State of the Union

Obama is like Michael Jordan back in the day- when the money is on the table, you just know he'll rise to the occasion. Every time he has needed to come up huge- 2004 keynote, Jefferson Jackson dinner in Iowa, Rev. Wright, 2008 nomination acceptance- he's done it. The SOTU was a home run- it struck just the right tone between bipartisanship and rallying the base.

Things I especially liked:

- Acknowledged that health care had been tough and that it wasn't politically easy
- Challenged anyone else to come up with a better way of fixing our system (and I really don't know how anyone can argue with a straight face that it doesn't need to be fixed).
- Don't ask, don't tell- gone this year- it is about time
-  Laid out facts that have been obscured- not a single American has had their taxes raised, millions of people received a tax cut with the stimulus package

Sneak peak at the State of the Union

Bayh makes the case for moving to the middle

I'll elaborate at a later time on where I think the Dems need to go, but I did think Bayh raised some interesting points in this WSJ article. 

And Calitics has a good article on how Jerry Brown might be the next Martha Coakley.  This is why I thought it might not be a great idea to have Ronald Reagan's gubernatorial  successor as our nominee. Funny how it looked like we could have a massive free for all for the nomination- Antonio, Gavin, Garamendi, Westly, Feinstein, Brown- and instead Jerry will be the nominee and he still hasn't even declared!

Bernanke

Paul Krugman has a good piece on why he is grudgingly supporting Bernanke's reappointment as the chair of the Fed.For me, knowing that hooker aficionado  David Vitter, John McCain and Jim Bunning oppose Bernanke is probably enough to get me to support him.

Bernanke is getting equally attacked from both the left and the right- in this case, he is about where he should be. In retrospect, the Fed did a horrible job of understanding the financial catastrophe that was developing in 2007 and 2008. Highly leveraged banks, the sub-prime mortgage fiasco, lack of regulatory control, CDOs run amok, etc.- the entire federal government failed to intervene in any type of meaningful way.

However, starting in September of 2008, Bernanke has been incredibly aggressive in trying to avert another depression. He vastly expanded the role of the Fed and that was vital to saving our financial system. He's currently keeping the Fed rate at zero in order to continue stimulating the economy.

My guess is that he'll get between 65 and 70 votes to continue as the head of the Fed.

More teabaggery

Maverick John McCain is going to have a primary challenger in 2010. Former Congressman J.D. Hayworth thinks that McCain just doesn't breathe enough fire so he'll try and replace him.  Apparently, the myth of moderate Maverick John McCain exists even within the Republican party, not just with the Washington press corps.

The moderate McCain vanished in about 2003 when he realized that there was no presumptive heir apparent for President Bush. Suddenly, McCain stopped attacking the Bush tax cuts and started embracing them as just the sort of thing we needed. Of course the highpoint of his embrace of Bush was...his embrace of Bush.

There was speculation that McCain would return to his alleged moderate roots after both he won the GOP nomination in 2008 and after he lost the general election.  Especially after his loss to Obama, there were rumors that he'd become an elder statesman and try to work with the new President. Instead, McCain is trying to make opposition to Obama the centerpiece of his reelection campaign with quotes like: "I stand in his way every day."

One upside of Brown's victory (even though it is mostly downside)  in Massachusetts is that it has embolden the tea party contingent to attack their own. Much like the Republican infighting in NY-23 helped Bill Owens win, primary battles like this one in Arizona and the gubernatorial battle in Texas will hamper GOP efforts to create a landslide in 2010.

Aftershocks

Losing Ted Kennedy's Senate seat is a blow- no way around it, but it is not the worst thing to ever happen. Time to start looking at the silver linings.

1.)  In many ways, 60 was the worst number of Senate seats for the Dems while keeping a majority. It is the exact number needed to end a filibuster, but it required keeping people like Lieberman and Ben Nelson in the fold. Jon Stewart said it well: Bush did whatever the f$#$ he wanted with a much smaller majority. Time to either start passing things with 53 votes or have Republicans hop on- no more selling of the soul in order to placate Joe Lieberman.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Mass Backwards
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

The good stuff starts at about 6:45 in...

