Did Scott Walker create Wisconsin's budget crisis as a means to the end of cutting the public unions' collective bargaining rights?

That's what the NYT thinks:

Just last month, [Gov. Walker] and the [Wisconsin] Legislature gave away $117 million in tax breaks, mostly for businesses that expand and for private health savings accounts. That was a choice lawmakers made, and had it not been for those decisions and a few others, according to the state’s Legislative Fiscal Bureau, the state would have had a surplus.

Wisconsin is certainly not as bad off as California, Illinois, and several northeastern states that are making tough budgetary decisions without trying to eliminate union rights. Nonetheless, the union-busting movement is picking up steam, with lawmakers in Ohio, Indiana, and several other states. 

It really is odd that Wisconsin became ground zero, because we didn't have the budget disaster that was going on conspicuously in some of the other states. I'm really trying to understand this. Why Wisconsin? A distinctive thing about us is how good our public employees' benefits are. The cut we — I'm one of them — are being asked to take is severe. (I'm looking at a loss of more than $10,000 a year, myself.) But it's hard to complain and appear sympathetic, because we're only being asked to go from paying 0.2% of the payments our salary into our pension fund to 5.8%, which probably looks astoundingly low to outsiders. We're being asked to pay more for our health insurance, but the coverage is extremely good, and the annual hit will be about $2,500.

So maybe we public employees in Wisconsin are a great target — a great starting place for what is a national movement by the Republicans. I'm trying to understand the party politics. Tell me if this is correct: There are vast numbers of public employees, who vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. Once elected, the Democrats create more and more public jobs with greater and greater benefits, and, consequently, more voters who are even more locked into voting for Democrats. This is a cycle that approaches political graft, and the Republicans, to win, must overcome all those passionate, self-interested Democratic voters. Why wouldn't the Republicans embrace a strategy hostile to the public employees? Why wouldn't they drive a wedge between the public employees and all the other citizens in the state?

So I see 3 questions: 1. Is this what the Republicans are really doing? 2. How good a political strategy is it? and 3. Is it a good idea to reduce the political and economic power of public employees?

The 3 questions are interrelated, but they should contemplated separately... but who is capable of doing that? I'm trying to be fair, and it's possible that I'm in as good a position as anybody. I voted for Walker and support many of the things the Republicans are trying to do, but this budget plan — as I said — will cost me more than $10,000 a year.

Why did Congressman Christopher Lee give up so easily?

It's weird, isn't it?

Lee resigned less than four hours after Gawker posted the emails and photo.

His office first claimed his email account had been hacked - which didn't really explain the topless photo of himself flexing his biceps in a mirror.

About two hours later, Lee told Fox News he couldn't discuss the issue because "I have to work this out with my wife."

At 6 p.m. Wednesday, Lee issued a brief statement saying he was resigning the seat he won in 2008. "I regret the harm that my actions have caused my family, my staff and my constituents," he said. "I deeply and sincerely apologize to them all. ... I promise to work as hard as I can to seek their forgiveness."

There must be a lot more below the surface, and the quick resignation was to get us to move on. I'd like to know what inspired the desperation. Or was it that he got no support from his GOP colleagues in Congress. Perhaps he was told, quite clearly, that they didn't want to burn any political capital defending him. If so, I think that was probably an excellent choice. They can't want him as the torso face of the party for the next month.

"The Patriot Act represents the undermining of civil liberties," says Dennis Kucinich, who got 26 Republicans on his side.

What happened in the House yesterday?!

House Republicans suffered an embarrassing setback Tuesday when they fell seven votes short of extending provisions of the Patriot Act, a vote that served as the first small uprising of the party's tea-party bloc.

The bill to reauthorize key parts of the counter-terrorism surveillance law, which expire at the end of the month, required a super-majority to pass under special rules reserved for non-controversial measures....

The vote was the latest signal... that on certain matters House leaders could face a sizable resistance to compromise from within their own ranks, both from the 87 GOP freshmen and from conservative veterans who have been emboldened by the newcomers.

Good! The Republicans don't own the Tea Party movement.

"A young Wisconsin trio could shape the direction of the GOP."

WaPo:

They all grew up in southern Wisconsin. They are close in age, ranging from late 30s to early 40s, and have known and worked with one another for many years. [Paul] Ryan and [Scott] Walker met when they were in their 20s. Ryan's chief of staff roomed with [Reince] Priebus in college.

