Cook Report: Dems Have Lost Control Of The Debate

If this is Charles Cook he knows better and should can the hyperbole

"That all of this is happening against a backdrop of an economy that appears to be rebounding and a resurgent stock market underscores how much the President's and his party's legislative agenda have contributed to these poor poll numbers."

It is a REAL stretch to argue that an economic rebound has captured or should have captured or might have captured the public's attention at this point

I've known Cook since 1972
He knows better than that

That said, his bottom line is spot on.
As I have said many times, Obama gave the 20% approval Congress his political chips to play with all summer long

Risk/reward ratio not the best

The bigger the Democratic party becomes, the less coherent its messaging is going to be. What has happened is that the radicalization of the GOP has pushed moderate conservatives into the Democratic ranks. Many of the Blue Dogs would have been Republicans ten years ago. The Democrats are as divided internally as they have been since the days of the Dixiecrats. Not necesssarily a bad thing, but it does mean that message control becomes a lot more difficult on our side.

Corporate shill-dom has its price... Nothing some fat Wall Street campaign bribes won't fix.

I guess that's it, then. Time to give up. Prepare for President Huckabee, folks! This administration has failed.

Oh, good grief. The scars and mislearned lessons of 1994 just will not go away. Why did we lose so many seats? Because Democrats stayed home because we were demoralized that a fully Democratic Congress and a Democratic president couldn't pass legislation on our top priorities.

People point out the health care bill, and that was huge, but the post office scandal and then the failure of the crime bill showed that Democrats simply couldn't govern.

Pass a health care bill and we will destroy the GOP in 2010. Failure to do so is what would lead to a wave.

I have never liked August. Not one bit.

This is so much off-year speculation. With HCR and so much as one new job, it's all over for Whigs...er, ah, GOP.

Off-election year masturbation at its finest.

But it might have the positive effect of kicking some Democrats in the butt. Healthcare reform is our Waterloo but only if we let it be. If the party unifies, the Republicans can't do a thing to stop us.

Election predictions more than 14 months out? Is Cook giving odds on the 2010 World Series as well?

it's way too early to make any sort of call like this

jeez, Dems are sure good at losing their heads...

some repugs shout at town halls and we go from "healthcare reform is going down the drain" to "dems will lose big a year and a lalf from now"

what's next week, "Dems all sucked into black hole -- white, racist, greedy minority to rule the galaxy for all time"????

I'm glad to see this. FINALLY.

There are 50,000,000 people without health care right now and Max Baucus wants to wait till the end of the year to do something -- anything. Harry needs to walk over to Max and let him know the timetable.

The reason we're going to lose seats is because people are fed up with the pandering to the insurance companies. If we passed a public plan today, the debate would close and we'd be able to move on to something else. But Harry and Obama better get control of this or things are going to get much worse and we won't be talking about any twenty seat loss.

This is sort of like the ultimate in DC Beltway insider punditry ... Not only is Obama doing well (56% approval today by WaPo) in the face of total opposition by crazy right-wingers, the GOP and the largest news corporation in the world, but Cook also TOTALLY ignores these most important facts:

1. This ain't 1994. Healthcare WILL pass this year.
2. The GOP is in TERRIBLE shape. They have an average 20% approval rating in natl polls.
3. The Net Roots are much more powerful than Cook would ever know about. That did not exist in the 1990s.

To me, this is just wishful thinking from conservative-minded DC pundits who want a more business-friendly and drama-ridden government, thereby giving the Republicans more credence than they actually deserve.

I think blogs have lost control. They used to have an independence from the convulsions of main stream media. A sharper more insightful eye. A penetrating reflective nature.

Lately, a lot of stuff has become chum.

Does anyone else get the feeling that blogs are losing their sea legs?

Perhaps too caught up in the nano news maelstrom?

Oh Jeebus help me, I fucking hate August. Year after year the torrent of stoopid is ceaseless and then Labor Day rolls around and, *poof* everybody in the chattering classses gets to tee up a penalty-free mulligan for all the stupid shit they said throughout the month because there was no actual news to report.

Boys and girls, you were punk'ed. Obama really was all talk and no substance, and we're all paying the price.

As frstrated as many people are with the utter lack of message unity and mealy-mouthed leadership amongst the Dems (hello HARRY!), it's struck me that there is quite possibly the rope-a-dope message control at the White House isn't working so well. Eventhough I personally think the stakes are way to high to be giving an inch to any repubs in the way they repeatedly have under the guise of bi-partisanship, there must be some 21st c. version of triangulation going on with Congress-master Rahm pulling the strings.

There was a pretty fatalistic and damning Greenwald article on Salon the other day saying as much and hypothesizes why we've seen the lack of any strong-arm tactics used for this bill to be passed the way they were for the Leadbetter Act or the Minimum Wage hike for example.

"
Now that they have a filibuster-proof majority, a huge margin in the House and the White House, the excuses continue unabated, as Democrats are now on the verge of jettisoning one of the most significant attractions for progressives to the Obama campaign -- active government involvement in the health insurance market. The excuses for "compromising" are cascading more rapidly than ever: We need Republican support to ensure it's bipartisan. The Blue Dogs won't go along with what we want. Centrist Senators will filibuster. There are similar excuses being made to defend Obama from accusations that he deserves some of the blame for the failure of the "public option.
"

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/08/19/obama/index.html

Damn right I'm pissed at how horrible this debate has shaped up - I expected something that resembled the tight message control we saw during the campaign. We know Obama is capable of this which is what makes the current situation even more frustrating and its no surprise that we see predictions of doom for Dems sweeping through the pollsters headlines. Even Nate Silver from 538 said something very similar given the current political climate.

