Tag Archives: Barack Obama

“Now it is your turn to let freedom ring”

by

Today, as Congressman and civil rights veteran John Lewis was laid to rest at a funeral service in Atlanta, Georgia, America saw another side of this country, the opposite side of Trump’s America.

The contrasts could not have been starker, and it renewed our hope that better days are ahead.

Here is Lewis’ op-ed article in the New York Times today, written just a day or so before his death on July 17. It’s a call to action to all Americans of good will.

“Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation”

By John Lewis

“While my time here has now come to an end, I want you to know that in the last days and hours of my life you inspired me. You filled me with hope about the next chapter of the great American story when you used your power to make a difference in our society. Millions of people motivated simply by human compassion laid down the burdens of division. Around the country and the world you set aside race, class, age, language and nationality to demand respect for human dignity.

That is why I had to visit Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, though I was admitted to the hospital the following day. I just had to see and feel it for myself that, after many years of silent witness, the truth is still marching on.

Emmett Till was my George Floyd. He was my Rayshard Brooks, Sandra Bland and Breonna Taylor. He was 14 when he was killed, and I was only 15 years old at the time. I will never ever forget the moment when it became so clear that he could easily have been me. In those days, fear constrained us like an imaginary prison, and troubling thoughts of potential brutality committed for no understandable reason were the bars.

Though I was surrounded by two loving parents, plenty of brothers, sisters and cousins, their love could not protect me from the unholy oppression waiting just outside that family circle. Unchecked, unrestrained violence and government-sanctioned terror had the power to turn a simple stroll to the store for some Skittles or an innocent morning jog down a lonesome country road into a nightmare. If we are to survive as one unified nation, we must discover what so readily takes root in our hearts that could rob Mother Emanuel Church in South Carolina of her brightest and best, shoot unwitting concertgoers in Las Vegas and choke to death the hopes and dreams of a gifted violinist like Elijah McClain.

Like so many young people today, I was searching for a way out, or some might say a way in, and then I heard the voice of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on an old radio. He was talking about the philosophy and discipline of nonviolence. He said we are all complicit when we tolerate injustice. He said it is not enough to say it will get better by and by. He said each of us has a moral obligation to stand up, speak up and speak out. When you see something that is not right, you must say something. You must do something. Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community, a nation and world society at peace with itself.

Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble. Voting and participating in the democratic process are key. The vote is the most powerful nonviolent change agent you have in a democratic society. You must use it because it is not guaranteed. You can lose it.

You must also study and learn the lessons of history because humanity has been involved in this soul-wrenching, existential struggle for a very long time. People on every continent have stood in your shoes, through decades and centuries before you. The truth does not change, and that is why the answers worked out long ago can help you find solutions to the challenges of our time. Continue to build union between movements stretching across the globe because we must put away our willingness to profit from the exploitation of others.

Though I may not be here with you, I urge you to answer the highest calling of your heart and stand up for what you truly believe. In my life I have done all I can to demonstrate that the way of peace, the way of love and nonviolence is the more excellent way. Now it is your turn to let freedom ring.

When historians pick up their pens to write the story of the 21st century, let them say that it was your generation who laid down the heavy burdens of hate at last and that peace finally triumphed over violence, aggression and war. So I say to you, walk with the wind, brothers and sisters, and let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be your guide.”

 

 

 

Advertisement

A voice of hope and optimism from Minnesota

by

R.T. Rybak, the former long-time mayor of Minneapolis, vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, and CEO and president of the Minneapolis Foundation,  lends a voice of hope and optimism to these otherwise dark days in America.  Let’s hope he is right. Here he is, on his Facebook page:

