Lincoln Mitchell

Blog

This page contains links to recent blogs by Lincoln Mitchell

Posted in: US Politics

On Health Care Smaller Might Be Better →

Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts immediately jeopardized President Obama's health care bill and forced the White House to figure out a strategy for what to do about health care reform and the bill itself. At least for the moment, the strategy seems to be to put health care on the back burner while focusing more directly on job creation so that the administration can demonstrate its awareness of, and try to do something about, the ongoing impact of the economic crisis, particularly with regard to unemployment.

Comment

What Obama Still Can Learn from Ronald Reagan →

The question this data raises is, so what? What is the value of Obama and his policies being more popular than his foes or his allies, particularly in a political system where Obama needs 60 Senate votes to accomplish anything? If Obama continues the strategic approach he used in his first year, including a willingness to bargain too early in the negotiating process, refusing to pressure Democrats in Congress -- particularly the Senate -- to support the party's position, and never going on the offensive against an aggressive Republican leadership, his popularity will not help him. However, popularity, particularly when it is bolstered by support for policies, can be an important asset to a president if it is used well.

Comment

Obama After Massachusetts →

Scott Brown's victory was a major victory for the Republican Party as it demonstrated that they are, at least for now, a political factor again, but in some respects it was less significant for the Democratic President and his party. The Obama administration, and his party, was in trouble before this special election given the ongoing economic problems, growing discontent with Obama's policies from, predictably, the right and, less predictably, the left, and a compromise on health care that only further angered these groups. The election in Massachusetts was additional evidence of a trend that was already strong, rather than a turning point of some kind.

Comment

International Responses to the Earthquake in Haiti

International assistance following a natural disaster of this sort is not new. Many of the same actors provided support to the victims of the Tsunami in 2004. It may, however, become more common in the next decades. Unusual weather events will likely be one of the first impacts of climate change which will be felt. Although the event in Haiti was an earthquake with no likely connection to climate change, the general pattern of a devastating natural disaster occurring in a country that has already had more than its share of misfortune which will both cause immediate tragedy and perhaps set that country’s development back years may become more common.

Comment

Limbaugh, Robertson and Trevino on Haiti →

Recent comments by Rush Limbaugh, Pat Robertson and now US Senate candidate from California Chuck Devore's communication director regarding assistance to Haiti are so hateful, misguided, myopic and, in the case or Robertson, downright strange, that they obscure the question of what they are trying to accomplish by making these comments. Robertson's comments are extraordinarily insensitive, focusing not on the suffering and desperation of the innocent victims of the Haitian people, but on a belief that the earthquake was a form of supernatural intervention as Satan himself has finally extracted his deathly fee for help in liberating Haiti from France.

Comment

Democracy, Primaries and Party Leadership →

Harold Ford Jr.'s interest in running for the senate seat from New York currently held by Kirsten Gillibrand has been met by discouragement from the Democratic political leadership in New York and Washington. Ford is, in many respects, not a great candidate for that seat. His record on abortion rights and marriage equality is not likely to be well received by a New York primary electorate. His roots in the state are not deep, as he only moved here following a narrow defeat for a U.S. Senate seat from his home state in Tennessee in 2006, although there is some precedent of electing people from out of state to the Senate in New York. Should Ford decide to run, Senator Gillibrand's substantial initial fundraising edge would give her an additional advantage.

Comment

2009 Was Not the Senate's Finest Year →

The U.S. Senate is a very unusual political institution. Revered by members and the political class as the world's greatest deliberative body, it is the only legislative body in the U.S. that violates the principle of one person one vote and is based on the notion of unequal representation. Some states, such as North Dakota are awarded one senator for roughly every 320,000 residents, while larger states such as California get by with one senator for roughly every 18 million residents. This principle is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, but similar principles of basing legislative bodies on representing polities rather than people have been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in cases such asGray v. Sanders or Board of Estimate of New York City v. Morris.

Comment

Obama's Choices for 2010 →

After 2010, the Obama presidency, if history is any guide, will change substantially. It will become reactive, initiate few, if any, major pieces of legislation, and focus more on foreign policy where cooperation from congress is often less necessary. Even if he is reelected in 2012, the energy, Democratic majorities, appetite for change and political power of the president, which characterized 2009 will not be as great in the beginning of Obama's second term. After 2010, Obama's presidency will be about reaction and management not initiative and change.

Comment

Improving the Health Care Bill After It Passes Will Not Be Easy →

Nonetheless, it remains important to look at the bill itself rather than the debate and news stories surrounding its passage. The biggest reason health care reform is so urgent is because there are more than 40 million Americans without health care today. For these people, a serious injury or illness can result not just in not receiving timely and adequate health care, but in devastating financial burdens as well. People without health insurance, of course, always had the option of buying health insurance from a private insurance company, but telling somebody without a lot of money to spend thousands of dollars on health insurance was something of a "let them eat cake" solution to the problem. The uninsured tended to be unemployed or concentrated in low paying jobs and could scarcely afford this option.

Comment

Keeping the Wheels on the Obama Presidency →

The wheels have not yet come off the Obama presidency, but they could next year. The best way to prevent this from happening would be for Obama to reenergize his political base so that they can be help put pressure on uncooperative members of Congress and help work to minimize Democratic losses in November of 2010. This will require Obama to define a progressive position on almost any issue, be it marriage equality, Wall Street bonuses, health care or anything else, and aggressively pursue it.

