Congress Punts on TaxesDemocrats Put Off Showdown on Bush Cuts Until After November Election
WASHINGTON—Democrats abandoned plans to vote before Election Day on
extending Bush-era tax cuts for the middle class while eliminating them for
better-off Americans, spooked by protests from vulnerable incumbents and bleak
prospects for passage.
With time running out to plan for 2011, the delay raises uncertainty for small businesses and individual taxpayers over their
future liabilities. It also sets up a titanic battle over taxes after the
election.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703384204575509793142421332.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection
I had a blog posting on the word Zugswang which fits here. Zugswang is chess term that means you have to move but any move you make is the wrong one. That sums up this election if you are a democrat
Alarm Bells ringing in Ohio
There's no shortage of political tumult in the Buckeye State this year,
where the Democratic-held governorship and at least six Democratic-held House
seats are in jeopardy. But what makes it particularly notable is that the state
represents several key demographic groups whose changing perspectives will give
serious insight into President Obama's broader political standing for 2012.
The voters Obama is losing -- white-collar managers in Columbus,
blue-collar union workers in Youngstown, pro-life independents around Cincinnati
-- are exactly the types he needs to win re-election in 2012, and they're
backing away from his party in droves. Obama tallied a whopping 60 percent
disapproval rating in Quinnipiac's latest Ohio poll, with nearly
two-thirds of voters disapproving of his economic performance.
That dissatisfaction extends across the board to Democrats on the
statewide ballot. The Quinnipiac poll showed Gov. Ted Strickland down 17 points
to Republican John Kasich and Republican Rob Portman leading Democratic Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher by 20 points in the Senate race. A separate CNN /Time poll was
striking in that the two statewide Democrats were badly underperforming
in nearly every part of the state, among almost every key
demographic
http://hotlineoncall.nationaljournal.com/archives/2010/09/what_ohio_tells.php
More Alarm bells are ringing
Pennsylvania 8 has been in the paper the last few days. It represents one of those swing districts which can be used as a good gauge of what is going on nationally in the electorate and the lastest numbers are alarming if you are a Democrat.
Pennsylvania Rep. Patrick Murphy is confronting worrisome new poll
numbers in his rematch against former GOP Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick.
A new Franklin & Marshall survey out Thursday morning shows
Murphy trailing Fitzpatrick by a steep 49 percent to 35 percent margin among likely voters — perilous territory for the two-term Democrat, who occupies a Bucks County-based 8th District seat.
The poll of 379 likely voters was conducted Sept. 14-19. Murphy has
long been seen as among the more electorally safe Pennsylvania Democrats,
raising a mammoth $2.6 million over the course of the cycle after easily
dispatching his 2008 GOP foe, Tom Manion, by 15 points.
Democrat Dreams that Won’t Come True
When facing a tsunami, what do you do? Pray, and tell yourself stories.
I am not privy to the Democrats’ private prayers, but I do hear the stories
they’re telling themselves. The new meme is that there’s a civil war raging in
the Republican party. The tea party will wreck it from within and prove to be
the Democrats’ salvation.
I don’t blame anyone for seeking a deus ex machina when about to be
swept out to sea. But this salvation du jour is flimsier than most.
In fact, the big political story of the year is the contrary: that
a spontaneous and quite anarchic movement with no recognized leadership or
discernible organization has been merged with such relative ease into the
Republican party………….
………. the general public is fairly evenly split in its views of the tea
party. It experiences none of the horror that liberals do — and think others
should. Moreover, the electorate supports by two to one the tea-party signature
issues of smaller government and lower taxes.
The Exhausted vs the Enraged.
"I'm a mother. I'm a wife. I'm an American veteran, and I'm one of your
middle-class Americans. And quite frankly I'm exhausted. I'm exhausted of
defending you, defending your administration, defending the mantle of change
that I voted for, and deeply disappointed with where we are." She said, "The
financial recession has taken an enormous toll on my family." She said, "My
husband and I have joked for years that we thought we were well beyond the
hot-dogs-and-beans era of our lives. But, quite frankly, it is starting to knock
on our door and ring true that that might be where we are headed."
But it was the word Mrs. Hart used that captured everything:
"exhausted." From what I see, that's how a lot of Democrats feel. They've turned
silent, too, like people who witnessed a car crash and can't talk anymore about
the reasons for the accident or how many were injured.
This election is more and more shaping up into a contest between the
Exhausted and the Enraged.
CNN Poll: Obama at all time low
I do believe when the history is written about the horrible defeat the Democrats will suffer in November, the conclusion as to how it happened will be “THEY EARNED IT.”
(CNN) – President Barack Obama is contending with the lowest approval
rating of his 20-month presidency, a new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll finds.
The president's approval rating now stands at 42 percent – an all
time low in CNN polling and 8 points lower than where Obama was only three weeks ago. Moreover, 56 percent of all Americans think the president has fallen short of their expectations.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/24/cnn-poll-obama-at-all-time-low/
Now He's Lost Margaret Carlson
If you are ever on the beach and the water suddenly subsides leaving fish floundering and vast expanses of land that minutes before was covered by water, don’t just stand there, run for higher ground. What you are witnessing is a tsunami. Right now the Democrats are seeing sign after sign of a coming political tsunami.
Obama's problem goes far deeper than his insolent style.
If he's lost Margaret Carlson he's lost Middle America. Sorry if
you disagree, but somehow, to our mind, that joke just never gets old. Carlson,
a fixture at Time magazine before jumping to the Bloomberg news service,
personifies liberal Beltway conventionality, and she appears to have turned
decisively against President Obama.
To be precise, she now thinks he's kind of a jerk--that's our
paraphrase; as you'll see, she puts it considerably more gently--which means
that her view of Obama has caught up to where conservatives were two years ago
and Middle American moderate independents this time in 2009.
Initial claims for unemployment aid rise to 465K
More bad news for everyone.
WASHINGTON -- Applications for unemployment benefits increased last
week for the first time in five weeks.
Initial claims for jobless aid rose by 12,000 to a seasonally
adjusted 465,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. Many economists had
expected a flat reading or small drop. The rise suggests that jobs remain
scarce and some companies are still cutting workers amid weak economic growth.
Initial claims have fallen from a recent spike above a half-million last month.
But they have been stuck above 450,000 for most of this year.
No comments:
Post a Comment