as one of the most boring and technocratic faces in American politics, he joins Mike Huckabee as among the wise few who realize that pending some crushing blow Obama is pretty much unbeatable. Among the so-called sensible candidates, we’re left with Romney, a man who gives dripping insincerity a bad name, Newt, a man of wit, great intelligence and Tourette’s syndrome, Tim “Who”-Lenty, a man defined only by his crushing ordinariness, and the Silver Mormon Jon Huntsman, a relatively moderate voice in an otherwise rabid mob with a resume that includes working for that Muslim Kenyan guy.

Then there are the loons, like Ron Paul, Michelle Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and that Pizza dude. And the late maybes like Jeb “Son of a” Bush, Chris “Fatboy” Christie, and Rick “Texas McMiracle” Perry.

Am I forgetting anyone?

Oh, yeah. Sarah Palin, formerly the star of 95% of all known news stories. She of the famous tweets, content-free bestsellers, reality shows, and Fox News contracts. Remember the days when her ridiculous “Death Panel” Facebook post defined the attack on “Obamacare” and very nearly sank the whole enchilada? She used to be quite a big deal. Could she be again?

Answer: You betcha. If she wants to be.
Read the rest of this entry »

He looks like a funeral director. We thought Paul Ryan was going to bury America but it turns out he's just cremating the GOP.

It’s beginning to look very possible that the high-water mark of the GOP resurgence was their Tea Party fueled victory in the 2010 Midterms. Because since then its supposedly sure-footed political machine is starting to look decidedly shaky. Unless something very dramatic happens, or Barackslider makes a mistake which he almost certainly won’t, the GOP is going to be handed its lunch in the Presidential contest, and could lose a big chunk of its house majority, and might even fail – in the most favorable of circumstances – to take the Senate back.

Their shopping list of problems is almost never ending. Firstly, the President has almost full control of the center, and after the Bin Laden moment, is appearing decisive and strong.  Secondly, the Tea Party continues to threaten to destroy the GOP from the inside out, it’s wilful libertarian naivite a millstone around GOP necks. Thirdly, the economy – at least on the surface – has stabilized, and fourthly, their potential candidate list for 2012 is topped by professional philanderer Newt Gingrich, professional loser Mitt Romney, professional loons, Ron Paul, Michele Bachman, Rick Santorum, and Don Trump, along with deeply unprofessional Sarah Palin. It’s a safe bet that most potential candidates are going to stay out, the GOP will choose a whipping-boy like Pawlenty to face the inevitable drubbing next November. Read the rest of this entry »

Captain Sensible gave a cracking performance out there tonight.

Every crafted word was about as rational and considered as it can be, threading the needle, professionally, professorially, as usual. The GOP and Tea Party responses, by contrast, came from the other side of the sanity spectrum, somewhere between total delusion, and crushing ignorance.

And yet, it’s the GOP in all its lies, puffery and vanity that scored big in the Mid-term elections last November. The Klingon forces of darkness zapped President Spock and his army of sane and sensible Democrats but good. Usually the good guy wins, but the rules were thoroughly shattered last time out.

All the wonks, from top to bottom tell us that the Obama Administration had got it right. The stimulus package put a million-plus to work, health care reform will cut the deficit, and the economy is growing at a good clip. So what gives? Why are people were so ungrateful?

The answer is simple.
Read the rest of this entry »

After a short, and barely respectable lull in their nasty ‘rhetoric’, the GOP is once more gearing up to repeal Obama’s Healthcare overhaul in the House.

Nobody seems to notice that the Senate spent a year watering the current law down to weak tea, but still has a Democratic majority, and that sitting in the White House is a President who called Health Care reform a landmark piece of legislation.

I think it’s a fair bet to suggest that whatever lunatic scrawl the House pass is going to be regarded with nothing less than utter disdain by the Senate and President.

In short, the whole Repeal Health Care shenanigan is a total waste of time. Talk about the bridge to nowhere. This is the fart to nowhere. Read the rest of this entry »

Cheaper Tea? How Dare you!

Americans are “mythmakers”. There’s nothing they love better than discarding the inconvenient bits of a story to fit their purpose, whether that purpose is to sell mattresses or glorify the nation’s founding.

A classic example of this is The Boston Tea Party of 1773. Indeed, so central a story is it in American Folklore that it’s the inspiration for the ‘party’ of the same name, currently running amok in American political life. The Tea Party believes in lower taxes, and cutting the deficit (go figure), and one of its favorite banner quotations is “No Taxation Without Representation”, which just happened to be a big favorite around the time of the orginal Boston Tea Party.

What today’s three-cornered hat wearing nutters don’t realize is that the use of the term “No Taxation Without Representation” was a rather convenient cover for what the Boston Tea Party of 1773 was really about.  To explain why requires a brief overview of something which people pay little attention to these days. History. Read the rest of this entry »