Comment

Obama and Charges of Elitism-Again →

It is, therefore, to be expected that the charge of elitism continues to dog President Obama and will likely to do so throughout his presidency. Apparently, Obama's education, belief in the import of education, his understated and often intellectual verbal style, his comfort in academic settings and his fluency on issues ranging from alternate energy to healthier eating make him suspect in the eyes of some. People like Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and others who are seeking to build a party based on resentment and frustration are wise to exploit Obama's style and to suggest that it indicates he does not care about real Americans. This is an unavoidable part of politics and is certainly not a new Republican approach.

Comment

Making Job Creation a Priority →

Putting the more than fifteen million unemployed Americans back to work in the midst of an ongoing recession is not an easy task, so faulting the administration for not coming up with a brilliant and politically achievable plan for doing this is a little unfair. Nonetheless, the administration's position on jobs has at times suggested an unexpectedly poor understanding of the impact of the economic downturn on ordinary Americans.

Comment

Echoes of Bush in Obama's Speech →

There were moments during President Obama's speech last night when if you closed your eyes, imagined the grammar a little mangled and a few words mispronounced, you could easily make the mistake of thinking you were listening to President Bush. Not only was the announced troop increase what one might have expected from the Bush administration, but much of the rationale for the decision was as well.

Comment

Obama's Unconvincing Argument that Afghanistan is Not Vietnam

Comparisons between the wars in Afghanistan and Vietnam have grown stronger in recent weeks. While this concern has been raised, often with the buzzword quagmire, about every conflict since the end of the U.S. effort in Vietnam, it is not without reason that this is mentioned with regards to Afghanistan. It is hard to ignore the similarities between the two conflicts. In both cases, the U.S. got involved in a war far away for which there was no easily foreseeable resolution. Obama, like another Democratic president more than four decades ago, was convinced, to some extent by his own generals, that more troops would make the difference and drew the U.S. further into the conflict. The Vietnam War destroyed Johnson’s presidency and overshadowed some of his impressive accomplishments on domestic issues. Critics of the war in Afghanistan, many of whom are supporters of the current president, do not want to see the same thing happen to Obama.

Comment

The KSM Trial and Republican Attacks →

The recent attacks on the decision by President Obama and Attorney General Holder to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM), one of the masterminds of the September 11th terrorist attacks, constitute one of those political moments where partisan sniping dominates everything else. For many Americans where KSM is tried is something of a non-issue a technicality that has little bearing on their lives, so long as justice is served. However, for many Republicans, none more so than former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani it is an opportunity to get some media attention and take a cheap shot at the president.

Comment

Towards the Next Victory on Health Care →

The passage of the health care bill is good news for President Obama and the Democrats, but it is more a case of avoiding defeat than of scoring a decisive victory. Given that the Democrats have control of almost 60% of the seats in the House of Representatives, by a margin of 257-178, and that all that was needed was a simple majority, this was not the greatest challenge facing Obama's health care reform. However, had the bill not passed the house, it would have been a stinging defeat for the president and his party.

Comment

One Year Later: A Return to Normalcy →

The election of Barack Obama on November 4th, 2008 was unlike any election day in recent memory. It was not only a day that changed America -- all presidential elections do that -- but it was a day laden with symbolic, and real, meaning. The image of Barack Obama and his family walking onto the stage in Grant Park in Chicago after Obama had been declared the winner of the election will be remembered for years. For many Americans, the day Obama was elected was a day of excitement and hope which had been all but forgotten in our political life.

Comment

Is Anybody Still Surprised by Joe Lieberman? →

The decision of so many leaders of the Democratic Party to support a senator who while opposing most of the party on an increasing number of important issues, was still a colleague and, presumably, a friend, was a mistake, but that mistake was compounded by the failure of any of these prominent Democrats to insist that Lieberman back the winner of the primary before agreeing to support him in that primary. This kind of agreement is very common in primaries and one of the things which helps hold the party together. By not demanding this as a condition for their endorsement, all these Democratic leaders opened the doors for Lieberman, after losing the primary to Lamont, to continue to contest the general election. Most of those prominent Democrats endorsed Lamont after he won the primary, but because they had not done their political work in advance, had much less leverage with Lieberman as they should have.

Comment

Obama and the Political Center →

Obama's transition from the candidate of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party to being broadly appealing to the American center began during the campaign. Correspondingly, the general election campaign of 2008 may have been the beginning of the resurgence of the American center. The two national elections preceding 2008 had been extremely close and extremely divisive. These elections contributed to an eight year period of intense partisan fighting and an evenly and intensely divided electorate. In 2008 this changed. During this time, partisan rhetoric on the extreme left, while not as nasty, outrageous or dangerous as what the right wing has said during the last year or so, was strong and viciously critical of President Bush, his policies and those around him.

Comment

What Olympia Snow's Support Could Mean →

The decision by Senator Olympia Snowe to support the health care bill in the senate finance committeeon which Senator Snowe sits is good news, but it may not turn out to be a turning point towards getting meaningful health care reform. Snowe's vote gave the bill a solid 14-9 majority in committee. Snowe's vote helped the bill out of committee and gave a bipartisan facade to what was otherwise a party line vote. There is still a long way to go, however, between this vote and real health care reform.

Comment