John Judis looks at Obama’s little-noticed regulatory revolution.
Looks like the good folks at Reuters got a little bit ahead of the curve on the bamboozlement front.
A long-time reader chimes in on the dividing line between politics and policy …
I think you hit on something really important here. And I think there is more to the story. One of the great tensions in the Democratic staff world is between those of us who work primarily on election and those who work primary on legislation and policy – and it is particularly true on the Hill.
Last week, Stephen Colbert named Harold Ford, Jr., “Alpha Dog of the Week.” Last night, he had Ford on the show, where he played to alpha dog type by referring to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand — who, at 43, is 3 1/2 years his senior — as the “young lady I’m looking to run against.” Watch.
A lot of pundits are chattering about and a lot of Dems are hoping that we’re going to see a ton of contested and embittered Tea Party primaries around the country this year. That’s what happened in NY-23 last Fall. But is it really? Tonight, Mark Kirk, who is close to the personification of what right-wingers call a RINO is poised to crush Tea Party candidates in the Illinois senate primary.
As we’ve tried to take stock of what happened to Health Care Reform in January, one thing I keep coming back to is the way Democrats got completely focused on the legislative inside game and in many ways just withdraw from the out of doors political realm. To some degree that’s hindsight. And there’s certainly something to be said for having an election and then setting aside politics for a while to make a good bill which brings real change. But politics, legislation and policy can never really be divided. As we’ve seen, what happens in the country at large has big feedback effects on what happens on the Hill — as it should. And for all the things that couldn’t be predicted or came down to bad luck, this is the strategic, even conceptual error that Democrats made consistently over the course of the year.
On Chris Matthews show last night, Chuck Todd noted something relevant to this point — that Democrats have not done nearly as much as Republicans did organizing tough votes for the opposition party, to tease out their unpopular stand on numerous issues. That’s one of the biggest powers of the majority in the House — you get to decide what gets voted on.
Video after the jump … Read More
The Pentagon is poised to extend the life of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy by proposing to study it before deciding whether to lift the ban on gays in the military. That and the day’s other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.
The alleged mastermind of the Mary Landrieu phone-tampering caper went on Hannity’s Fox Show last night. At what point do this guy’s lawyers tie him to a chair and lock him in their conference room until the criminal case is resolved? For his own sake. Watch.
Today is election day in Illinois, where centrist Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) is writing a counter-narrative in what is supposed to be a “tea party” election cycle. Kirk is widely expected to win his party’s nomination for the U.S. Senate against two tea party opponents. What does that mean for other GOP moderates?
Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) was on Chris Matthews show a few moments ago and rolled out his idea for the Republican platform to get the federal budget into line: cut benefits and for everybody now under 55 and privatize the program like President Bush tried to do in 2005.
Here’s the full video.