Barack Obama

This is it. This is the opportunity that Barack Obama has been waiting for. He finally has the chance to push for policies that are popular with Republicans and independents as well as with Democrats. This is his "post-partisan" moment.

But there's a catch: These policies have been stigmatized among the policy elites. The only people who like them are voters.

So the Big Chance comes with a Big Choice: the President can win the bipartisan support of the electorate. Or he can win the support of insiders from both parties, backed by billionaires and corporate think tanks, who use the "bipartisan" label to push the right-wing ideology of austerity economics. But he can't do both.

There's no "third way." And the choice he makes now may well determine his political future.

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A long time ago, in an historical America, lawmakers determined a progressive tax code to be the fairest and most logical for all.

The legislators asked more of those who had benefitted most from the advantages America provides. They asked less of those who benefitted least. more »

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Washington, DC felt like a city on a deathwatch this week, after a series of White House news leaks said the President would announce cuts to Medicare and Social Security benefits next Monday.

One plan was to raise the eligibility age for Medicare and Social Security. Another involved an accounting gimmick that would cut the already-inadequate cost of living adjustments for Social Security benefits - and raise taxes on the middle class, too.

The response was negative, as most people might expect. Very, very negative.

Come Monday

Many elected Democrats have been dreading next Monday's speech ever since these trial balloons were first floated. They saw these proposals, probably rightly, as a fatal blow to their reelection chances.

Another dark cloud was hanging over public interest groups who represent older Americans, sound economic policy, or improvements to our health care system. They understood the damage these ideas could cause.

That was then, this is now. Today the clouds lifted ... some of them, anyway. more »

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Here's an interview we did with Sam Seder today (Monday) on his Majority Report show. It's about raising the Medicare eligibility age. Great discussion (it's always a great show):

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Red's the designated Republican color, but the shades used for Wednesday’s GOP debate have never been glimpsed in nature. Ranging from scarlet to carnelian to a kind of raspberry-magenta blend, they would have induced psychosis in any self-respecting interior designer. They made the set look like a cross between Pee-Wee’s Playhouse and a Betsy Johnson dress catalog from the 1990s. And when the camera pulled back to reveal a stars-and-stripes pattern my first thought was, What have you done to my flag?

Come to think of it, that was my last thought, too.

The unearthly tones were appropriate, since the candidates seemed to be speaking from another planet. They certainly weren't on this one, where tax breaks have produced no jobs and deregulation's destroyed both the economy and the Gulf of Mexico.. But then, they weren't selling reality. They were offering a free-market science-fiction story, with special-effects economics that could have been designed by Industrial Light and Magic. Their reality is not yours, or mine, or that of most Americans.

But you know what? It may not matter. Sure, they were pushing economic hocus-pocus. But that hocus-pocus has cast its spell before. If aggressive steps aren’t taken to fix this economy soon, one of those candidates may be our next President.

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This past Friday night in Washington, a New York Mets pitcher threw the type of pitch President Obama must use in his march to stop any new proposals to cut Social Security if he plans to make it through the game of the deficit talks and his reelection. In the recent past the President and his teams have pitched a slew of failed curveballs that would cut our Social Security. The number 43 Mets pitcher R.A. Dickey helped beat the Nationals 7-3 with his slow velocity, highly unpredictable knuckleball. The 44th President and his multitude of committees have taken an approach to cutting the deficit that replicates a tied baseball game, with no end in sight. Could knuckle balls from a President battling to win the game, save the economy, and win reelection save the tied ball game called the deficit debate? Let’s take a look at the tape.

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Rest. A time of rest from long hours of work. That's the principle enshrined in Labor Day, a 125-year-old American holiday that celebrates the spirit of organized labor. It's the spirit behind the six-day workweek, too. A day of rest was enshrined in monotheism's holy texts, after all, but it didn't become law until labor unions demanded it. ("Thou shalt remember the Sabbath and keep it holy" - did your boss forget?)

It's also the spirit behind the principle that people who work all their lives deserve a financially secure retirement. Our forebears fought to win us this time of rest, too, and now we're called on to defend it once more.

The White House keeps hinting that the President will once again propose cuts to Medicare and Social Security - either when he presents his jobs proposal next week, or shortly afterwards. That would roll back the hard-won principle that people who work hard deserve their time of rest. It would also be a harsh blow to a struggling economy after a devastating jobs report.

If Americans return from their Labor Day celebrations to hear their President announce these cuts, it will feel like the breaking of an ancient compact. Voters should encourage him not to make that mistake, and not to break that promise.

Days of Struggle

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When it comes to the "Grand Bargain" they're pushing in Washington, the movie posters for The Fly said it best: Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Othe people are using our lives as bargaining chips. Whether it's the so-called Congressional "Super Committee" or the President's push for that grandé-sized deal, they want to look "grand" while we get stuck with the "bargain."

The Capital's misplaced focus on austerity has led to plenty of bad ideas, but one of the worst is raising the Medicare retirement age to 67. It may be the most destructive deal to come out of Washington since the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. It's unfair, short-sighted, and will actually cost the economy more money than we're spending today.

No Democratic President would accept an idea like that, right? Right?

Be afraid. Be very afraid. more »

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When somebody you think pretty highly of does something that seems crazy, the fairest thing you can do is ask them "Why the hell did you do that?" Kinky Friedman's somebody I've followed for years, first as the bandleader of the Texas Jewboys and then as an independent candidate for Governor of Texas. So when he seemed to endorse Rick Perry for President this week. I asked him why the hell he did that. We spoke by phone after his plane trip was cancelled by Hurricane Irene.

"Well, now, hold on," he says. "I don't exactly endorse people. I mean, I'm not some Tammany Hall boss." The next day he called me to clarify. "Did I 'endorse' him? We don't need to get all Talmudic here. We're taking a chance whoevever gets elected." Kinky's erudite and passionate, and disappointed enough in both parties to ask, "Where do you go to give up?"

"Politics is the most corrupt it's ever been. Apathy is a killer. And there's no Harry Truman to lead us. Roosevelt's people wouldn't even stand when Truman entered the room. But he made the tough decisions anyway. This President is always behind the curve, waiting so see how it's going to turn out before he acts."

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Call it "Helpless President Lit." A recent Ezra Klein column is the latest in a growing genre which celebrates our Commander-in-Chief, not as a powerful leader, but as a perennial victim. It portrays him as someone who's powerless over other people's actions, and sometimes even over his own. more »

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