Lessons learned for president Obama

Nate Silver, the man behind the surprise star of the blogshere during the 2008 elections, FiveThirtyEight.com, ran the numbers and provides some cogent lessons for president Obama:

Nº 1. Republicans will obstruct, because they have nothing to lose.

Nº 2. President Obama needs to be the face of his policy initiatives, and not outsource it to the Democratic Congress.

Nº 3. So-called bipartisanship is over-rated, and has been a drain on president Obama in the short term.

In more words, Nate Silver breaks down the lessons as:

Republicans have nothing to lose. Public perceptions of Congressional Republicans are also significantly down from their already-low levels since the stimulus debate began. But, the Republicans will gladly torpedo their own brand if it means taking Obama down with them. They are dangerous to him, in the way that a gang of rabid velociraptors is dangerous to a T-Rex.

Obama has to do the heavy lifting himself. Support for the stimulus dwindled when the Congressional Demorcats, who are not much more popular than their Republican colleagues, were charged with the job of selling it. The more Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are the faces of the Democratic Party, the more Barack Obama’s approval ratings will come to resemble those of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

The benefits of “bipartisanship” are dubious. The public says they want bipartisanship, and a large majority of the public believes that Obama acted in a bipartisan fashion during the stimulus debate. And yet, his approval ratings fell significantly during this period.

GOP to America: FU

This is discouraging … Essentially president Obama, in the name of misguided bipartisanship, sacrificed the effectiveness of the much needed American recovery package, a.k.a, the stimulus bill:

[T]o appease the centrists, a plan that was already too small and too focused on ineffective tax cuts has been made significantly smaller, and even more focused on tax cuts.

According to the CBO’s estimates, we’re facing an output shortfall of almost 14% of GDP over the next two years, or around $2 trillion. Others, such as Goldman Sachs, are even more pessimistic. So the original $800 billion plan was too small, especially because a substantial share consisted of tax cuts that probably would have added little to demand. The plan should have been at least 50% larger.

So, while president Obama played the bipartisan Washington game and wooed republicans, the GOP (Grand Obstructionist Party) just gave the finger to the president and a big FU to the country.

So it begins — President Obama’s official portrait

Why I belong to the party of FDR & BHO

If this doesn’t move you, you better check your pulse; ’cause you just might be dead. Just one more reason why I belong to the party of FDR and of BHO.

John McCain shows his hand, comes up with the “race card”

Someone get this man on CNN or MSNBC, he deserves to be heard and not just read. I’m just happy to see a member of the so-called mainstream media calling John McCain’s bullshit for what it is, latent racism posing as legitimate political discourse.

But I’ll let Bob Herbert put it in his own words, he writes:

Gee, I wonder why, if you have a black man running for high public office — say, Barack Obama or Harold Ford — the opposition feels compelled to run low-life political ads featuring tacky, sexually provocative white women who have no connection whatsoever to the black male candidates.

Spare me any more drivel about the high-mindedness of John McCain.

[…]

Senator McCain has only upped the ante, smearing Mr. Obama every which way from sundown. On Wednesday, The Washington Post ran an extraordinary front-page article that began:

“For four days, Senator John McCain and his allies have accused Senator Barack Obama of snubbing wounded soldiers by canceling a visit to a military hospital because he could not take reporters with him, despite no evidence that the charge is true.”

Evidence? John McCain needs no evidence.

[…]

Now, from the hapless but increasingly venomous McCain campaign, comes the slimy Britney Spears and Paris Hilton ad. The two highly sexualized women (both notorious for displaying themselves to the paparazzi while not wearing underwear) are shown briefly and incongruously at the beginning of a commercial critical of Mr. Obama.

The Republican National Committee targeted Harold Ford with a similarly disgusting ad in 2006 when Mr. Ford, then a congressman, was running a strong race for a U.S. Senate seat in Tennessee. The ad, which the committee described as a parody, showed a scantily clad woman whispering, “Harold, call me.”

Both ads were foul, poisonous and emanated from the upper reaches of the Republican Party. (What a surprise.) Both were designed to exploit the hostility, anxiety and resentment of the many white Americans who are still freakishly hung up on the idea of black men rising above their station and becoming sexually involved with white women.

[…]

Mr. Obama told [an audience]: “What they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, he’s not patriotic enough. He’s got a funny name. You know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills, you know. He’s risky.”

The audience seemed to appreciate his comments. Mr. Obama was well-received.

But John McCain didn’t appreciate them. RACE CARD! RACE CARD! The McCain camp started bellowing, and it hasn’t stopped since. With great glee bursting through their feigned outrage, the campaign’s operatives and the candidate himself accused Senator Obama of introducing race into the campaign — playing the race card, as they put it, from the very bottom of the deck.

[…]

Senator Obama has spoken more honestly and thoughtfully about race than any other politician in many years. Senator McCain is the head of a party that has viciously exploited race for political gain for decades.

He’s obviously more than willing to continue that nauseating tradition.

Amen!

UPDATE (8/4): Damn! I got my wish, here’s Bob Herbert on MSNBC up against conservative mouth piece Joe Scarborough.