Dems increasingly worried Obama going to lose in 2012, Obama campaign cockily dismisses concerns

NYT looks at growing Democratic concerns that the President may lose re-election next year:

“Now that they’re slapping him in the side of the face, he’s coming back,” said William George, a committee member from Pennsylvania. “He needs to start stomping his foot and pounding the desk.” At the White House and at Mr. Obama’s campaign headquarters in Chicago, officials bristled at the critiques, which they dismissed as familiar intraparty carping and second-guessing that would give way to unity and enthusiasm once the nation is facing a clear choice between the president and the Republican nominee.

Jim Messina, the campaign manager for the president’s re-election, said the criticism was largely a “Washington conversation” that did not match up with the on-the-ground enthusiasm for Mr. Obama among his network of supporters. Yet even without a primary challenger, the campaign purposefully started its effort early to allow concerns from supporters to be aired.

To reassure nervous Democrats, the president’s campaign aides are traveling the country with PowerPoint presentations that spell out Mr. Obama’s path to re-election.

I've often said that the President's biggest challenge for re-election was the lack of sufficient PowerPoint presentations. As for Mr. Messina's typical Obama-insider hubris, there's this at the end of the story:

Mr. DeFazio recalled attending a dozen or so town-hall-style meetings recently in his district, a slice of western Oregon that Mr. Obama carried in 2008 by 11 percentage points. Mr. DeFazio said party loyalists had bluntly said they were reconsidering their support.

“I have one heck of a lot of Democrats saying, ‘I voted for him before, don’t know if I can do it again,’ ” he said.

Messina is simply telegraphing the Obama campaign's and Obama White House's traditional disdain for Democrats. That disdain, unfortunately, colored Mr. Obama's perception of how bad things were getting out there, in terms of public disaffection, but perhaps his perception of the economy as well.  (Only the "bed-wetters" don't think the economy will improve in a year, the President's top advisers likely told him back in 2009.  That "year" was up a year ago.)

An interesting, larger, point to be gleaned from this article is that all of us bed-wetters, as the Obama White House called us - with the progressive Netroots (including the blogs) at the lead - were right all along. We said early on that the President's approach to governing was wrong, that it made him look weak, and that it would eventually bite him in the behind. And it seems we were finally right.

It gives me no great pleasure to issue a "we told you so" that might entail Rick Perry winning the presidency. But after three years of being called names by the White House, and being more generally treated as the crazy virtual aunt in the attic, all of us were right.

The biggest question now is what the President plans to do about it. PowerPoint presentations aren't enough. The President needs to fight back. And part of fighting back is selling what he's already accomplished, including the stimulus and health care reform. You don't hear about either of those two rather major accomplishments any more, and considering they're probably the two biggest things this administration has done, it's a bit disconcerting that they too are treated like the policy version of the crazy aunt in the attack. The GOP has worked this President to a t.

Hopefully the recent signs of life in the President, including the jobs speech and signs that he may just barnstorm the nation in support of it, are an indication that he's finally understanding that if he doesn't "change" the way he operates, there's going to be a change in the Oval Office in 14 short months. Read the rest of this post...

Just got in from a Lebanese festival in the Chicago burbs

Just got back from a Lebanese (Catholic) church festival with mom and dad in the Chicago burbs. Was quite interesting, as it was almost like a Greek festival (almost familiar, I told mom) but different. The food, almost similar but different, and the same goes for the look of the people - though I'd venture to say, based on my very unscientific study of one Lebanese church festival, that the Greeks are actually a darker (physically) people than the Lebanese - I don't mean skin color, per se, but rather, we're almost more Arabic looking at times than these Lebanese I saw at the festival. Maybe it's our (Greek, our) centuries of intermingling with the Turks. But a lot of these folks looked like cuter Greeks, for lack of a better description.

The food was great, especially the baklava that was made with some kind of cream filling, and the kefta (which is similar in name and taste to a Greek meatball, or "keftes"/"keftedes"). They also had a woman making manakeesh, a kind of very thin pizza dough with thyme, oil, sumac and other spices on it. It was a bit too spicy for our tastes (not hot, just too much of the sumac I think). The woman told me they eat it for breakfast, among other times.

And of course, lots of loud music (my dad called it "belly dancing music," or at least that's what it would be in Greece), and lots and lots of hookahs (interestingly, the smoke from the hookah was downright pleasant, totally unlike cigar or even pipe smoke (not as pungent somehow).  Interestingly, young girls (teenage or college, it's getting hard to tell at my advancing age) were smoking hookahs too- - I didn't (culturally) expect that.  And of course, the Lebanese dance more like the Persians (or vice versa) - again, we'd probably call it belly dancing - whereas the Greeks (traditionally) only do circular line dances at events like this.  The music, however, could almost have been Greek (at least one form of traditional Greek music).

All in all, a surprisingly interesting mom-suggestion of an evening. Read the rest of this post...

