Desperate Democrats


05 Nov 2009



Despite the whipping they took in Tuesday's election, congressional
Democrats are moving fast on cap-and-trade and health care. Are they
politically tone-deaf, or is this some kind of desperate strategy?



Our guess is that Democratic leaders, having gotten a very negative message
from the off-year balloting, are moving as fast as they can to pass the main
big-spending items on their unpopular agenda. If they don't act now, the
know their radical agenda is dead.



On Thursday, Senate Democrats hustled the cap-and-trade bill out of
committee without so much as a hello-and-howdy to the Republicans - knowing
full well the GOPers would oppose it.



All this haste, even though global participants in the upcoming Copenhagen
climate talks planned for December agree that any CO2-cutting deal is
probably a year away.



Meanwhile, Democratic leaders in the House want a Saturday showdown for
their $1.2 trillion health care takeover after trumpeting support from the
AARP and American Medical Association.



As the publication The Hill noted, Democratic leaders are still scrambling
to "placate party factions threatening to defeat the health care bill over
hot-button issues such as spending, immigration and abortion." They need 218
votes in the House, and they don't seem to have them.



What's the big hurry for a bill that won't even go into effect until 2013?
And why act with such haste to move the cap-and-trade bill out of committee?
The only obvious answer is Democratic leaders are running scared. Yet
there's an element of self-delusion to their strategy.



Just listen to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi after her party's shellacking at
the polls: "From our standpoint, we won last night."



"We won"? Sure, and from the standpoint of the Titanic's passengers, it was
a heckuva half-voyage.



Fact is, 2010 has many Democrats - especially moderates in red or purple
states carried by John McCain in 2008 - fearful of a wave of anti-incumbent
and anti-Democrat sentiment.



It hasn't helped that voters have been frightened - and justifiably so - by
the $787 billion stimulus, the $700 billion in bailouts, the $1
trillion-a-year deficits and the government takeover of key U.S. industries
such as autos and finance. There's practically no evidence any of these
initiatives has worked to any meaningful degree.



Recent polls show the president and Congress falling fast in public esteem.
The RealClearPolitics poll of polls, which aggregates a number of
congressional favorability surveys, shows an average of 25.5% approval and
66.7% disapproval for a -41.2% spread.


http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?idQ1489





Warmest Regards



Bon z0



"It is a remarkable fact that despite the worldwide expenditure of perhaps
US$50 billion since 1990, and the efforts of tens of thousands of scientists
worldwide, no human climate signal has yet been detected that is distinct
from natural variation."

Bob Carter, Research Professor of Geology, James Cook University, Townsville
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