They are not only friends but political soul mates. They share a worldview, a set of conservative values and a determination to show the country that conservative governance can solve many of the nation's problems. And in Wisconsin, they found a way to unify the party establishment with the tea party movement, avoiding many of the conflicts that occurred in other states.

It's all about Wisconsin....

Things said about Dick Cheney lead me to reaffirm my decision to vote for Obama.

Instapundit picked up on the Cheney-hate wisecrack I blogged yesterday:

CIVILITY CAMPAIGN NOT CATCHING ON: “Cheney’s heart transplant. Wouldn’t that be the worst day ever? Not only are you dead but they’ve given your heart to THAT prick!”

Plus, from the comments: “Obama ends up adopting half these policies in his continuance of his war on terror. And yet, whereas these policies made Cheney Darth Vader and the Emperor rolled into one, under Obama these policies are not even worth mentioning.” That Obama adopted them too only makes Cheney more evil — for undermining the fierce moral urgency of change. And then mocking The One for going along.

That last link goes to Tom Maguire, who notes Glenn Greenwald's moaning over Cheney's solemn observation that Obama, as President, has recognized the importance of the Bush administration's policies and made them his own:

“I think he’s been through the fires of becoming president and having to make decisions and live with the consequences,” Cheney said. “I think he’s learned that what we did was far more appropriate than he ever gave us credit for while he was a candidate ... I think he’s learned from experience.”

And I just want to say that this is part of why I voted for Obama. I explained my vote on November 9, 2008, just after the election and made a prediction that I think you should now see was right. Here's the key part, where I quote what I blogged on October 30:

October 30: I come to terms with the problem of 1-party government:

Usually, I prefer divided government, but that doesn't mean I need to support McCain. I've seen McCain put way too much effort into pleasing Democrats and flouting his own party, and I can picture Obama standing up to the Democratic Congress and being his own man. What, really, will he owe them? McCain, by contrast, will need them. And we've seen that he wants to be loved by them.

Sometimes, I think that letting the Democrats control everything for 2 years would work out just fine. Let one party take responsibility for everything. When they can't whine and finger-point, what will they actually step up and do? It will be interesting to know. And it will do the Republicans good to retool and define themselves, with an eye toward the 2010 election. I'd like to see this clarification after so many years of obfuscation.

This goes along with my problem that McCain had abandoned the effort to define himself as conservative. I could see myself voting for a conservative. I would like some good conservatism. But I did not see it in McCain. Certainly, just bringing in Palin was no substitute for having his own clear principles.

Also in that November 9th post I quote something I wrote on November 3:

One thing I don't like about John McCain is that he never showed respect for Bush. He was all about distancing himself from Bush, but if it's distance you want from Bush, there's Obama. And Obama had no reason to defend the other party's President, but for all his criticism of Bush's policies, I don't remember Obama taking ugly potshots at Bush. McCain treated Bush like an outcast. Was there even a word of defense for the man who protected us from terrorist attacks for 7 years?

Before you bitch about Obama, do a clear, honest visualization of where we'd be right now if McCain were President. Take account of the benefit we have received as the Obama administration has had to embrace many of Bush's policies, and these things have become the norm. And look at what the Republicans have done with their period of exile. Now, seriously picture what the political discourse would be if the Republicans had held onto power.

I know some of you are ready to list the terrible things the Democrats did in their 2 years of dominance. I'm not saying there wasn't a down side. The Democrats did a lot more damage than I thought possible. But McCain would have gone along with a lot of things, and there would be continuing partisan criticism about the wars. Everything having to do with national security would be pinned on McCain and presented in the worst possible light, for the aggrandizement of the Democratic Party.

If McCain had won, we would not have experienced the revitalization of the conservative movement that had such a tremendous effect on the 2010 elections and is shaping the next presidential election. Finally, think about all the angst there would be right now over the lost opportunity to experience the brilliant hope that was Barack Obama. Instead of the wistful imaginings of the glories of Obama administration that could have been, we have the reality. We get to see it, criticize it, and sharpen our conservative politics on it.

"House Republicans plan to vote tomorrow to repeal last year’s health care overhaul."

"One of the key defenses of the law is that it will reduce the deficit over the next decade and the decades to come. But the projections employed to make this argument just aren’t believable. Democrats gamed the Congressional Budget Office’s scoring process, producing a score that distorted the long-term numbers and was believable only under a set of fantastic and improbable assumptions."

"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government..."

The part of the Constitution that by accident was not read in the House's Constitution-reading ritual. Somebody turned 2 pages at once. Intentionally left out was the Three-Fifths Clause. Obviously, the accidental omission was unfortunate, but was the intentional omission wise?