The President needs to push the banks to lend, and refinance mortgages

Interesting column about how banks are refusing to lend to small businesses with perfect credit ratings.

Three years ago, the federal government used tens of billions in taxpayer dollars to save the banking system. Now, at this dire economic moment, the country needs the banks to return the favor. Pushing the country’s banks to act more like Sterling Savings Bank, and less like JPMorgan Chase, is something that the president might want to put on his jobs agenda.

And how about pressuring banks to let people with stellar credit ratings refinance their mortgages to a lower rate? I contacted my lender to ask about refinancing and was told "no" because my mortgage had to be less than 75% of the total value of my house, or something like that. It didn't matter that I have a perfect credit rating, or that my place is worth a good deal more than my mortgage (in a town, DC, where property values are actually going up). No, the bank is going to insist that I pay more in my monthly mortgage payments, rather than less, because they're afraid I might not be able to pay at all.

Now think about that for a moment. They're going to make me pay MORE each month, instead of LESS, because somehow if I owed less each month that would put me at greater risk of not paying at all.

Uh, no. Kind of the contrary.  Owing less each month would put more money in my pocket, which would not only make it easier to pay the mortgage, it would give me more disposable income to spread around the rest of the economy.

It's absurd that I can't refinance. And I'm sure lots of others are in the same situation I am. These are the kind of sensible things the government can and should be addressing. And for whatever reason, they're not. Read the rest of this post...

Obama, Bernanke and IMF says worldwide funk exacerbating economic problems

Apparently we're all being far more negative than we need to be, and thus not spending adequately. And here I thought I wasn't spending as much money because the my income dropped precipitously once the economic crisis kicked in. Silly me.  Gail Collins in the NYT has some suggestions for how we might all put on a happy face the next time we hear bad news:

Every time you hear a depressing piece of news, come back with something cheerful.

For instance, the weather has been absolutely horrendous. We’ve had everything this summer but locusts. However, on the plus-side, Fox News has reported that the earthquake in the Washington area caused Robert Valderzak, a 75-year-old patient at a Veterans Affairs Hospital, to regain his hearing.

The price of gas is approaching $4 a gallon in some places. On the other hand, Beyoncé is pregnant.

Some viewers of this week’s Republican debate found it depressing that Rick Perry, who has referred to evolution as “a theory that’s out there” also did not seem to believe in climate change, and appeared to be under the impression that Galileo was persecuted for his belief in the earth revolving around the sun by his fellow scientists, rather than the religious establishment.

However, it did give us a welcome chance for a national discussion about Galileo, who does not get mentioned nearly enough.

Read the rest of this post...

Sadrists demand removal of all troops from Iraq

As Juan Cole points out, 3,000 US troops in Iraq are not troops, they are hostages.

If the troops are attacked it is likely to result in more troops being sent in and a possible third US-Iraq war. Besides which many Iraqi's do not want them there:

The Muqtada al-Sadr nativist Shiite movement in Iraq is planning a huge demonstration in downtown Baghdad on Friday, in favor of three demands. The first is that the Iraqi government announce an immediate jobs program that would put 50,000 Iraqis to work, from all ethnicities and religious groups. The second is that the Iraqi government give each Iraqi a royalty payment on Iraqi oil profits (ironically a suggestion once made by US viceroy in Iraq, Paul “Jerry” Bremer and modeled on a program in Alaska). The third is that there be no US troops at all in Iraq by the end of the year or earlier.

These are not idle demands:

The Sadrists not only have a proven ability to put a lot of people in the streets, but their some 40 seats in parliament are key to the governing coalition of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, so that he ignores them to his peril. The Iraqi constitution allows for parliament to call for a vote of no confidence if 50 MPs sign off on it, and rivals of al-Maliki such as Ayad Allawi have been calling for early elections.

Meanwhile the US establishment is busy debating with itself how many troops the US should keep in Iraq as if it was their decision to make.

The report brought howls of outrage from Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who say they want to keep 25,000 troops in Iraq. I am not sure why McCain and Graham believe that this decision is their own. The only legal document governing this issue is a Status of Forces Agreement signed by the Iraqi parliament and the Bush White House in late 2008, which stipulates that there must be no US troops in Iraq at all by December 31 of this year.

Their reason? Iran. Seems that McCain and Graham have completely failed to notice that in the wake of the 2010 elections, Iran chose the Iraqi government. One of the (many) reasons I opposed the invasion of Iraq in the first place was that it would inevitably increase the influence of Iran.

The US presided over the destruction of a Sunni-dominated secular Arab nationalist regime and the installation of a government led by fundamentalist Shiites, many of whom had lived in exile in Iran and had excellent relations with Tehran. That cow is out of the barn, and the presence of US troops is unlikely to be relevant to the budding Tehran-Baghdad-Damascus axis, which is a political reality.

Read the rest of this post...