“My heart sank Friday as I walked down Pennsylvania Av in Washington and saw a giant reviewing stand had been built in front of the White House. Eight years ago this is where I was so filled with pride when I saw our new President Barack Obama, and his family, as they were about to enter their new home. Knowing it was now about to house Donald Trump was almost more than I could take.
I felt so hollow when I thought about all we have had, and what we will lose. But something really wonderful happened next and I hope it gives hope to those of you who love President Obama as much as I do:
I went through security into the White House because the President invited me in to come by for a few minutes before he left office. I turned the corner to the Oval Office to see him looking more energized than he has in months, and with that huge smile on this face that has lifted so many of us so many times.
I gave him a copy of my book, told him that now that he’s mastered this POTUS gig he was ready for the big time as a Mayor. Then I handed him a note from my wife Megan O’Hara recalling what it felt like nine years ago when we stood in the Des Moines Convention Center, just after he won the Iowa caucus, and the announcer said: “And now the next First Family of the United States of America.”
I was really overwhelmed as I was telling him that because it was such a moment of pride, a beginning of a long path to him getting to the White House and, now it was over. He put his arm on my shoulder and looked at me intensely, saying, “We aren’t done yet.”
I wish I could have bottled the look in his eyes so all the people I know, and don’t, who feel dishearten now, who are so fearful of what comes next, and who feel a sense of loss, know he is absolutely not, under any circumstances, going to stop fighting for what we believe in.
“I’m going to take a little vacation,” he said, “get a little sun, but then we are right back at it. ”
He told me about the work he will be doing on youth and families, on getting more people engaged in voting, on protecting liberties. Then he said the words that meant the most to me: “The best is yet to come.”
I believe Barack Obama was the greatest President of my lifetime, but as I heard him talk, I remembered he is about more than political office. At so many times—his amazing speech about race in the first campaign, his powerful words after Sandy Hook, his second inaugural when laid out the imperative of attacking climate change—he has moved us beyond politics to elevate our values. This is his great opportunity now; just as America faces a crisis of values, a great debate about who we really are at our core, he will be speaking not as just a politician, but as a moral leader. In many ways we need that even more today than great politicians.
In the couple minutes we had left we talked about what I am learning in my own evolution from political to civic leader; about what you can and can’t do in and out of office, and how much can be done if each of your statements aren’t filtered through the cynicism people have for politicians.
We said goodbye and I walked out of the White House, past that reviewing stand, but didn’t feel the same sense of dread. Donald Trump will be my President and I won’t try to delegitimize him even though many, including Trump, tried to do that to Obama for eight years. But we can fight for what we believe, and fight back, hard, when we see something wrong. And, remembering that look in the President’s eye when he told me, “We aren’t done yet”, and remembering all we have seen during his remarkable Presidency, I know he will be with us every step.
Later that night Megan and I went to a farewell party at the White House. I talked to Obama’s Education Secretary Arne Duncan who has gone back to Chicago to work on youth violence prevention, to former Attorney General Eric Holder who is organizing opposition to unfair redistricting around the country, former White House political director and Ambassador Patrick Gaspard who is working on citizen engagement with George Soros, Gabby Giffords is fighting the gun violence that robbed her and so many others of so much, activist actors like Alfre Woodard who has been through waves of social movements saying she’s now ready for the next phase. Obama has been a President but Obama is also a movement that isn’t done on Jan 20.
Back in 2007, when I was working with activists around the country in the Draft Obama campaign, I wrote a blog on a national website saying: “Barack Obama is a great man but this is not about him. It’s about setting off a movement.” The next day he called my office, said that’s the way he saw it, that he was community organizer who wanted to light the spark, and he recruited me to volunteer for what was then a long-shot campaign. I still feel that way, and it’s clear he does, too.
And after those few wonderful minutes with him as he gets ready to leave office, I feel, like him, that “the best is yet to come.”

A tragedy, and an uncertain future, but not the end

by

Well, I tried, as did over 59 million American voters, but Donald Trump was not to be stopped.

The New Yorker’s editor, David Remnick, one of my favorite American journalists, called the election, “An American tragedy” — a triumph for “nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism.”

Trump’s victory is a victory for the old America and a rejection of the past eight years under Barack Obama. It’s a big step backwards, away from the America of freedom, openness, and multiculturalism that had brought millions of immigrants, like me, to its shores.