2.) Much better to get the wake up call in January than in November.  During the primary campaign, the Obama team stuck to their game plan and didn't get worked up by the fact that critics were flipping out about Hillary Clinton, McCain's "Celebrity" ad, Palin, etc. Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod are pretty damn smart and politically attuned-  good people to have in charge of the campaign operation.

3.) People are angry, but not just at the Democrats. Brown ran a great campaign, but the GOP as a whole is still viewed negatively by the electorate. Maybe Brown becomes the shining star of the GOP because the alternatives still suck- Palin, Romney, Steele, Rush, Beck, Cheney- yikes.

Let's not wet ourselves quite yet. And yeah, I'm the same person who said this.

Nice work, Martha

Well, she didn't get caught burning a Tom Brady jersey in Faneuil Hall, but short of that Martha Coakley did everything possible to lose this election. Here are some of the greatest hits:

1. According to Marc Ambinder, from the primary until the Sunday before the election, Brown had 66 events compared to Coakley's 19. Three times as many events!Even if you think you have the election in the bag (and Coakley obviously didn't), it is just good form to pretend  you are taking the race seriously. Brown just flat outworked Coakley post-primary.

2. Coakley attacks Curt Schilling, he of bloody sock and eternal glory for helping the Red Sox win the 2004 World Series, for being a Yankees fan. Feel free to say Curt has terrible taste in politicians, sure, but accuse him of being a Yankees fan?

3. In case she didn't alienate enough Red Sox fans with her diatribe about Schilling, Martha also had this gem in the Boston Globe in response to accusations that she wasn't doing enough retail politicking:

Coakley bristles at the suggestion that, with so little time left, in an election with such high stakes, she is being too passive.

“As opposed to standing outside Fenway Park? In the cold? Shaking hands?’’ she fires back, in an apparent reference to a Brown online video of him doing just that.

Heaven forbid she get out there and shake hands in the cold.


4. At a Washington DC fundraiser a week  before the election, one of Coakley's campaign workers knocked over a reporter who asked impertinent questions. First, a week before the election, shouldn't you be campaigning in the state where the election will be held? Second, is beating up reporters the way to improve media relations? A halfway decent candidate would have managed to reach out the reporter afterwards and try to turn it around.

Here's the video:



5. Coakley also kept touting how she didn't pay attention to polls. Yeah, maybe that was a mistake.

6. If this election had been closer, Coakley's campaign would probably have blown it just with the finger pointing and bickering that occurred before the election was even over. Certainly fired up Brown supporters and depressed the Dems.

And that's how you can lose Ted Kennedy's seat to a former male centerfold.

2010 Massachusetts US Senate Special Election Results - Boston.com - Politics

Here's where i am checking results:

http://www.boston.com/news/special/politics/2010/senate/results.html

Sent from my iPhone

Election Watch

Update 2: Nate Silver on the things to watch. 

Update: According to Chuck Todd, 25% of the votes should be counted in the first hour. 

The polls in Massachusetts a little more than an hour. Lots of speculation and reading of the tea leaves, but don't think there have been any comprehensive exit polls (probably a good thing since President Kerry can attest that they are worthless). It does sound as though there will be heavy turnout for a special election, but that can cut both ways- Coakley is helped by lots of voters in a traditionally liberal state, Brown definitely has the enthusiasm factor.

My prediction right now is a 8 point win for Brown.

All I see on the Dem side today is lots of finger pointing- never a good sign when that happens before the damn election is over. And this sure didn't help my confidence any.

Seems like the White House isn't very confident of victory.

Not looking good

During the 2008 primary season, the two people who were able to interpert the numbers and lay out the most logical scenarios were Chuck Todd of MSNBC and Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com. By the end of the primaries, if one of those guys said that it would snow in June in San Diego, I would have bought a parka.  Nate has Martha Coakley as a 3 to 1 underdog in tomorrow's Massachusetts special election to replace the late Ted Kennedy. Great article on how Nate Silver works his magic here. 

Democrats have a huge registration advantage over Republicans in Massachusetts but independents make up more than half of the voters. Republican Scott Brown is apparently trouncing Coakley with the independents.

President Obama made a last ditch visit to try and rally the troops, but it likely was too little, too late. By most accounts, Coakley thought she had the race wrapped up after winning the Democratic nomination. Perhaps hiring Walter Mondale as her campaign manager wasn't such a great idea.