You can read some of the debate on that question at the link. I think it's quite interesting that we list the amendments after the original document instead of integrating them into a new, amended document. Considering how much shame we now feel for the parts about slavery and how much we want to revere the document, you might think we'd have changed our approach to formatting by now. But our traditionalism about the Constitution extends even to the placement of the amendments.

Are you watching the reading of the Constitution on the House floor?

I just turned on C-SPAN and hit the 2d Amendment right on the nose. Do I have some kind of right-wing instinct?

Here, you can watch on the internet. Hurry! They're up to the 6th Amendment.

UPDATE: The 10th Amendment won a spatter of applause.

UPDATE 2: John Lewis read the 13th Amendment – abolishing slavery — and that got a big round of applause. Section 1 of the 14th Amendment — read by Democrat Mel Watt — also got some healthy applause.

UPDATE 3: Silence at the 17th Amendment.

UPDATE 4: The word "sex" is in the Constitution.

UPDATE 5: You have one sentence to read: How can you mispronounce one of the words? Compulsatory, etc. etc.

UPDATE 6: Applause... either for the document as a whole, now completely read, or for the idea that they shouldn't give themselves a raise, which was the last thing read.

UPDATE 7: I missed the birther outburst. Did it really happen?

Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) tweeted from the House floor that a "birther" had interrupted the Constitution reading that's been taking place.

Yes, it happened...



... from the gallery. It wasn't another Joe Wilson "You lie"-type situation.

UPDATE 8: The heckler — who has been arrested — yelled "Except Obama, except Obama. Help us Jesus." Jesus? Why drag in Jesus?

Was Issa just "pandering to Rush Limbaugh" when he called Obama "one of the most corrupt presidents in modern times"?

That's not the way Rush Limbaugh sees it:

[L]ast Sunday morning on CNN's State of the Union, fill-in host Ed Henry and Darrell Issa [the new House Oversight Government Reform Committee chairman] have this exchange about Issa's remarks about Obama on my show back in October.
HENRY: Right before the election you went on Rush Limbaugh's radio program. You have since said you regret saying that --

ISSA: I corrected what I meant to say. You know, on live radio with Rush going back and forth -- and, by the way, that was because Rush had me on to answer the question of about coming together, having compromise. He didn't like the compromise word when I said, we're gonna agree to disagree and then we're gonna find the kind of common ground, the kind of compromise that makes and gets things done. In saying that this is one of the most corrupt administrations, which is what I meant to say there, when you hand out a trillion dollars in TARP just before this president came in, most of it unspent, a trillion dollars, nearly, in stimulus that this president asked for plus this huge expansion in health care and government, it has a corrupting effect....

RUSH: So here's Issa trying to walk all this back. Now, just to set the record straight, I have no problem with Congressman Issa, literally no problem. He called the program wanting to get on. He called and wanted to get on to set something straight, to correct something I had said.... I was mad at him over compromise is sort of right. But when I hear Republicans say, "We want to work together to get things done," with any liberal Democrat, particularly Obama, red flags go up. There's no working with these guys. There's beating these guys, which happened in November. And what's going on now is an attempt to erase that, the fact that there was a big win. The mainstream media is trying to erase that fact. So Sunday morning on Face the Nation, the fill-in host was Harry Smith, and he talked to Darrell Issa and they had this exchange again about Issa on my radio program in October.

SMITH: I want to go back to something you told Rush Limbaugh not so long ago that you thought President Obama's one of the most corrupt presidents in modern history --

ISSA: But you know I walked -- I walked -- I walked back very quickly and said it's about the money the administration has had in a loose fashion. It's more about Congress' mistake in funding.

SMITH: Okay, 'cause my question was, do you think the Obama administration is corrupt?

ISSA: Time and time again what we've seen with the Obama administration is they played fast and loose with the walking-around money Congress gave 'em.

RUSH: Congressman Issa, look, I have no business here to be handing out advice, but no matter what you do, sir, they're gonna hate you. No matter what you do they're gonna twist and turn what you say. I mean this happened in October and they couldn't have cared less. Now it's January, it's the eve of you guys being sworn in and you assuming the chairmanship, and now all of a sudden you are some reprobate. Well, you're always gonna be a reprobate to these people in the media. There's nothing you can say. It's not worth trying to tie yourself in knots, congressman, to please 'em because it isn't gonna happen, you are the enemy. It's like I told the freshman class in 1994, "The media doesn't like the fact that you won. They're not happy you're here. They're not gonna treat you like winners. They're not gonna afford you the respect that they offer people like Debbie Wasserman Schultz or other B players. They're not gonna afford you any respect at all. They are gonna try to humiliate you, embarrass you, and try to get you to take back things that you meant, that you said, through intimidation or what have you. So you may as well just say what you think."