Not only did Trump improbably win the White House, but the Republican Party held on to its majorities in the Senate and the House. The political results will come swiftly: Merrick Garland, nominated many months ago by Obama to the Supreme Court will never become a member of the Court, whose conservative majority is now guaranteed for years to come. The Affordable Care Act could be abolished and the fate of those twenty million with new health insurance is unknown. The future of the nuclear deal with Iran is highly uncertain. “Get ready for a rough ride,” writes Los Angeles Times’ Doyle McManus.

Still, this is not the end of America. The political forces, from Trump himself and other Republicans to President Obama and Hillary Clinton, have all quickly urged the coming together to ensure the peaceful transition of power. We are Americans first, patriots first, said Obama. “We all want what’s best for the country.” Tomorrow, he will receive Trump in the White House.

For the anti-Trump forces, for the losing side, there are some silver linings in the dark clouds. Hillary Clinton won the plurality of the vote, 59,679 million to 59,472 million for Trump. But she lost the all-important Electoral College vote, failing to reach the magical number of 270. And that’s really all that counts. That’s happened before, most recently in 2000, when Al Gore won the plurality of votes but still lost the election to George W. Bush. It’s time to do away with this antiquate election system and elect America’s president on the basis of how many votes he/she gets.

California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Vermont belong to the group of states where Clinton captured over 60 percent of the vote, followed by New York State with 59 percent, Washington State 56, and Illinois, New Jersey, and Rhode Island 55. In Washington, DC, almost 93 percent of the voters supported Clinton. For Trump, Wyoming gave him his largest victory margin with 70 percent of the vote, followed by West Virginia 69, Oklahoma, 65, North Dakota, 64, Alabama and Kentucky 63, and Tennessee 61 percent.

It was urban vs. rural, the two coasts vs. the heartland. The election shows a country split down the middle, more divided than anyone had realized.

The Democrats failed to capture the majority in the U.S. Senate but they had some success by electing three new, female, senators: Kamala Harris, California, Catherine Cortez Masto, Nevada, and Tammy Duckworth, Illinois, an Indian/African-American, a Latina, and a Thai-American. Maryland has a new U.S. Senator, Democrat Chris Van Hollen — my former Congressman — who, in turn, was succeeded by Jamie Raskin, also a progressive Democrat.

In Minnesota, which I have followed closely a few years, Clinton squeaked through with 46.8 percent of the vote, or 43,000 votes, but the Republicans increased their majority in the State House and captured the majority in the State Senate. Democratic governor Mark Dayton’s two remaining years in office will not be easy. Minnesota also elected the first Somali American to the State Legislature. 34-year-old Ilhan Omar, who came to America as a child after years in a refugee camp, captured 81 percent of the vote in her Minneapolis district and became not only the first Somali-American legislator in Minnesota, but in all of America. That’s not Trump’s America, but it is my America.

 

Few bright spots for the Democrats as America voted Republican

by

Well, that was really depressing.

Only in Minnesota, and a few other bright spots around the country, did the Democrats win, or even put up a good fight in yesterday’s Republican landslide. Even in Democratic strongholds, like Massachusetts and Maryland, the voters elected new Republican governors. Southern Democratic Senators trying to get reelected failed, like Mark Pryor in Arkansas and Kay Hagan in North Carolina. Only Mark Warner in Virginia held on, barely…

The next US Senate will have a comfortable Republican majority, and the least sympathetic of all American politicians, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, will be the new majority leader. He was the one — remember ? — who set as his primary goal at the start of the first Obama Administration to make sure that America’s first African American president would only serve one term. Well, Obama was reelected in 2012 and McConnell remained minority leader. Now, McConnell plus House Speaker John Boehner in charge of an even larger Republican majority in the House of Representatives, will have to work with President Obama if anything is to get done in the new Congress.

Don’t hold your breath! The Republican majorities in Congress contain more conservatives and more Tea party sympathizers, who now see even less reason to work with the President. If they turn cooperative, it will be a first after years of Republican obstruction, including a government shutdown, for which, apparently, and remarkably, the American voters have rewarded them while at the same time — and completely illogically — bitterly complaining about the gridlock in Washington.