Campbell opts for the Senate

Tom Campbell, former Congressman and Dean of the Haas School of Business (Go Bears!), has apparently switched out of the gubernatorial race and instead will attempt to be the GOP nominee against Barbara Boxer.  Campbell's a smart guy and figured out the math of running against former Ebay CEO Meg Whitman and Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner was daunting. Poizner is worth hundreds of millions and Meg is a billionaire. Campbell was by far the most experienced and intelligent of the GOP gubernatorial contenders, but he had no chance of getting his message out.

He'll be squaring off against former HP CEO Carly Fiorina and Assemblyman Chuck Devore in the Senate primary. Devore is the teabag candidate in the race and Fiorina is allegedly able to appeal to women and fiscal conservatives.

Carly was pretty much a disaster as the head of HP and McCain sidelined her from his campaign after she noted that neither McCain or Palin had the qualifications to run a large corporation. Fiorina walked away with a $21.4 million severance package when HP fired her and she has loaned her campaign $2.5 million, but she certainly does not have the ability to self-fund at the levels of Poizner or Whitman.

I was looking forward to debates between Jerry Brown and Campbell- they are the only two candidates capable of having an in-depth conversation about the massive problems facing our state. Campbell has a better shot at winning the Senate nomination and it might be easier for him to beat Boxer than Brown.

Uncle to Mike Tyson's kids continues to do crazy things

Michael Steele, Chairman of the RNC, just keeps getting wackier. A few weeks ago he declared that Congress was "thumbing their nose and flipping the bird to the American people".  While promoting his new book, "Right Now: A 12-Step Program for Defeating the Obama Agenda", Steele busted out with:


"Our platform is one of the best political documents that's been written in the last 25 years. Honest injun on that. It speaks to some core conservative principles on the value of family, faith, life, economics. Those principles don't change."


Honest Injun? In the year 2010? Who says that? Where do you even learn to say something like that?


In the book itself, Steele accuses GOP leaders of having abandoned conservative principles. When those same leaders began to criticize him for blind siding them with the release of the book, Steele responded:


I'm telling them and I’m looking them in the eye and say I’ve had enough of it. If you don’t want me in the job, fire me. But until then, shut up. Get with the program or get out of the way.”


More details and video here.


Part of the GOP criticism of the book was that Steele wrote while he was supposed to be concentrating on his job as RNC Chair. Steele stated that most of the work was done on the book in 2008 and all he did was a bit of polishing last year. Makes sense to me.....But the inconvenient part is that TPM points out many of the events covered in the book didn't take place until 2009: The stimulus bill, the health care debate, foreign policy, ACORN, the party switch of Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the Tea Parties and the 9/12 March on Washington, etc.


Let's hope the RNC comes to their senses and makes Steele Chairman for life. 

The race Dems have to win

Retaining Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in Massachusetts should be a slam dunk for Dems, but a couple of recent polls (including one showing GOP nominee Scott Brown in the lead) indicate that the race could be very close. Democratic nominee and state Attorney General Martha Coakley cruised to victory in the primary, but reports are that she wasn't not going all out on the campaign trail.

If Coakley can't win this race, it will be an unmitigated disaster for Dems. Aside from a stunning rebuke in a liberal state, Dems would also lose their 60th seat in the Senate. People like Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman would be even less likely to fall in line with the majority.

A GOP win in Massachusetts is the one thing that might stop passage of health care reform at this point. I expect to see Obama and Biden campaigning for Coakley and pulling out all the stops to make sure she wins.

The Boston Globe just came out with a poll this morning showing Coakley up by 15 points- that's what I'd expect her to win by and is certainly a bit of a relief.

Visit to the Fed

Yesterday we went to the federal reserve and received a briefing from a senior advisor named Winthrop Hambley (good name for a guy working at the Fed). We were in the meeting room where the Board of Governors convene. They actually have little gold name plates on the tops of the chairs- one of my classmates sat in Bernanke's chair. While we were receiving the briefing, the person in Bernanke's chair was battling valiantly to stay awake, but with little success.

