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These have been a tough few weeks for Democrats. The recent election in Massachusetts will deny the Democrats their filibuster proof majority, but the unexpected loss here also portends an ominous shift in public opinion. The mood of the people has shifted away from the Democrats and the Republicans are claiming that this shift indicates that the people are rejecting Obama’s policies and proposals. Democrats up for election this year are panicking and health care has been declared dead.
All of the anger of the Tea Partiers indicates a dissatisfaction of government and big spending. Perhaps it is time for Obama and the rest of the Democrats to rethink all of their policies. Does the election mean that the people are fed up with Obama, and will the Democrats will loose power to the ascendant Republicans again?
First let’s study the results of the Massachusetts election. A Washington Post Kaiser Harvard Poll: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/WaPoKaiserHarvard_MassPoll_Jan22.pdf?sid=ST2010012203176
found that most of the voters like Obama and 52% are satisfied with his policies, yes the people were angry with the Democrats, and with the obscene deal making exhibited during the Senate Health Care reform process, but they were even more angry with the Republicans. 58% were dissatisfied with Republican policies. Perhaps the most telling result of the poll was when people were asked if they wanted Brown to go to the Senate to work with the Democrats or to obstruct them. 82% of the voters including 75% of those who voted for Brown, thought he should work with Democrats and try to incorporate some Republican ideas into the legislation. Only 11% thought he should mainly work to stop the Democratic agenda.
Scott Brown won because he was the better candidate and ran a better campaign. The independents swung his way, but will they vote for the Republicans if they continue to obstruct the Democrats?
Scott Brown is a decent pro-choice moderate that didn't mention that he was a Republican, and he probably won’t survive the ideological purging of the right wing ideologues in the Republican Party. When he was in the State Senate he voted for the Massachusetts universal health care plan. Most of the people in Massachusetts are happy with their health care and only 2.8% of the people in the state are not covered. Why would they prefer the monstrosity the Senate cobbled together if it meant they would loose the universal system they liked? Does his election mean that health care reform is dead? No, 70 % of the voters thought that Brown should work with the Democrats to pass Health Care Reform. The people of Massachusetts think that universal health care is a right, and that the folks in Congress should play nice with each other and try to work something out.
The filibuster has gotten completely out of hand. The Constitution does not even mention a filibuster. It specifically says that all legislation should be passed with a simple majority except in a few specific cases. One of the main jobs of the vice president is to cast the tie breaking vote. He hasn’t had much to do lately. If the minority continues to abuse the filibuster process and in effect require a super majority to do anything, the Congress should eliminate or bypass the filibuster. The least they can do is actually make the Republicans do the filibusters instead of just threatening to do so, as in Mr. Smith goes to Washington.
Perhaps the way to pass Health reform is to break it up into parts. One part for insurance reform, one for reducing costs, one for providing for the 40 million uninsured (3/4ths of the people would still like Medicare for all.
What about everyone being angry about the stimulus program? People are very angry about the big cats and the banks getting bailed out. The TARP program was started by Bush and he just gave money out with no strings attached. When Obama took over the TARP he required the banks that got federal funds to put limits on executive compensation, and partly to get out of that, most of the banks have paid those funds back with interest. To recover the last bit of the public’s money Obama would like to tax the bankers. I think that won’t work too well because you can’t isolate one industry to punish. What he should do instead is tax the short sales, the derivatives and the other risky investments that caused the economy to crash. There is a house bill to do that (HR4191). http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-4191&tab=summary
The $150 billion generated from this could be used as a second stimulus to generate jobs.
But people don’t like the stimulus and think we already spent too much on it. People haven’t seen that the stimulus helped them at all. They are still broke, they still don’t have jobs, they hate what all of this spending is doing to the deficit and the national debt.
Unfortunately most people think the stimulus is what bailed out Wall Street and the banks. It is not. That was the TARP program. The stimulus gave money to states and local governments so they wouldn’t have to fire hundreds of thousands of teachers, firemen, and police. People don’t see the jobs the stimulus created because those jobs were there already. Saving jobs isn’t as sexy as creating new ones, but it is 650,000 more jobs than there would be without the stimulus. The main problem with the stimulus, and with TARP is that they relied on the private sector. If the Government had nationalized the banks, the government could force them to do their jobs and actually lend money. Without any regulations or strings attached to the money they received, banks simply took that free money and invested it. That is why they are all getting rich and the economy is still in the dumps.
So what about banking reform? We know that the lack of regulation and those risky investments caused the economic collapse. Why haven’t we created rules and regulations to prevent them from doing the same thing again? It is because Congress has been bought off by Wall Street and the Banks.
More of that will be happening now that the Supreme Court has eliminated campaign reform. In the past the rich, powerful, and the corporations had undo influence over Congress. Now there is nothing to keep them from just buying them outright.
When the Constitution was created, corporations were pretty unpopular because they were tools of the king's oppression, chartered for the purpose of exploiting the "New World" and shipping the nation’s wealth back into Europe. And so Corporations were prohibited from any part of the political process. Individual stockholders were held personally liable for any harms done in the name of the corporation, and most charters only lasted for 10 or 15 years. But most importantly, in order to receive the profit-making privileges the shareholders sought, their corporations had to represent a clear benefit for the public good, such as building a road, canal, or bridge. And when corporations violated any of these terms, their charters were frequently revoked by the state legislatures.
Giving the corporations “personhood”, with their campaign contributions protected by the first amendment is purely political and ignores 100 years of precedent. So what can be done to take the power back from the corporations and give it back to the people? There is a movement to amend the constitution, see: http://www.movetoamend.org/we-corporations Failing that we have to wait until the balance of power in the Supreme Court returns to favor the people.
To summarize, people are angry at both parties because they are not doing their jobs and helping people. They hate the deal making and the obstructionism, but most of all they hate the ineffectiveness of Congress.
The people think that the country is heading in the wrong direction. On Wednesday President Obama will try to set the nation on course again.