They give Congress embarrassingly low approval ratings — even lower than the President — and then vote them back in power, stronger than before. Figure that one out!

Actually, and once again, the American voters have shown how negative they are towards the government, not only this government but government in general. They want a weak government and with yesterday’s outcome they have assured themselves of that.

I mentioned Minnesota in the beginning, where I have recently spent quite a bit of time, and although Minnesota’s voters reelected all the top Democratic candidates, Governor Mark Dayton, Senator Al Franken, the State Auditor, the Attorney General, as well as all five Democratic members of the US Congress, and elected a new Democratic Secretary of State, the voters turned their back on the Democratic Farmer Labor Party’s (DFL) candidates for the State House of Representatives. The Democrats’ majority of 73 to 61 for the last two years will switch to a solid Republican majority, 72 to 62,  in the next House, while the Democrats keep their majority in the Senate, which is not up for reelection until 2016.

So, also in Minnesota, the voters chose change, to end, as they put it, the “single-party DFL rule.” It’s the fourth time in ten years that the majority in the House has changed hands. And, just like in Washington, the ability to govern, to get results, to move the country forward, has been weakened. In that sense, the voters in Minnesota were no different than the voters in the rest of America.

The outcome does not bode well for America in the next two years.

It’s “we” and “together” in Obama’s inclusive America

by

President Barack Obama’s second inaugural address today was all about ”we,” and ”we, the people,” about ”equality” and ”together.”  It was a clear and straight forward statement by the re-elected president about his view of America, a liberal/progressive view in an inclusive America  — a country for everyone.

The speech was elegant, inspiring, and passionate, given by someone who looked forward to his second term in the White House with renewed strength and great self-confidence, and it was the highlight of a most festive day in Washington, DC, where the crowds were not as large as four years ago, when almost two million people jammed The National Mall in spite of very chilly weather. But they were just as enthusiastic, clearly cherishing the moment that America’s first black president had been re-elected and handed the nation’s trust for another four years.

The president talked about America’s “never-ending journey” and that so much is remains to be done.

”Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, and one people…This is our generation’s ask – to make these words, these rights, these values – of Life and Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness – real for every American.

The speech was an unabashed re-affirmation of Obama’s basic liberal political philosophy, saying that  ”preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.”

He was full of hope and faith in America, if the nation stuck together:

“America’s possibilities are limitless, for we possess all the qualities that this world without boundaries demands: youth and drive; diversity and openness; an endless capacity for risk and a gift for reinvention. My fellow Americans, we are made for this moment, and we will seize it—so long as we seize it together.”

He talked about equal pay for women, equal treatment for gays, right to vote for everyone,  about the importance of social security, Medicare and Medicaid, the right of immigrants, and about gun control, without mentioning the word but referring to the ”quite lanes of Newtown” and keeping the nation’s children ”safe from harm.”

“We, the people,  still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity. We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit;  but we reject the belief that America must choose between the caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future.”

Obama’s second inaugural address was free of political attacks and party politics. It contained no direct attacks on the Republicans, but, on the other hand, one could interpret the whole speech as Obama putting down his marker, that this is what he believes in, this is his America, and this is what he is going to fight for during his second term.

The details in his political program will come in his State of the Union address to Congress on February 12. That will also likely mark the continuation of Washington’s political battle. Will that fight be as merciless as before today’s inauguration? Probably, and maybe even more so… But, at least it is now totally clear where Barack Obama stands, and that feels liberating.

Less hope before Obama’s second inaugural

by

“We had all started early from home that beautiful but chilly January morning in 2009 in Washington, DC. We wanted to be sure to be there on The National Mall in the middle of the U.S. capital that day. The last stretch, all motor traffic was prohibited, and the streets were full of eager and smiling people on their way by foot to the heart of the capital.”

“The walk of my life,” said a young black man from Atlanta, Georgia, to me. We were among the almost two million people who wandered down to the monuments over the American nation’s two hundred year history to be part of something historic, something that we still found difficult to comprehend that it had happened, something we certainly did not want to miss — a black man had been elected President. We thought that maybe that might happen sometime in the future, maybe even in our lifetimes, but not this year, and probably not for many years to come.”