Let's see since January 20th, Obama has passed or ordered passed :
The Closing of Guantanamo
American Recovery and Reinvestment act
Oversaw the bankruptcy of both Chrysler and GM (who since have recovered)
The Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay act
Re-authorization of SCHIP
Nominated the first Hispanic Justice (who happens to be very well-qualified, ask Lindsey Graham will tell you) and changed Procedures to promote disclosure under Freddome of Information Act (I realize that there have been some miscues so far but we are just passed the 6 month mark and many appointments have not been filled (for a variety of reason))
Re-peeled a Bush-era policy which prevented federal funding of Embryonic Stem Cell research
Changed US policy called the "Global Gag" rule
Actively promoted peace Negotiations between Israel and it's neighbors (Palestine especially)
Oversaw the successful pirate rescue of an American at sea
Has so far committed to the time-line for the withdrawal of American troops in Iraq.
Has committed to going after those that perpetrated 9-11
Passed a wonderful GI Bill (I know quite a few people in the service and I have yet to hear one say anything bad about this bill)
Oversaw the soft stimulus, otherwise known as "Cash for Clunkers"

and I am sure that some may disagree with my list, it surely is not complete, and I do happen to be a supporter of our President. However I surely know that the president is not without faults, and I know that so far it seems that Congress will continue to be disdained by much of the American people, but I would not for a moment not appreciate how far we have come since GWB was in charge. I will not forget the lies that he and his administration told to the American people and the rest of the world (with their faulty intelligence). This is a former President who was elected by Americans to "bring respect back to the office". If his eight years was supposed to resemble respect then I would hate to see disrespect. His policies and decisions while in office (while very trying and difficult) led to a war which has cost many their lives and much of our resources. He failed to capture many of those responsible for 9-11, and it is acknowledged by a majority of the military community for 2003-2006 as a failed military policy. Only until the Sunni Awakenings and the Surge did our military get a real hold in the situation. So you can see that GWB military policies from 2000-2006 were not very good. We will have to wait and see how President Obama fairs in his first four years but so far I see nothing to be alarmed about. In fact with the GI bill passed and defense spending reform (like the f-22) spearheaded by Gates (who I see as a sort-of-right leaning pragmatist), I think there is much to be excited about. This Health-care thing is big, and Obama has been more than fair to repeatedly talk about the need for Medi-care reform and Health-Insurance reform. Just from a fiscal perspective this should be a no-brainer with all Americans but especially fiscally conservative Americans. I don't hear anyone calling for the end of Medi-care, far from it you always here the GOP start their sentences with, "well, I am not against reform per-se". At that point you should probably stop listening to them because from the voices in the MSM that I have heard you would think that they are against "re-form". Of course that would be a lie, as during the GWB presidency the GOP lead Congress passed the MMA act (otherwise know as Medicare Part D) to a tune of about 1.3 trillion dollars over 10 years. From the sound of things on MSM you might think it a little odd that the people who brought this country into a false war, a 1.3 trillion dollar Medi-care reform, and the worst economy this side of the depression now wanted to have a voice in fixing things. Sorry you don't get to drive the car into a ditch on the wrong street, then get to tell me that my driving and directions are wrong. I do think many of these people are "barnyard crazy" (and I don't mean to imply some sort of rural urban conflict) and it often really upsets me to see that the GOP "leaders" abandon their integrity to feed into these lies. President Obama is a US citizen, Hawaii is a US state, IRS, DOD, FBI, DOE etc are all forms of socialized institutions, as are our Police Departments and Fire Departments. These are facts and yet we have elected US leaders who do not tell their constituents who believe and push these falsehoods that they are indeed false. Instead they are cowards, who refuse to denounce the lies of their base. It is repugnant to see Americans comparing our POTUS to Hitler (I would have thought so about any of POTUS), it is hyperbole. Many of these people exhibit the old saying, "they want ot have their cake, and eat it too".

I believe that those that were against the GOP style presidency of our past, those who remember its rhetoric and it's policies, will remember and make sure that those policies and rhetoric is put in its proper place. Why repeat the same mistakes? Bush refused to take seriously issues dealing with immigration, economic and trade-policy (except those policies that insured corporate profits), energy policy (as it relates to the certifiable climate change issues) and more equatable Tax policy which supports a healthy middle-class. Obama on the other hand seems poised to tackle most of these issues, we may disagree on how but at the end of the day these issues must be addressed (and we are paying these guys to do meaningful stuff). I am for progress, I am sure you are too, so let's get out there civic-ly and get a good Health-care passed and move forward to other pressing issues.

Given how volatile the times are, any prediction has limited utility no matter who makes it.

Anyway, Dems need to (wo)man up and pass a bold plan.

ONLY the Democrats could blow the trifecta: Oval Office, House, and 60 vote Senate majority. They are pathetic.

"Chicken Little" or "The Boy Who Cried Wolf"; either fits about 80% of the posters here. And those stories aren't "fairy tales" for nothing.
I am particularly amazed at poster jdb316's apparent idea of what constitutes "politics"; compromise and negotiations are the totality of small-D democratic politics. The version you seem to like is definitely not politics, rather some form of dictatorship by the majority. (see: Bush, G.W.)