Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: Democratic Party (US)

  • Republicans in Congress Have Actually Achieved a Lot

    Washington DC
    View of Washington DC with the United States Capitol in the distance, February 17, 2015 (Matt Popovich)

    There is a persistent belief on the American right that Republicans in Congress have done little to stop President Barack Obama. Commentators, especially of the fringe variety, claim the party — which has held a majority in the House of Representatives since 2011 and in the Senate since 2015 — stabbed its supporters in the back to enable the Democrats.

    Jonathan Bernstein argues at Bloomberg View that this is the sort of myth that makes conservative voters susceptible to a candidate like Donald Trump, who promises to uproot the entire political system.

    I argued here last week that some conservatives are coming to terms with their complicity in Trump’s rise. They recognize that they have spent too much time vilifying their allies as opposed to their opponents and raised unreasonable expectations as to what a party can do when it only controls one branch of government.

    But others, like Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, Breitbart and Drudge, continue to peddle the stab-in-the-back narrative. They won’t be satisfied no matter how many times conservatives get their way in Washington or block a Democratic policy proposal, because — like Trump — they thrive on grievance, not success.

    So it’s worth pointing out the Republicans’ successes when you don’t read too much about them in the right-wing media. (more…)

  • The World According to Bernie Sanders

    It’s rather rare for me to have an opportunity to hear directly from the horse’s mouth. I rely, as so many do, on public media. But this weekend Senator Bernie Sanders paid a visit to Coney Island; a mere handful of subway stops away, it seemed unconscionable to not bother my Sunday with a speech. The unseasonably chilly breeze numbing my rapidly sunburning skin (New York winters, after all, lighten everyone a shade, me especially), I waited in an orderly, two-hour long security line, strolled by a trio of wonderfully abusive Donald Trump supporters (I’d expect no less) and found myself planted behind the phalanx of media outlets who wholly obscured the view of Sanders himself.

    But I heard him, and at a rally, that’s all that counts.

    There wasn’t much newsbreaking; Sanders repeated his talking points of many other stump speeches and his crowd reacted predictably to the themes he is most famous for. An old woman next to me passed out from the long wait; a swarm of cops provided a brief distraction, but hidden as we were behind the media, Sanders himself paid the situation no mind.

    For a man whose electoral platform hinges heavily on domestic inequality, it made sense that the foreign policy aspect of his stump speech was light. But his statements bear analysis: with the New York primary coming up on April 19, Sanders is rapidly reaching his make-or-break political moment and victory in the Empire State could well propel him and his ideals to the White House. (more…)

  • Unloved Clinton Would Defeat Despised Trump

    Whatever else can be said about the relative virtues of the two Democratic candidates running in the presidential primary election, the party should consider itself fortunate that the Republicans are about to nominate Donald Trump.

    HuffPost Pollster, which aggregates favorability polls to provide a more holistic outlook, has Clinton’s favorability rating at -12.7. Trump’s net favorability is at -29.5.

    Clinton’s rival, Bernie Sanders, by comparison, enjoys a net favorability of +11.1, alone among all candidates but John Kasich in being in positive territory.

    According to CBS, both Clinton and Trump are viewed more unfavorably than any major-party frontrunner in polling history. (more…)

  • Second Super Tuesday Blog

    • Six presidential primaries are held across the United States on what the news media have dubbed the second “Super Tuesday”.
    • These primaries are a chance for former secretary of state Hillary Clinton to prove she can win outside the South, where nonwhite voters have dominated the Democratic contests. Her socialist rival, Bernie Sanders, has done better in Northern industrial states. Watch Ohio.
    • For the Republicans, it’s the last chance to slow down businessman Donald Trump. If he does poorly today, he is likely to fall short of a delegate majority. But if Trump wins, it is going to be almost impossible to take the nomination away from him. Crucial will be Florida and Ohio, the home states of Trump’s rivals Marco Rubio and John Kasich. (more…)

  • Michigan Primary Suggests Sanders Has a Chance

    The outcome of the Michigan Democratic presidential primary suggests Bernie Sanders might have a chance after all.

    Although the Vermont senator did not win Michigan by a large margin, overcoming media expectations as he did on Tuesday night stands to give him the same “buzz” that a landslide would have.

    How did Sanders manage it? (more…)

  • Super Tuesday Blog

    • Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton has won the Democratic nominating contests in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. Her socialist rival, Bernie Sanders, has won his home state of Vermont as well as Colorado, Minnesota and Oklahoma.
    • Counting “super delegates” (party officials with a vote at the convention), Clinton now has 1,001 out of 2,383 delegates needed to win. Sanders has 371.
    • On the Republican side, businessman Donald Trump has won the contests in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee and Virginia. He has 316 out of 1,237 delegates he needs for the nomination. Senator Ted Cruz is in second place with 226 delegates after winning his home state of Texas as well as Alaska and Oklahoma. (more…)

  • Electoral Fight of the Future: Go West, Young Man!

