Fallows notes:

Counting the new Republican Senator Scott Brown from Massachusetts, the 41 Republicans in the Senate come from states representing just over 36.5 percent of the total US…

The other day, I was lighting a fire with a copy of the Times from June 27, 2009 when my eye fell on an article about Republican objections to the health-care reform bill. Back then, the public…

Barack Obama was not as popular and powerful as he seemed on January 20, 2009, and he is not as unpopular and weak as he seems today. His first year in office demonstrated his strengths and his…

Remember, Republicans will blame you for this bill anyway. Unless you’re among the few Democrats who opposed it on the first go-round, you’ve already voted for health care reform. And you can bet the Republicans will let voters know that come November. You’ll be the representative who voted for that awful liberal boondoggle that, thankfully, the Senate blocked at the final stages of deliberation. Or maybe you want to explain to constituents why you were for health care reform before you were against it.

On the other hand, if you find a way to pass legislation, then you have something to show for your efforts—an accomplishment you can tout, legitimately, as making people’s lives better. Thanks to this bill, you’ll be able to tell people, insurance will become both more affordable and more reliable. Coverage will be there for people who don’t have it, and it will be better for people who have it already. The uninsured will benefit, for sure, but so will the insured—with a guaranteed benefits package, caps on out-of-pocket spending, cost control to slow down rising premiums, and more.

adamkatz:

Does anybody actually believe the ridiculous CW that Obama went “too far, too fast”?

The problem with Obama isn’t that he’s trying to do too much, but that he’s actually doing so little.

I think we elected Obama because we thought he was bold, different, and, because his vast rhetorical talents suggested he was capable of spurring the kind of widespread change we really wanted. This change wasn’t ideological (more government vs. less government) but rather Newtonian - motion vs. stopped.

Here’s my narrative: The country wants to get stuff done. For 20 years, we’ve drifted, squandering a remarkable position of global leadership. Bridges are crumbling, cities are sinking, and, insanely, we can’t get the guy who killed 3,000 of our fellow citizens. Rather than building things, we securitized overlevered buildings. Americans are desperate to arrest this drift and, in Obama, we thought we had an answer. It wasn’t so much that we wanted single payer, but wanted to take a real shot at fixing health care. It wasn’t so much that we wanted a certain set of financial regulatory reforms, but wanted a real attempt to shrink Wall Street to proper proportions.  Obama was less a product of specific policy goals but an inchoate yearning to get America moving again, to make things, to solve problems, to demonstrate to the Tom Friedmans and Fareed Zakarias of the world that democracies and not just dictatorships could tackle the complicated problems of the 21st century. Obama was the big and bold choice and, in 2008, we wanted to go big or go home.

If John Harris and Carol Lee are right, the Obama team understood this. If so, evidence is in short supply. Across the board the White House has been timid where it should have been bold. On the banks, it shouldn’t have taken a year, several false starts, and repeated public scolding from Paul Volcker to do something substantial. On health care, it shouldn’t have paid off big pharma and big insurance with a mediocre hodge-podge plan but gone with a real deal - single payer or Goldhill. To pass it, it shouldn’t have played inside baseball (compromising our faith in Obama’s outsiderness) but made an end-run around Congress. Harnessing OfA has been challenging because OfA isn’t going to get fired up over a little-better-than-average plan. On infrastructure, it shouldn’t have deferred to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, but eschewed the pork and done something. 8 billion for high-speed rail? Emblematic baby step.

So, here’s my advice. Ignore the conventional wisdom. Stop playing inside Washington baseball. The old-LBJ rules no longer apply - you can’t buy-off Ben Nelson when the blogosphere will know before breakfast. Take three big issues: (1) Financial regulatory reform (2) Infrastructure and (3) Education Reform. Play it straight and simple. Be honest - where there are tradeoffs (e.g. health care) don’t tell us we can have our cake and eat it too. Do that and we know you’re lying. If you want sacrifice, ask - we’re down for it.

On issue (1), Financial regulatory reform - Break up the banks. Too big to fail is too big to exist. Simple, easy, clear and the virtue of being right (see Volcker, Paul, again). (2) Infrastructure - Build something, anywhere. Start laying tracks between San Francisco and Los Angeles. If there’s red tape, cut it. Have Rahm play Robert Moses to demonstrate to people that we’re actually doing something. (3) Education - Obama put a super-smart guy in Arne Duncan in charge. Good. Take the ten zaniest ideas out there (start with Roland Fryer’s stuff) and start doing them. Experiment under the rubric of improving America’s future competitiveness (that’s the big underlying worry). Talk about educating more engineers and motivating more entrepreneurs.

Even if they disagree with you, the American people will respect the boldness, courage, and effort. The political dynamic is Newtonian and it’s time to get moving.

Obama’s political problem boils down to the difficulty he has speaking to and for middle America. This problem became evident during the middle of the primary battle with Hillary Clinton. And it could have seriously damaged his candidacy against John McCain. But the onset of the financial crisis that fall, and McCain’s feeble response to it, along with his choice of Sarah Palin as vice president, highlighted Obama’s strongest asset in the eyes of voters—his intelligence—and reduced the importance of his lack of a common touch.

As president, however, Obama’s lack of engagement with middle America has come to the surface and has contributed to his decline in popularity.