Those words are from my book America – Land of Dreams about the inauguration four years ago, when Barack Obama became America’s first black president, gave his inaugural address, and we said goodbye to the old America.

Obama’s speech that day was not of the same high quality we had been used to during the election campaign, and certainly nothing like his dramatic speech at the Democratic Convention in 2004, which launched him as a possible presidential candidate:

”There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America. There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.”

But his inaugural address in 2009 contained nothing really memorable and certainly nothing that has been subsequently quoted extensively. It was a speech in the deepest economic crisis for America since the Depression and with two ongoing wars. The speech refleced those somber times.

That’s nothing unusual, wrote Larry Sabato, professor at the University of Virginia, recently on his blog the Crystal Ball. Sabato wrote about numerable inaugural addresses in the modern era that no one remembers, certainly nothing like Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address in 1965, when he said:

 “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds…”

Or 1933, in the middle of the Depression, when Franklin Roosevelt said:

“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

But, Sabato wrote, “there is arguably only one speech that transcends the concerns of the moment and speaks to every generation anew, from beginning to end, without becoming dated,” and that was John F Kennedys inaugural address in 1961.

Some excerpts:

“Let the word go forth, from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans…”

“…[W]e shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and success of liberty.”

 “Now the trumpet summons us again — not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are — but a call to bear the burden of a long, twilight struggle, year in and year out, ‘rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation’ — a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.”

“And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

Lincoln’s second inaugural address is regarded as much stronger than his first. Maybe we will say the same thing about Obama after tomorrow?  But times are different now and in 2009. The two million who gathered on The National Mall will likely be far fewer tomorrow, and the hope of big changes in Washington is no longer there. The political paralysis in Washington continues as America’s political and economic problems grow.

Back then in January 2009, we said goodbye to the old America, but we have not really succeeded in doing so during Obama’s first term. We are more seasoned now, less hopeful, more realistic.

Still, we should be heartened by the fact that with John F Kennedy a candidate’s religion is no longer an important election issue, the color of a candidate’s skin is no longer an issue with Obama.  In that sense, we are really able to bid farewell today to the old America.

Massive criticism of Ryan’s “dishonest” speech

by

As I suspected after Paul Ryan’s speech last night, many commentators have not been kind to him. I am not talking about his performance. It was powerful and the speech was well written speech, and although Ryan in the beginning looked a bit like a nervous young kid, he clearly managed to establish a very good contact with convention delegates.

So the Republican base is now not only secure but clearly enthusiastic about Romney’s choice as vice president. Thus, the goal of the speech was accomplished.

But did Ryan manage to reach the broader American voter groups, especially the independents? We do not know yet. Probably not. It was somehow too partisan, the picture of President Obama’s years in the White House somehow too dark, with no nuances.

A few examples: “Mr. Ryan’s misleading speech,” the Washington Post wrote in its main editorial today, while one of the paper’s blogs, The Plum Line, talked about Ryan’s “staggering, staggering lie”.

Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic has a good compilation under the headline “The Most Dishonest Convention Speech … Ever”? And Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine called the speech “Paul Ryan’s Large Lies and One Big Truth”.

Here’s a bit of what they are talking about:

  • The GM plant in Ryan’s hometown of Janesville closed before Obama became president.
  • Ryan, just like Obama, wants to cut more than $ 700 billion from the Medicare, but he was silent about this.
  • The downgrading of U.S. credit rating was not a result of Obama’s policies but of Republican’s refusal to agree to raising the debt ceiling.
  • Obama has not contributed more than anyone else to the increase of the national debt. It is rather the result of the policies that George W. Bush pursued and which Ryan as congressman fully supported: the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the two huge tax cuts.
  • Ryan’s pledge to support the weak and the poor do not rhyme with his budget proposal, where 62 percent of his cuts affect the low-income earners, including Medicaid.
  • Bowles/Simpson Commission: Ryan attacked Obama for not having adopted his own commission’s proposal. But he neglected to say that Ryan himself, as a member of that Commission, refused to sign the proposal because it contained tax increases.