    Las Vegas Nevada
    Skyline of Las Vegas, Nevada (Shutterstock/Andrey Bayda)

    Often forgotten amid the larger, classic swing states like Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio, the American West is finding itself in a new position of prominence in the 2012 election and will likely retain that prominence as the country’s demographics shift in the Democrats’ favor over the coming years.

    With the Midwest probably in President Barack Obama’s column and the entirety of the South probably in Republican candidate Mitt Romney’s (with the possible exception of Virginia), Tuesday’s election may come down to three states in the Rocky Mountains that all went for Obama in 2008, George W. Bush in 2004 and split between Bush and Al Gore in 2000.

    The region was uncompetitive for Democrats in 2000, with the exception of New Mexico which Al Gore won by a mere five hundred votes that year. In 2004, the region was one of John Kerry’s many “backup” paths to victory (besides Florida and Ohio) that didn’t pan out. In 2008’s election between Obama and John McCain, it didn’t make the difference — preelection polls weren’t close and the election was effectively decided well before results came in from the West.

    What will happen this time around? Recent history might offer a clue as to what we can expect — history as recent as the 2010 congressional elections. (more…)

  • Barack Obama Deserves Second Term

    Regardless of whether or not this presidential election is a referendum or a choice, President Barack Obama deserves to be reelected on both counts. On the economy and foreign affairs, the Democrat has shown himself to be a better candidate than any of Mitt Romney’s public personas.

    The first issue of Barack Obama’s presidency was his handling of the economic collapse which is also his strongest case for reelection. The crisis left a classic liquidity trap in which demand had dropped to very low levels and interest rates had already been lowered to the minimum. This required an immediate Keynesian approach.

    By passing the Recovery Act and injecting $787 billion into the American economy only three weeks after his inauguration, the president stopped the ongoing hemorrhaging and quickly stabilized the markets. Despite near unanimous Republican political stonewalling, the president got billions of dollars into green energy investment, health information technology, middle-class tax relief and more.

    Investigators found minimal fraud and waste and given the impact it had on the economy, both short and long-term, the spending in sum appears to have been worth it: The economy rebounded with the stimulus saving or creating around two and a half million jobs. The recovery only really slowed down once governors began to institute austerity at the state level and Congress refused to renew any form of stimulus because of the perceived failure of the first round as well as its large impact on the deficit.

    However, the Recovery Act was uncommonly large because the slump was too — and it turns out more massive than the stimulus. The oft cited “promise” that unemployment would be at 6 percent right now is a canard, citing a projection, not a promise, by the transition team based on the belief that gross domestic product loss in late 2008 was 5.4 percent. It turned out that the contraction rate was 8.9 percent — unheard of since the Great Depression. Thus, a larger stimulus was economically necessary, though politically impossible.

    Having no stimulus? That would have resulted in a Second Great Depression, permanently less revenue and a larger weight in the safety net — much worse for the deficit than temporary spending.

    We know this because countercyclical spending has been economic orthodoxy since the 1930s. Democratic and Republican presidents alike have always spent money in some form to juice a down economy. When they haven’t, it has stagnated. This creates a natural deficit but that’s okay — interest rates are low during liquidity traps and are historically so right now.

    (Given that the task of economic stimulus is evidently incomplete, pursuing it or not remains the choice for the future.)

    Other issues are dwarfed by the president’s averting of economic catastrophe, yet still have large importance — especially in contrast to the plans of Mitt Romney and the congressional Republicans. (more…)

  • Atlantic Sentinel Responds to Final Obama-Romney Debate

    Incumbent president Barack Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, debated foreign policy in Boca Raton, Florida tonight in what was their third and last televised debate before November’s election.

    The Atlantic Sentinel‘s Christopher Whyte said the debate was “not a blowout for either candidate.” Both held their positions well on a number of fronts, he said. (more…)

  • Atlantic Sentinel Responds to Second Obama-Romney Debate

    President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, met in Hempstead, New York on Tuesday night for their second televised debate before November’s election.

    The stakes were particularly high for the incumbent whose lackluster performance in the first debate in Colorado two weeks ago disappointed many Democrats. (more…)

  • Benghazi Attack Aftermath Threatens Obama’s Reelection

    Republicans in the House of Representatives increased their pressure on the Obama Administration on Tuesday over the September 11 attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, sending a strongly worded letter (PDF) to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and ordering her to cooperate with the Congress.

    The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, headed by Republican congressman Darrell Issa, has opened up its own investigation into the attack with a special focus on why security at the consulate was so weak prior to the assassination of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. (more…)

  • Atlantic Sentinel Responds to First Obama-Romney Debate

    Democratic president Barack Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, met for their first in three televised debates in the city of Denver tonight, the capital of Colorado which is one of nine states that can sway November’s election in either candidate’s favor.

    The Atlantic Sentinel‘s Steve Keller said “this was a really wonky debate.”

    President Obama seemed to go in with an eye toward playing defense and Mitt Romney playing offense. Both did so effectively.