There's no question this administration's corrupt. Why do they care about it all of a sudden? They fear somebody's out to prove it, and actually do more than prove it, to actually act on it. Here's Margaret Carlson last night with Maude Behar on the Headline News channel. Maude Behar said, "What's he up to, Issa? Is he looking for a little time in the sun or something trying to improve his image in his party, what's going on here?"

CARLSON: In fairness to Congressman Issa, he was bullied by Rush Limbaugh when he said the thing about corruption, and no Republican wants to go up against Rush Limbaugh. Even if you have an investigatory commission, you are nothing compared to Rush Limbaugh, and they all know it.

RUSH: Okay, there we have it. So he was bullied by me. He has an excuse, you see. If he'll just change his mind, if he'll just walk it back, they'll let him get away with having it blamed on me, that I bullied him into saying something he doesn't really believe, that I, a harmless lovable little fuzzball, El Rushbo, on the radio intimidated a congressional committee chairman. And as long as he flies with that, then they'll give him a pass. Here's Chris Matthews last night on Hardball, just to show you the template that's been created here.

MATTHEWS: When you say "the most corrupt government," you are pandering to Rush Limbaugh. That's not true. This president's clean.

RUSH: (laughing) And articulate. You forgot articulate.

Michael Steele says his favorite book is “War and Peace” and he quotes the first line as: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

D'oh! Bad times for Michael Steele. The 5 candidates for RNC were asked, in their debate, what's their favorite book? It's not like anybody else said anything good. ("To Kill a Mockingbird" — give me a break!)

The actual opening lines of "War and Peace":

"Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war, if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist — I really believe he is Antichrist — I will have nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer my 'faithful slave,' as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see I have frightened you- sit down and tell me all the news.""

Here's "A Tale of Two Cities":

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way — in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Pretty much the same thing, no? Close enough for RNC work.

The "risk in over-learning" the lesson that Presidents can win reelection after getting slammed in the midterms.

Nate Silver writes:

Mr. Clinton and Mr. Reagan, though they are two recent examples, are nevertheless just two examples, and they were both once-in-a-generation political talents.

Reagan was in the "greatest generation" and Bill Clinton is a Baby Boomer. This makes me want to dredge up the old question whether Obama is a Baby Boomer. Taking Silver's assertion seriously, if Bill is the "once-in-a-generation" talent, then Obama's not at the Clinton level. But I'll just link back to that time I assumed Obama was not a Baby Boomer and you readers argued with me about it. Well, maybe you've changed your mind. I haven't.

[Would Obama] win re-election if an election were held tomorrow[?] His approval ratings right now are quite similar to where George W. Bush’s were at the end of 2004. Mr. Bush won re-election, albeit very narrowly and against a relatively weak Democratic nominee.

Then again, the set of prospective Republican nominees is also perhaps rather weak.... [I]f an election were held tomorrow, Mr. Obama would be a clear favorite against Ms. Palin, and probably about even money (although perhaps a very slight favorite) against a less divisive Republican nominee....

[But] an election won’t be held tomorrow. Do we have any inkling yet about whether Mr. Obama’s standing with the public is likely to improve or decline by 2012?

There's the economy, which might improve. And there's the post-election flurry of activity by the doomed Democratic majority in Congress, and then, whatever will happen with the Republicans in the next session.

Mr. Obama will be fighting from a defensive posture on health care, which remains unpopular with the public....

Ultimately, however, Mr. Obama is more popular than the Republican Congress — an advantage that Bill Clinton did not have after 1994, nor Ronald Reagan after 1982. With the equally unpopular Democratic Congress largely being marginalized, that may work to his advantage....

Until we get a better sense for how the dynamics between Mr. Obama and the Republicans will play out — or in which direction the economy is headed — I would be skeptical of analyses that seem to express a significant amount of confidence on either side of that figure.

It seems to me that people generally tend to hate Congress, so it will help the President to have an oppositional Congress.

Girl talk — Barbara Walters refers to Sarah Palin's "considerable weight"...

... and Sarah Palin calls the GOP — "these boys" — "silly." And "impotent and limp."



And I love when Walters gives Todd a chance to speak, limits him to 3 words, then scolds him for saying more than 3 words.

