Why didn't we vote for the real triangulation masters if that's all we were going to get? Read below, Mark Penn knows the mid-west and Ohio better than Sherrod Brown. And to boot check the link towards the end for the names of the Bill Clinton staffers populating the W.H.
Maybe the journalist from the Des Moines register had it right when she asked Obama about the people he would employ in his white house.
http://www.youtube.com/...
Remember that?
First, Bill Clinton took over Obama's presser on the tax deal in the W.H. press room. Obama faked a smile and walked off to the W.H. Christmas party.
Read here http://www.theatlantic.com/...
Bill Clinton, at the time this blog post is being written, has taken over the White House press room, leading to potential confusion over who the actual president is, Obama having ducked out to go meet the First Lady at "one more Christmas party," as the current (I think) president put it before taking off.
Watch here http://www.realclearpolitics.com/...
Second, Mark Penn wrote an opinion at the Huffington Post essentially saying that we must support the GOP-Obama plan, because... democrats should not allienate high income earners who are becoming democratic.
The most paradoxical argument he makes is that Obama didn't motivate these voters before the 2010 midterms and that's teh reason he lost/
But by failing to make this tax deal before the election, Obama lost a lot of ground with those new Democratic voters, who voted Republican by an 18-point margin in 2010. These voters will favor the social policies of the Democrats and many progressive Democratic domestic policies as long as they don't think they are being taken to the cleaners when it comes to tax policy.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
And finally, Howard Fineman details how more and more Clinton aides are finding their way into the W.H.
But an array of other Clinton vets has stepped up to handle the sales job on taxes on the Hill and in town. Key names include: Lawrence Summers, Gene Sperling, Ron Klain, Jack Lew and John Podesta. Austan Goolsbee, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, is an early Obama advisor, but he's philosophically in tune with the economic views of the Clinton types.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Change we can believe in!
UPDATE:
Politico runs a story detailing Schumer's idea to set the tax cut limit to $1,000,000 so as to corner republicans into defending millionaires.
Schumer was irked, according to people he’s spoken to subsequently, deeply disappointed and convinced Obama had missed a major opportunity. The White House, in turn, was incensed when it learned Schumer planned to push forward with votes — ultimately unsuccessful — on alternative Democratic proposals.
“The bottom line is that he had a short-term partisan strategy for point scoring that would have been really costly in the long run and for which people would be properly angry,” said a top administration official. “He's a smart guy. This wasn't a smart or practical strategy.”
Later the White House took pride on Schumer's efforts to defeat the republicans
"Sen. Schumer says he wants a fight? He couldn't hold his caucus together," an anonymous White House official told ABC’s Jake Tapper earlier this week.
http://www.politico.com/...
So we have resorted to not even listening to the Senator from NY, who has never had a beef with the rich; instead we listen to GOP minority leader Mitch McConnell.