    Left-wingers were disappointed Obama didn’t “take it” to Romney and try to knock him out. Keller, however, wasn’t surprised Obama came across as more professorial. (more…)

  • Obama Puts Jerusalem Back in Democratic Party Platform

    Before he formally accepted his party’s presidential nomination on Thursday night, President Barack Obama had to step in to change part of the Democratic platform.

    At first glance, worrying about a few sentences in the foreign policy chapter of the document would seem out of the ordinary. Foreign policy has scantly been a major issue in the campaign. But the subject under the microscope was not about some marginal country but about the state of Israel, a country that administrations of both parties have pledged to support, work with and defend.

    After learning that the status of Jerusalem was omitted from the party platform, President Obama personally pushed to have the language changed. (more…)

  • Neither Party Cheers Tax Cut Compromise

    With the current session of the United States Congress coming to an end, the tax cuts brought about during the Bush Administration are due to expire. After months of fierce discussion between Democrats and Republicans about the need of maintaining existing tax rates, a compromise was reached between opposition members of the Senate and the White House this week. But some Democrats in Congress have already vowed to vote against the deal.

    Democrats and the president have routinely blamed Republicans for holding the extension of middle-class tax rates and unemployment benefits “hostage” to tax cuts for “millionaires and billionaires,” or the richest 2 percent of Americans. In recent months, Republicans have blocked other legislation in Congress before, they say, Washington assure the people that their tax rates will not go up next year.

    Confronted with this stalemate, President Obama, in a statement last week, said that he was unwilling to let “working families across this country become collateral damage for political warfare” in Washington. “I’m not willing to see two million Americans who stand to lose their unemployment insurance at the end of this month be put in a situation where they might lose their home or their car or suffer some additional economic catastrophe,” he added. So he announced a compromise agreement: a two years extension of current tax rates coupled with a thirteen-month extension of unemployment benefits. “It’s not perfect,” the president admitted, “but this compromise is an essential step on the road to recovery.”

    Some members of his own party beg to differ and Congressman Chris Van Hollen of Maryland explained why on Fox News Sunday. Even if there are some House Democrats who “haven’t adjusted to the post election reality,” most are willing to compromise but upset about the estate tax cut, he explained. “That doesn’t help the economy,” according to Van Hollen. “It hurts the deficit. And most importantly, the Republicans did not insist on the estate tax being part of the central portion of this deal.”

    The estate tax break — which according to Van Hollen would cost the government $68 billion in revenue — would lower rates to 35 percent on estates over $5 million as opposed to the current 45 percent tax on estates worth more than $3.5 million. Paul Ryan, who will succeed Van Hollen as chairman of the House budget committee in the next Congress, characterized it as a double tax on death. “Economists will tell you that it’s really not a tax that soaks the rich,” he said, “but it’s a tax on capital that deprives business investment and therefore job creation.”

    If liberal Democrats successfully manage to stall or vote down the compromise agreement, Paul promised that Republicans next year, once they have a majority in the House of Representatives, will prevent any tax increase. “And we’ll do it retroactively after the first of the year.” Unsurprisingly, Van Hollen was quick to add that he did not intend to block the compromise altogether

    The White House seems confident that the deal will pass. Senior advisor to the president David Axelrod said on ABC’s This Week that he expected “strong support on both sides of the aisle.” He warned Democrats that unless they accept the compromise, hundreds of thousands of unemployed Americans would see their benefits cut next year. The alternative is to “put money in the pockets of middle-class people,” he said.

    Axelrod, who was Obama’s chief strategists during the presidential campaign, was all the more explicit on CNN’s State of the Union. “You can focus on what you don’t like and cut your nose off to spite your face, and that would be the wrong thing to do,” he said, adding that Congress should approve the deal because “everyone understands what it means to the economy if we don’t get this done.”

    The greater question for the American economy is the ballooning national debt however. The federal government currently borrows more than a third of what it budgets and there are no plans to seriously rein in spending.

    Even if restoring balance to the budget is possible at existing tax rates if only Washington freezes spending levels, it seems unlikely that Democrats will accept cuts during the next two years unless they are offset by some tax increases.

    Congressman Ryan, who has proposed radical spending cuts and entitlement reforms in the past, was asked about the deficit on Fox News Sunday but wouldn’t say how exactly he intends to balance the budget next year. Extending the tax cuts isn’t so much a fiscal measure though. “I’m not going to make any bones about this and say this is a great growth package,” he told CNBC Wednesday. “They have some demand side Keynesian stuff in here I’m not particularly a fan of,” he complained then, “but this is probably the best deal we can get.”

    On his Fox Business show this Friday, David Asman also criticized Democrats who pretend that stimulating consumption will help the recovery. “Our economy’s health is judged by how much we produce, not by how much we buy,” he said. “The more Americans work and produce, the stronger our economy grows. And that’s what gives us the wealth to buy and consume, not the other way around.”

    With unemployment rates stuck at 10 percent, Asman said Congress shouldn’t do anything that could undermine job creation. “We need economic policy that encourages work and production a lot more than we need policies meant to encourage consumption,” he explained. “That’s why any tax increase is insanity right now.”