Roger Hickey, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future and a founder of Health Care for America Now!, writes
Obama, Yes. And Win The House Too:
With large leads among women and people of color, and the stark contrast on economic issues building movement toward Obama even among white males in key states, the prospects for Obama winning a second term are starting to look pretty good.
But what about the House? Prospects for Dems keeping the Senate are looking better, but if the House of Representatives stays in Republican hands, even if President Obama is re-elected his second term will be crippled. Obama can still name good Supreme Court justices, and he can veto terrible legislation - both good reasons to vote for him - but, in the face of Republican obstructionism, he will be virtually powerless to pass economic recovery laws aimed at creating jobs and getting the economy growing and not shrinking.
Obama has repeatedly told voters they have the opportunity to "break the current stalemate in Washington between two fundamentally different ideas on how to create strong, sustained economic growth," - as he said in Cleveland on June 14. A few days later he told a campaign crowd "What's holding us back is a stalemate in Washington between two fundamentally different visions on which direction we should go, and this election is your chance to break that stalemate.".
Obama is right, of course, but only if the voters reelect him AND sweep into office at least 25 Democrats to seats now held by Republicans. You didn't hear much about taking back the House as a goal of Democrats at the Charlotte convention - an indication that they don't want to look like failures if they fall short. But for the same reasons Obama now looks like a winner, Democrats and independent activists now have the possibility of "nationalizing" contests for the House and turning this election into an historic wave election that can truly "break the stalemate" and put the nation on a course of decisive change. How do we do that?
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2009:
On Wednesday afternoon, Olympia Snowe told MSNBC's David Shuster and Tamron Hall that she has personally asked President Obama to remove any mentions of the public option from his speech to Congress.
Snowe said she wanted the president to take the public option "off the table" because doing so "would allay the concerns of so many of whether or not there's a government takeover." Snowe added, "The point is, I don't support a public option, and none of my Republican colleagues do."
So here's the question: how in the world can Olympia Snowe be negotiating in good faith if she is demanding that the public option be taken off the table while simultaneously peddling false taking points about a government takeover of health care?
Snowe claims that she supports a "trigger," but when she says that she is absolutely against the public option, why in the world should we believe that she would ever agree to a trigger that could actually lead to a public option?
Tweet of the Day:
Romney flips on healthcare. That's a flip-flop-flip into a flip-flop-flip-flop, for those keeping score at home:
http://t.co/... #p2
— @Jason_Reads via web
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