Latest Generic Polls: Ras +12%R; WSJ 6%R; Gallup 15%R; CNN 10R; Fox13R; Bloom 3R

[Brittain33]

Thanks Obama, you jackass.  Im sure you will love having Republicans strap strings onto and move you around like a mariannette after this election.  Democrats should have tanked Obama when they had a chance in 2008. 

President Clinton wouldn't be doing any better, not unless she had the magical cure for avoiding a massive deleveraging that Obama doesn't.

[Brittain33]

Obama's win in 2008 was the worst thing that ever happened to the Democrats.

BINGO.  And the only way to to give Democrats any chance of a comeback is to make sure he tanks in 2012.  

You two can wail and gnash your teeth, I'm glad that Obama accomplished what he did with health care and financial regulation and don't give a damn if it means the country flips back for the short term. Republicans are going to get elected on a pure protest vote with almost no ideas other than extending the Bush tax cuts and making life tough for Obama. That's not a mandate for a bright future. This past term has been meaningful and done a lot of good for the country. If nothing else, it means future Democratic Congresses will never again have to tear themselves up over the idea of universal coverage. There will be a time in the future when I would be content for Democrats to merely govern, and not legislate, but that time wasn't 2008-2009 after 30 years of conservative government. A Republican victory in 2010 sets us up for a clash of ideas in 2012. Bring it on. Viva democracy.

[Brittain33]

If you also take into account that Republicans almost always outperform the generic ballot...

How many points do you add to all of these ballot results to "adjust" for this phenomenon?

[Brittain33]

Further data from Rasmussen's sample: Palin's fav/unfav numbers are 48/49 and health care's numbers are 33/56 support/oppose. Whether or not that reflects the electorate is debatable since this is quite a conservative slice of America; it's interesting to think of the Republican ballot number tracking exactly with Palin's favorables.

[Brittain33]

Things seem to be regressing back towards a tie between the two parties.  It is vaguely reminescent of the UK elections last spring.

This was always the problem with disregarding the gap between RV and LV polls in August because only the LV polls were significant. That's true to a point, but it meant there was the potential for change as the pool of LV grew larger given that Republican enthusiasm maxed out about 16 months ago and has stayed there.

[Brittain33]

Things seem to be regressing back towards a tie between the two parties.

Which still means massive losses for the Dems from 2006/2008 numbers, of course.

[Brittain33]

Do the moderators update the title of the thread, or is it up to the original poster? We have three Ras numbers in there and I think Gallup has changed...

[Brittain33]

Not wasting 18 months on a healthcare plan that they ended up stuffing down people's throats in some pretty undemocratic ways.

The filibuster is pretty much the antithesis of a democratic procedure. That doesn't make it a bad thing, mind you, but if we had applied democratic principles, the health care plan would have passed easily and probably done more. Giving a reduced minority a veto that prevents the majority from debating an issue or voting on it is not democratic. Again, that is different from saying it's a bad thing or good thing; clearly everyone whose party is in the minority thinks it is awesome, while those in the majority fulminate against it. But you can hardly blame the large Democratic majority from using the rules of the Congress to accomplish what Republicans, using the rules of the Congress, strove to prevent. 

Who do you think is responsible for the health care bill taking about 12 months? Was it the Democrats 100%, 90%, 80%?

[Brittain33]

Making a few concessions to get at least a few token Republicans onside for major bills. (When you can't pick off any of Collins, Snowe, Graham, Lugar, Murkowski, etc... you know it's a pretty far out there bill)

Or they're voting on what they believe is in the best interests of their party. The times when Republicans not only voted against, but voted to sustain filibusters against bills they once supported because of political calculations is quite disheartening. But it's a natural outcome of rules that allow for this kind of political strategy.

I can't come around to your view that the Republicans were purely reactive and not taking politics into account when they chose to reject Obama's policies and follow their base's initiatives to not cooperate on everything.

[Brittain33]

Collins, Snowe, etc...  at least one or two of them could have been brought on board fairly easy and fairly early if the Democrats had been willing to make a few minor concessions.  The final Health Care bill was 2000 pages long, if you had let Collins write 4 pages of it, Snowe 6 pages, and Lindsay Graham another 5 pages it would have been 99% the same as the final product, and it would have passed in the fall of 2009.

Max Baucus pursued negotiations with Olympia Snowe for at least a month on that basis, along with other Republicans. If Snowe could have promised her support, Obama would have made her the lead author and named it in her honor. But she kept pulling away the football, because that is what the dynamics of her position allowed her to do.

How closely did you follow the discussion in the Senate in summer 2009? Obama had Snowe, Collins, and others in his office regularly for hours of discussion, and as I said, the Senate put the health care bill on hold for at least a month as Max Baucus assembled his group of Republicans and negotiated with them. I don't see how you can acknowledge the tremendous influence these people were given--influence they then rejected, as we saw when Grassley pivoted from supporting an individual mandate and negotiating with Baucus to railing against "pulling the plug on grandma" and suddenly deciding that the mandate was unconstitutional after all--and still claim it was the Democrats' responsibility.

I feel like you have this need, as someone who strongly disagrees with the Democrats, for a "just so" story where Democrats could have gotten what they wanted, if only they hadn't been so pigheaded, stubborn, partisan, etc. I simply can not see how you can come to that conclusion after a close study of the actual behavior of Obama and Baucus and the various Republican senators in 2009, and knowing how human nature and partisan interests determined how Republicans actually would vote. I'm sorry, there's quite a few things I think Democrats did wrong, but I will not accept your spanking on this.