The Democrats have a lot of new ammunition for the remaining days of this election campaign, but Ryan, unlike Sarah Palin, is no fool, so it will be a tough debate! Who will the American voters believe in the end? Mitt Romney has a big task tonight.

Here is Ryan’s speech:

Success in Tampa crucial to Romney’s chances in the fall

by

Leading up to the Republican convention in Tampa this week, it’s not just the weather that’s put a spoke in the wheel of the Romney/Ryan strategy to focus the campaign on the economy and unemployment, and that they are better suited than Obama to lead the U.S. in these difficult times.

There has also been an abortion debate after Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin’s stupid statement about “legitimate rape,” which produced lots of attention on the fact that the Republican Party platform prohibits abortion in all cases, even rape and incest. Then we had Romney’s equally stupid statement that he has never been asked to show his birth certificate — a bad joke to some, to others a calculated political signal to the despicable “birther” movement.   And we had Medicare, Medicare, Medicare.

So it hasn’t been a smooth ride, which raises the stakes for the Republican ticket this week in Tampa. Although conventions are no longer what they used to be, an estimated TV audience of about 35 million is nothing to sneeze at. In fact, it is a golden opportunity for Romney/Ryan to re-focus their campaign, show who they are and where they want to take the United States in the years to come. Romney, it is said, must reveal more for himself and of who he really is. It will be difficult. Does he really have something to offer beyond what we already know about him?

Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan as his vice presidential candidate has not resulted in any major swings in the polls, except that Obama’s lead in Ryan’s home state Wisconsin has shrunk a bit. On point after point, voters still prefer Obama over Romney, according to the latest Gallup Poll. Obama is more “likable” with 54 percent against 31. Obama is a stronger leader, he is more honest and generates more confidence, and he cares about people like you (the respondents). He is ahead on foreign policy, taxes, energy, healthcare. Only on the economy did Romney beat Obama, 52 percent to 43.

The economy is the most important issue for November, so the fact that those asked in the Gallup Poll thought that Romney is better suited to reverse the present dismal picture – something that could be re-enforced with successful convention – is of great importance looking ahead to November. But the economy alone will not decide the election. There will be Medicare and taxes and abortion, but, most of all, there will be the fundamental question of whether an ever more conservative Republican Party, increasingly hostile to the government, dominated by whites with only five percent Hispanics and two percent African-Americans, and with ever fewer moderate Republicans in the ranks, can appeal to a broader American electorate.

One of those moderates, Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine, has chosen to retire and walk away for a certain re-election this fall after 18 years in the Senate. In Sunday’s Washington Post, she pleaded almost in despair for deep changes in her party now so hostile to America’s women.

“Today, the Republican Party faces a clear challenge: will we rebuild our relationship with women, thereby placing us on the road to success in November, or will we continue to isolate them and certainly lose this election?”

This will be no easy task for Romney/Ryan. Another Gallup Poll recently showed that Obama leads among women voters by 50 percent to 42. Romney, once a moderate Republican governor of Massachusetts, has since then a moved righton a number of issues, disavowing his record as governor, and taking far more conservative positions.

With his choice of Ryan, Romney’s conservative conversion is complete. He has now joined the ranks of Ryan and the Tea Party sympathizers in the House of Representatives and a party about which Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein recently wrote in their book “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks:”

“The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme, scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science, and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges. “

This is where Mitt Romney now stands. The Republican Party’s conservative base is certainly happy about this. The question is what the broader American electorate, those outside the Republican Party, will say about this in November. Without them, Romney cannot win.

Ryan’s budget will haunt the Republican ticket

by

They look happy, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, but it’s hard for me to see how Romney’s choice of Ryan as his running mate will strengthen the Republican ticket, increase its chances for victory, and bring joy for the party in November.

Yes, the choice will energize the far right in the party — the born-again Christians and the Tea party, who will now feel more motivated to actually turn out and vote. That’s not bad, of course, but beyond that? Not much.