It is amazing how active the Fed has been in trying to end the recession with actions that are unprecedented in the US. Normally when the Fed purchases assets from a bank it offsets the transaction by selling off corresponding assets. Right now the Fed is buying assets from Depository Institutions and simply crediting their accounts for the transaction amount- they are making no attempt to sell off assets. In a little more than a year, the Fed's balance sheet has almost tripled to $2.24 trillion.

Back in March of 2008, the Fed created a Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PFDC) so that it could make available overnight loans to primary deals- firms that were not depository institutions (the normal recipients of Fed loans). This was in response to the near failure of Bear Stearns. Even this new facility was not enough to save Lehman Brothers in September of 2008- an event that triggered the global economic collapse.

I asked Winthrop if in retrospect it had been a mistake to let Lehman Brothers fail. He stated that it was a subject that historians would be debating for decades. His view was that if Lehman had been saved, another investment bank or similar institution would have been the catalyst for the crisis.Best book I've read on the subject so far is Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System---and Themselves

Bernanke absolutely missed some key indicators about the seriousness of the housing bubble, but once the crisis started, I can't imagine a better Fed Chairman. The current unemployment rate (10%) is atrocious, but without Bernanke's actions,we could easily be looking at levels unseen since the Great Depression.

AD-25 race

Lots of talk in Washington about how the GOP needs to find new leaders. After reading this article in the Modesto Bee, I think that Jesse James White is just the man.

Things that make him awesome:

- He was 19 when he was elected to the Riverbank City Council last year.
- There's already been an effort to recall him and a grand jury called for his removal.
- He's a "self-employed hair care distributor".
- His name is Jesse James White

Get your popcorn here

I discovered that the Dirksen Senate building has a popcorn machine- surprised they don't make a bigger deal about that. When the smell of fresh popcorn wafts through the building, I'm not sure how people get anything done.

Lots of talk about healthcare reform in the seminar sessions I've been attending. Ben Nelson in particular has been a popular topic of conversation. Nelson held up the Senate bill until Harry Reid backed the truck up and cut a deal that gave Nebraska a huge carve out- federal funding for Medicaid in perpetuity (strong chance that it would be ruled unconstitutional).

Nelson thought he'd gain political cover by this monstrosity, but it is going to boomerang on him. It would be shocking if this giveaway survived the House-Senate conference on the bill. Secondly, Nelson's popularity has plummeted in Nebraska- Huskers voters act as though they are embarrassed by Nelson's behavior. He's not up for reelection until 2012, but that's going to be a very tough seat for the Dems to keep.

Iowa versus the American Revolution

It is cool being in DC exactly two years after Barack Obama won the Iowa caucus. I've been reading David Plouffe's book about the campaign and it strikes me what long odds the campaign faced. The notion that a first term Senator named Barack Hussein Obama could beat Hillary Clinton was regarded by many as laughable. The two things that stood out to me about why Obama won the nomination:

1. The unbelievable grassroots movement that was galvanized by online tools such as MYBO.com and Facebook.

2. The discipline, intelligence and cohesion of the Obama campaign team. A stark contrast to the people surrounding Hillary's campaign- she was a really good candidate (especially after Iowa) but the campaign structure was a disaster and really let her down.



After checking out the Smithsonian American History Museum, I wondered which was more unlikely- Barack Obama becoming the President or a ragtag group of soldiers defeating the mighty British Empire?

Ray's Hell Burger

Since Jon and I both already wrote about Obama's burger excursions (Jon's take), you can be sure that we'd make it out to Ray's. I had the peppercorn crusted bacon cheeseburger- I give it 4 1/2 stars and the fries were tasty as well. We'll be hitting Five Guys and I'll have a report on that one.

Weather report from DC

It is damn cold. California (even Northern California) sure does spoil you weather-wise. No wonder the President is in Hawaii. Although I'm not sure shorts is a good look for him.

The holy grail

My elusive quest to find a Prius with a McCain sticker comes to an end!

DC Trip

I was born in Northern Virginia, but this is only my second time back to the area in 10 years. I'm sure being born right next to our nation's capital has a lot to do with being a political junkie.

Aside from being our greatest President, Warren Harding had one great sense of style- I think this outfit at the Smithsonian is one he wore to a party at Hef's.

I'll have more details of the trip and political thoughts throughout the week. 2010 resolve- blog on a regular basis for 6 months. Feel free to hold me to it.