President Obama’s plan to sign an executive order on immigration, expected as early as this week, will meet more resistance than support, a new USA TODAY Poll finds. Close to half of those surveyed, 46%, say he should wait for the new Republican-controlled Congress to act, and another one in […] Read more »
You win elections to enact policy, not the other way around
… The Beltway media approach to winning elections is to regard winning elections as the key step that helps you win more elections. … Ultimately, though, the point of winning elections is to pass legislation that helps the most people, at the least harm, and at a reasonable cost. Majorities […] Read more »
The coming clash over immigration is reflective of past conflicts
The scars from six years of political conflict between President Obama and Republican congressional leaders have quickly washed away all those gauzy comments about cooperation that were offered in the aftermath of the midterm elections. Today, Washington is bracing for a major collision over immigration, with each side calculating the […] Read more »
The immigration debate is about to come to a head. And neither side is assured of victory.
President Obama and Republicans are slated for a major showdown over Obama’s plans to potentially grant legal status to nearly 6 million undocumented immigrants. And despite Obama’s low approval ratings (especially on immigration) and Democrats’ “(butt-)whuppin’” in the midterm elections, he has something on his side: Public support for allowing […] Read more »
Health Care and the Obama Presidency: A Giant Squander?
There’s no doubt that, as midterms go, President Obama has not fared well. … The successive Republican waves are particularly devastating because they swept away what many pundits believed to be a coming period of Democratic electoral dominance. … Where did it all go wrong? CONT. Matthew Dickinson, Middlebury College Read more »
How Did Obama Lose American Voters?
In December 2012, 56 percent of Americans approved of President Obama’s leadership. About 40 percent disapproved. Today, those numbers are almost precisely reversed, a fact that Democrats were made keenly aware of in the fall campaign and in the midterm elections. … So what happened? CONT. John Guida, New York […] Read more »