"Defying President Obama, House Democrats vote not to bring up tax deal he negotiated with GOP in its current form."

CNN Breaking News.

Meade, immediately: "Oh, man! That's going to make bleeding-heart moderates like you like him even more."

Immediate Althouse: "Obama is being thrust into the arms of the onrushing GOP!"

Meade: "In the same way that H.W. befriended Bill Clinton, W is going to befriend Obama. You'll see them playing golf together. Maybe even mountain biking."

It's the Obama I voted for: Obama the Pragmatist.

Now, Rush Limbaugh was talking about how "the media is just beside itself over how pathetic [Obama's] performance was yesterday" in the news conference about the tax compromise. And Rush is saying that Obama "knows full well that he had a meltdown yesterday."

Here's the video:



Rush says he can tell that Obama...

... has been festering, this has been effervescing inside him, that he's unappreciated, that he did something nobody else has done, and they wanted it for a hundred years, and by golly he got it.  He didn't get everything he wanted, he got 99%, and they don't appreciate me,...

So he's essentially telling them, look, I gotta back off on some of this stuff if we're to get anything done.  And that infuriated 'em even more because the question was, "Where you gonna go to the mat, what are your core values?" And he withered.  He caved.  And that made them even angrier.  I know it's hard to comprehend.  But these people on the left, they are truly enraged.  It is a lifestyle.  They are never happy.  I looked at the comments on the Daily Kos website, they are hilarious.  But they're real.  And it went on for ten pages.  I mean they are just fit to be tied because Obama is not what they thought he was....

I must say... I watched that video clip earlier today, and I liked the Obama I saw there. You could say he's beaten down, but there's fire there. It's the fire of pragmatism. I see a sensible and strong man. I never believed in Obama the Messiah, and I fretted about the signs that he was a left-wing ideologue. But when it came down to a decision between Obama and McCain, in the midst of a terrible economic crisis, I put my trust in Obama. I said:

I worry about what awful innovations the new President will concoct in league with the Democratic Congress, but at this point, I'm more worried about McCain than Obama. 

I thought that Obama would have some independence from the Democrats in Congress and that he'd use his common sense and pragmatism to work out some solutions. The more he departs from left-wing ideology and struggles to get to good solutions, the more I like him.

When I watch that video, I don't see a melt-down at all. I see Obama coming into his own at last. I see the Obama I voted for.

It's funny the way people are trying to spin the tax deal, now, before the vote.

There's this from Ezra Klein:

If you look at the numbers alone, the tax cut deal looks to have robbed Republicans blind. The GOP got around $95 billion in tax cuts for wealthy Americans and $30 billion in estate tax cuts. Democrats got $120 billion in payroll-tax cuts, $40 billion in refundable tax credits (Earned Income Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit and education tax credits), $56 billion in unemployment insurance, and, depending on how you count it, about $180 billion (two-year cost) or $30 billion (10-year cost) in new tax incentives for businesses to invest....

.... Much of what the Obama administration wanted was not that noxious to conservatives. They were tax cuts, many of them for businesses. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels had previously proposed both a payroll tax cut for 2011 and the tax breaks for business investment. Republicans have frequently said that they don't even oppose unemployment insurance.

I elided 4 paragraphs for humorous effect.  The "numbers alone" skew heavily toward the Democrats only because Klein limited the Republican side to "tax cuts for the rich." He also says:

Conservatives saw the extension of the tax cuts as an important pivot point in American politics -- full stop. As my colleague Jennifer Rubin puts it, Republicans "won the philosophical point (tax hikes impede economic growth)..." The Obama administration didn't see the tax cuts as a philosophical point....

Well, that's convenient.

Greg Sargent says:

... Obama's strategy going forward will be to position himself as Washington's lone resident adult in a town full of squabbling children on right and left, and at his presser just now, Obama offered a surprisingly stern, and even angry, rebuke to his liberal critics....

This is a good stance to take for 2012. At that point, we'll see how well the tax cuts worked. If the economy improves, Obama can take credit and warn us against giving too much power to Republicans because they will overdo tax cutting for the rich instead of taking the intelligently balanced approach he brokered. If things go badly, he can say the Republicans got some power in 2010 and forced a compromise that demonstrated that their ideology is wrong.