Ryan is not broadly known and has no strong geographic base. It is unlikely that he will succeed in helping Romney carry his home state of Wisconsin in the fall. And his view of America, based on his budget proposal that he persuaded his fellow Republicans in the House of Representatives to support, is too radical and too controversial for the broader electorate. But the former Governor of Massachusetts, seen by many as a moderate voice in the Republican party, is now closely associated with that budget, and he will not be spared in the coming months.

Here is what the The New Yorker’s economic commentator James Surowiecki wrote about Ryan’s budget last spring:

But the simple truth is that his plan is not an evenhanded attempt to solve America’s long-term budget problems. It’s a profoundly radical document, its proposals skewed by ideological biases. Raising taxes, of course, is out of bounds. The same goes for using federal power to hold down Medicare costs, which will be the key driver of future budget deficits. Instead, House Republicans would cut spending on almost everything else the government does.

This budget will be a big negative for Romney/Ryan during the rest of the election campaign. The Obama team will see to that and their attacks will be relentless. Here is what Jim Messina, Obama’s campaign manager said today, and this is just the start:

In naming Congressman Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney has chosen a leader of the House Republicans who shares his commitment to the flawed theory that new budget-busting tax cuts for the wealthy, while placing greater burdens on the middle class and seniors, will somehow deliver a stronger economy. The architect of the radical Republican House budget, Ryan, like Romney, proposed an additional $250,000 tax cut for millionaires, and deep cuts in education from Head Start to college aid. His plan also would end Medicare as we know it by turning it into a voucher system, shifting thousands of dollars in health care costs to seniors. As a member of Congress, Ryan rubber-stamped the reckless Bush economic policies that exploded our deficit and crashed our economy. Now the Romney-Ryan ticket would take us back by repeating the same, catastrophic mistakes.

Here is what Paul Ryan said himself today, in his first speech as the Republican Vice Presidential candidate:

Paul Ryan: a sign of a campaign in trouble

by

Mitt Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan, congressman from Wisconsin, as his running mate was surprising, but no bolt out of the blue like when John McCain nominated Sarah Palin as his vice presidential candidate. But Romney is taking a big chance with Ryan, just like McCain did. Ryan is untested, like Palin, largely unknown to the general American public, like Palin, and Romney’s choice gives the impression of desperation, as McCain’s did.

Romney’s campaign is in trouble, if not in a crisis. He needed to do something drastic to. In three recent major polls, President Obama’s lead over Romney has increased, and according to Fox News, it is now 9 per cent. Romney needed to do something drastic to wake up the slumbering conservative Republican base.

The choice of Ryan means that Romney has succumbed to the harsh pressures from the party’s right wing and leading press voices like The Wall Street Journal and the Weekly Standard, which demanded that Ryan, seen by them as a leading conservative intellectual, be nominated. These voices opposed candidates such as Minnesota’s Tim Pawlenty and Ohio’s Rob Portman, too plain, too much like Romney himself and without any chance to inspire the conservative Republican voter base.

Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee and the Republican Party’s chief economic and budget spokesman, is a controversial figure, best known for the heavy-handed, radical cuts, in the country’s entitlement programs, particularly Medicare, while lowering the taxes for higher income groups and increasing them for the middle class. Ryan as the Republican Vice Presidential nominee means that the campaign will now completely be about pensions, health care for the elderly and a fair tax system. That debate will be favorable to President Obama.

Conservative columnist David Frum describes the problems in his comments on the Daily Beast today. The election will not be at about jobs and the economy but about security, about pensions and Medicare.

Economic conditions are so tough – the Obama re-election proposition is so weak – that Romney may win anyway. But wow, the job just got harder.

The choice of Ryan, according to Ezra Klein’s Wonkblog in the Washington Post, means that “both the Democrats and the Conservatives have the exact debate they wanted. I’m not so sure about Republicans. “

To learn more about Paul Ryan, 42 years old, Catholic, father of three children, born in Janesville, Wisconsin, which he has represented in the House of Representatives since 1998, you must not miss Ryan Lizza’s recent stellar profile of the Republican Vice Presidential candidate in The New Yorker.