Long time, no blog! Obama answers questions about the Deep Water Horizon spill

President Obama held a news conference today after several weeks of mounting criticism from both democrats and republicans regarding the federal government's response to the BP oil spill.

While Obama's critics have mostly lacked specific suggestions on what the federal government should be doing to mitigate this environmental disaster (also known as Obama's Katrina and/or Obama's Exxon Valdez, take your pick), the general consensus is that the government was slow to act and that red tape is keeping local clean-up efforts from moving forward.

In his news conference today, Obama lashed out at the GOP for politicizing the oil spill and seemed to make a deliberate effort to come across as angry and frustrated with BP. He defended the federal government's response effort while at the same time acknowledging that the size of the oil spill has now exceeded the level of the Exxon Valdez (making it the largest oil spill in US history).

So what is next for Obama? The oil spill is still continuing to spread, but could this spill really have the same political impact on him as Katrina did on Bush? The disaster has gone uncontained for a month now, is it possible that public interest in the issue could wane if it goes on long enough? Even though Obama was open to offshore drilling only 2 months ago and since scaled back his stance, the GOP is still heavily tied to the oil industry, and it seems unlikely that a future challenger would be pro-oil in a campaign.

It is also unclear what exactly the federal government can do other than work with BP as it has been to stop the spill. The nature of this event is in completely uncharted territory, but perhaps the public announcement that the head of the Minerals Management Service (MMS) had been fired and the president's moratorium on offshore drilling will begin to have an effect on the public's perception of the disaster response.



On a side note, while some had speculated that a question regarding the job offer supposedly made to Joe Sestak might pop up during the conference, it apparently did not come up.

Health Care Vote Countdown

With the health care reform 'vote' set for Sunday, the media is aflurry with headcounts naming whose on Nancy Pelosi's side and whose still undecided. There are currently 64 representatives holding out, my guess would be that they aren't really undecided but are waiting to see what kind of goodies they can pick up in the final hours in exchange for their vote. And in case you're still wondering how the 'deem and pass' strategy actually works, Todd Purdum over at Vanity Fair wrote a good piece yesterday of breaking it down.

Paul Krugman wrote a great piece today reminding Americans why passing health care reform is so important. It will be interesting to see how Democrats will recover if health care reform doesn't pass. As Paul Krugman mentions in the linked piece above, this may be the final shot at health care reform for several years.

Are Democrats finally getting their act together?

In the dawn of what some see as a coming GOP renaissance, the Democrats, after a tumultuous year, may be seeing a glimmer of hope for their party's prospects in this years midterm elections. The Health care bill may (actually, someday) pass, the jobs bill is moving forward, and financial reform is coming together.

President Obama will apparently be embracing ideas on tort reform and cost control in his new legislation that he will be unveiling sometime tomorrow that will take the "best" ideas from last week's health care summit.

The way forward on health care is not to make it more ambitious, which is a solid strategy the White House is employing. Speaker Pelosi only passed their more liberal version of health care reform with two votes to spare (and that includes one GOP vote that is now dissenting,) so the hope is that a more scaled down bill that costs less and even contains some GOP goodies like medical malpractice reform and major cost control measures will be enough to get 6 or 7 more moderate Democrats who had initially voted no to switch their votes. Measures like tort reform and the ability to purchase insurance plans across state lines have been in the standard Republican talking points for months, and the White House will be daring the GOP to vote against something their party has advocated for nearly 30 years.

Kentucky GOP Senator Jim Bunning, who has long been a thorn in the side of his leadership, made several of his colleagues wince yesterday when he went on a tirade to reporters asking him why he is single handedly blocking a widely popular extension of unemployment benefits, COBRA benefits, medicare reimbursements for physicians, a highway trust fund extension, and many other programs that both parties actually like. Bunning may have unwittingly blunted much of the progress and momentum his party has been enjoying recently, and his actions seem only to be perpetuating the commonly held public view that the Republican Party is needlessly jamming up the government for political gain. Senator Harry Reid could kiss him, although he himself doesn't enjoy a rosy relationship with the press, he has at least never flipped off a reporter in the halls of the US Capitol.

GOP surge

At the CPAC conference yesterday there was a palpable sense that maybe things are starting to go Republicans' way. In May of last year Time Magazine had a cover story about the Republican Party as an "endangered species;" just 9 months later, their fortunes have suddenly turned a complete 180 as an anti-incumbent wave has hit middle America and Democrats' inability to get anything passed has seen their poll numbers drop considerably.

Minority Leader John Boehner spent a good amount of time during his speech explaining how a "Speaker Boehner" would run the house, bold prognostications that would've been unheard of even a few months ago. A pretty nerdy breakdown of competitive House races according to Congressional Quarterly was just released and can be found HERE. Prospects don't look good for Democrats and the CW has been changing in a real way that the Democrats' 4 year hold on congress is in significant danger. With just 9 months to go before the election, they will be potentially vulnerable in a whopping 95 districts, over a third of their whole caucus, with many political strategists saying the chances are good that they could lose close to half of them.

An article today in Politico talks about President Obama's fundraising trip for Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid in Las Vegas today, and how much their fortunes are tied together. They need eachother for their political survival, and this bosom-buddies story just goes to show how desperate things have really gotten for the Democratic Party.

Are Democrats Losing Ground on National Security?

The last few weeks have been slow on political news, first with Washington DC shut down due to snowstorms on the east coast and now with intense media focus on the Vancouver Olympic Games. President Obama is using today to unveil his unsexy plan for a bipartisan committee focused on reducing the deficit while at the same time seeming to allow America’s wave of recent progress in capturing Taliban leaders go relatively unnoticed.

Greg Sergeant over at The Plum Line argued today that downplaying the Obama Administration’s successes in fighting the “war on terror” could prove to be a major mistake come mid-term election time. Republicans are already pushing talking points to attack Democrats on national security issues, which plays nicely into the narrative that former Vice President Dick Cheney has more or less been pushing since Obama’s inauguration.

Vice President Joe Biden in particular has been the Democrats’ first line of defense in responding to Cheney’s criticisms, although it’s possible that the White House is losing ground on the narrative concerning national security as they continue to focus on tackling the economy, health care, and the deficit. If Democrats continue to downplay their successes with national security, they are likely to lose out come election time.

SOTU Response and reaction

You have to feel bad for anyone that has to follow the President with their party's rebuttal to the annual State Of The Union Address, especially after last night's from Obama was a little longer than usual and featured as gifted an orator as Obama.

Bob McDonnell of Virginia gave a decent response though, hitting all the right talking points for his party and showing himself to be a fresh face on a party currently on the rise. He wasn't combative, and as a moderate next door to Washington, there's probably a lot he and the President can share. It seems that the GOP theme right now is that they have Obama and The Democrats right where they want them and so now is not the time for the cooperation the president called for in his speech. It may be good optics to work through compromises on health care and jobs, but it's not smart politics when you can just delay and obstruct as long as possible, hoping that your party can be the one making the rules within the next year.

Here's some more reaction to Obama's state of the Union: NY Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, And I thought Jonathan Chait from The New Republic had a great analysis here.

In short: It wasn't soaring or lofty or inspriational, or claiming any of the usual adjectives assigned to Obama's other high profile speeches. However it did have some of the neccessary energy he needed to unite his nervous party, and sober plans for bipartisanship and middle of the road concessions that appeal to independent voters.

SOTU continued - change won't be easy

Obama is going for the big finish and trying to come back around to his campaign theme of change.

It's a new year. A new decade. We don't quit!

That's it.