Meanwhile, both Jim DeMint and Mary Landrieu are lambasting the deal. Landrieu says she's "going to argue forcefully for the nonsensicalness and the almost, you know, moral corruptness of" tax cuts for the rich. DeMint says:

"I’m glad the President recognizes that tax increases hurt the economy.... [b]ut ... most of us who ran this election said we were not going to vote for anything that increased the deficit.... I don’t want to second-guess my leadership, but frankly, I think we need to come away with a lot better than this. We cannot increase the deficit, or keep increasing deficit spending.."

And I'll just end this patchwork post with Rush Limbaugh....

My take is, taken by itself in its own universe, yeah, okay, pretty good.  I like the fact the left hates Obama. I like the fact they're mad at him right now.  I like the fact that nobody's taxes are going up.  But placed in the context of the shellacking and of this huge election victory, it's not nearly what we coulda gotten....

ADDED: My post title is "It's funny the way people are trying to spin the tax deal, now, before the vote." Once the legislation is passed, I assume people will say different things. Extreme claims of victory can't be made now if what you want is to get the legislation passed. And, too, different things will be said about this when 2012 rolls around.

Paul Krugman adds a new layer of shellac to Barack Obama.

"... a pay freeze for federal workers. This was an announcement that had it all. It was transparently cynical; it was trivial in scale, but misguided in direction; and by making the announcement, Mr. Obama effectively conceded the policy argument to the very people who are seeking — successfully, it seems — to destroy him."

"The Select Committee on Global Warming – which was created to provide a political forum to promote Washington Democrats' job-killing national energy tax..."

"... it will not continue in the 112th Congress."

"'I am,' Sarah Palin told me the next day when I asked her if she was already weighing a run for president."

Here's the big NYT Magazine article by Robert Draper.

“I’m engaged in the internal deliberations candidly, and having that discussion with my family, because my family is the most important consideration here.” Palin went on to say that there weren’t meaningful differences in policy among the field of G.O.P. hopefuls “but that in fact there’s more to the presidency than that” and that her decision would involve evaluating whether she could bring unique qualities to the table....

[D]idn’t she believe that the Republican establishment’s predominant worry was that she would lose to Obama? “Then perhaps they should vent some of their paranoia toward all of the potential G.O.P. candidates,” she said. “Because obviously there’s no guarantee that any one of us would win. But I do believe that much of this is a threat to their hierarchy, because I’ve never shied away from a battle and because I’ll put principle before politics.”

In a sense, Palin views Beltway Republicans as she does the Obama administration: aloof, self-interested and vulnerable to the populist power that she believes she wields. “They’re in an isolated bubble — Barack Obama mentioned that in his press conference, and I agree with him, he is isolated from what average Americans are talking about,” she said, referring to the president’s words after the midterm elections. “But what he was meaning, of course, was that he’s not in touch with average Americans. I am — because that’s who I am. That’s who surrounds me, common-sense Americans who just want government on their side, not riding their backs. And I tweet to reach out to them.”

Much more at the link.

"While the president has been on a trip to Asia for the past 10 days, all but a few of his top aides stayed behind to figure out what went so wrong and what to do about it."

WaPo reports:

One adviser said they spent the past dozen days "soul-searching."

Another said that, around the White House, "people aren't just sitting around doing soul-searching. They're gaming out the short, medium and long term."

Gaming out.... Am I wrong to hear that as electoral politics?

Advisers also said it will probably take months, if not longer, to develop a strategy for restoring some of the early promise of the Obama presidency, particularly the notion that he was a different kind of Democrat.

In a nod to that ambition, his weekly address Saturday focused on earmark reform, one way, Obama said, of "restoring public trust." 

Am I wrong to hear this as a repulsive desire to re-engulf us in a mindless hopey-changey mood? I don't care about a feeling of "promise." I see America's grim sense of reality as a hard-won accomplishment. We're awake now. The dream is over.

Over the next few days, White House officials said they will begin to gauge whether they can forge an alliance with any top Republicans, many of whom are scheduled to attend a bipartisan meeting at the White House on Thursday. Although Obama could benefit from a high-profile compromise - perhaps on extending the Bush-era tax cuts or on other tax initiatives set to expire before the end of the year - officials are also prepared to point out any Republican intransigence.

The medium and long term game plan is the Republicans will screw up enough to take advantage of. The short-term plan is to look willing to so something bipartisan and beneficent.

"If Manchin, Nelson and Lieberman switched, it would leave the Senate in a 50-50 deadlock."

"Republicans believe Manchin is particularly susceptible to the overture because he is up for reelection in 2012 and will have to be on the ticket with President Obama, who is direly unpopular in West Virginia. Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Independent Joe Lieberman are the other two prime targets of Republican advances."