Daily Kos

You know you're having a bad day in the Republican primary field when you feel compelled to put out a video denying that you support a health coverage mandate. And if you're name isn't Mitt Romney, you're having an especially bad day.

Newt Gingrich, who last held elective office nearly fifteen years ago, found himself in that position today, thanks to comments he made yesterday:

“I agree that all of us have a responsibility to help pay for health care. And I think that there are ways to do it that make most libertarians relatively happy,” Mr. Gingrich told the host David Gregory. “I’ve said consistently, where there’s some requirement you either have health insurance or you post a bond or in some way you indicate you’re going to be held accountable.”

That's pretty clear support for a federal health coverage mandate. It's not precisely the same one as signed into law by President Obama—Gingrich would allow people to post a bond that would cover any potential medical expenses (presumably very few people could do this as it would need to cover potential expenses)—but the principle is similar: no free riders. Everybody must pay.

Less than 24 hours later, and Gingrich is already reversing himself in much the same way that he flip-flop-flipped on the RyanCare plan to end Medicare:

“I am completely opposed to the Obamacare mandate on individuals,” Mr. Gingrich said in a new video released Monday.

Gingrich goes on to claim the mandate is unconstitutional, saying he's fought against it every step of the way.

But if Gingrich thinks a mandate is unconstitutional and actually fought it every step of the way, why did he say he supported it on Sunday? And why has he supported it since at least the 1990s?

Could it be that he's a pathological liar? Who knows...but I bet his first two wives have a point of view on that.

Greg Sargent has obtained a letter sent from CIA Director Leon Panetta to Sen. John McCain, reiterating that the path to bin Laden did not begin with the torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Here are the operative three paragraphs from the letter, which represents a response from Panetta to McCain’s earler request for information about torture and Bin Laden’s death:

Nearly 10 years of intensive intelligence work led the CIA to conclude that Bin Ladin was likely hiding at the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. there was no one “essential and indispensible” key piece of information that led us to this conclusion. Rather, the intelligence picture was developed via painstaking collection and analysis. Multiple streams of intelligence — including from detainees, but also from multiple other sources — led CIA analysts to conclude that Bin Ladin was at this compound. Some of the detainees who provided useful information about the facilitator/courier’s role had been subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques. Whether those techniques were the “only timely and effective way” to obtain such information is a matter of debate and cannot be established definitively. What is definitive is that that information was only a part of multiple streams of intelligence that led us to Bin Ladin.

Let me further point out that we first learned about the facilitator/courier’s nom de guerre from a detainee not in CIA custody in 2002. It is also important to note that some detainees who were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques attempted to provide false or misleading information about the facilitator/courier.
These attempts to falsify the facilitator/courier’s role were alerting.

In the end, no detainee in CIA custody revealed the facilitator/courier’s full true name or specific whereabouts. This information was discovered through other intelligence means.

Emphasis mine. Panetta’s account contradicts Mukasey’s claim that the trail to Bin Laden “began” with disclosures from Khalid Sheikh Muhammed that were achieved through the “pressure" of torture.

Panetta’s account also represents public, on-the-record confirmation from the CIA of — and adds new detail to — a careful and thorough investigation by Scott Shane and Charlie Savage of the New York Times, which was based on anonymous sources and concluded that torture “played a small role at most in identifying Bin Laden’s trusted courier and exposing his hide-out.” Shane and Savage also quoted unnamed sources claiming torture resulted in bad information — also confirmed in Panetta’s letter.

What we don't know, as Sargent points out, is whether legal and effective interrogation techniques would have secured the information on the courier from KSM. We can't know that now, but there's the very real possibility that torture actually slowed the hunt for bin Laden.

"I think that without a doubt, torture and enhanced interrogation techniques slowed down the hunt for bin Laden," said an Air Force interrogator who goes by the pseudonym Matthew Alexander and located Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, in 2006....

"We know that they didn’t give us everything, because they didn’t provide the real name, or the location, or somebody else who would know that information," he said.

In a 2006 longtime military intelligence officer who has extensively researched, practiced and taught interrogation techniques.

"By making a detainee less likely to provide information, and making the information he does provide harder to evaluate, they hindered what we needed to accomplish," said Glenn L. Carle, a retired CIA officer who oversaw the interrogation of a high-level detainee in 2002.

What we do know, and what hasn't got enough traditional media coverage, is that torture was used to extract a false confession, and the false confession by Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi "that two al-Qaeda operatives had been receiving information from Saddam Hussein about the use of chemical and biological weapons" was used by the Bush administration to build the case for invading Iraq. Had Bush's CIA really been on the hunt for bin Laden in 2002, why were they torturing al-Libi for information about Saddam Hussein?

Sam Stein:

WASHINGTON -- With the U.S. government officially hitting its debt ceiling on Monday, the Obama administration is distributing a set of talking points emphasizing the “panic” and “catastrophic” outcome that would result from a full-on default.

The talking points, sent over by a Democratic source, strike the same dire tone that administration officials have done for the past few weeks, if not months. The one noteworthy hook may be the invocation of the 2008 financial crisis, which the White House holds up as a possible template for what would happen should Congress not pass a bill raising the ceiling from its current level.

Republicans have tried to argue that failing to lift the debt limit would be no big deal because in theory creditors could still be paid, but that is either an ignorant or dishonest way of looking at the situation.

After exhausting emergency measures (which began today), failure to lift the debt limit would mean the federal government would not have enough money to fully fund its obligations. Nobody knows exactly how we'd decide what services to cut, but the one thing that is certain is that we would go from setting the gold standard for dependability to becoming a fiscal rogue state. Confidence in our government would plummet globally and the economy would tank as it did in 2008.

Republicans either don't understand this or they are lying about it. Either way, they are playing a dangerous game. With the debt limit having already been reached, and with emergency measures now in place, they need to come to their senses immediately. If they don't, they'll be entirely responsible for causing the second major financial crisis in the past three years, and that's the last thing America—or the world—needs.

Millions of seniors who have paid into the Medicare program for the majority, if not all, of their working lives are really going to love Rep. Paul Ryan's new messaging strategy for the beleaguered proposal: he's doubling down on the Medicare = welfare talking point.

Speaking in broad terms Monday before the Economic Club of Chicago, House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) defended his controversial proposals to slash entitlement spending and privatize Medicare.

Though billed as an effort to revamp his widely criticized budget, Ryan avoided describing his health care plans in specific detail, eschewing even the friendly terms he and other Republicans have used to explain it since he first unveiled it earlier this year. Instead, Ryan reframed the entitlement cuts in his budget as "strengthen[ing] welfare for those who need it," and accused Democrats who have attacked his budget as engaging in class warfare....

"If I could sum up that disagreement in a couple of sentences, I would say this: Our plan is to give seniors the power to deny business to inefficient providers. Their plan is to give government the power to deny care to seniors," he said, according to prepared remarks.

He's two for two there—Medicare is really welfare, and having faceless insurance company employees denying your care is the answer. It seems like Ryan missed the whole point of this relaunching effort with his proposal. He was actually supposed to be trying to make it sound better to voters. Or to his own leadership and party hopefuls. But hey, he's got Sen. Scott Brown on board, so that's something.

Last week, Newt Gingrich called Barack Obama the "food stamp" president and floated reimposing a Jim Crow-era poll tests:

You know, folks often talk about immigration. I always say that to become an American citizen, immigrants ought to have to learn American history. [applause] But maybe we should also have a voting standard that says to vote, as a native born American, you should have to learn American history. [applause] You realize how many of our high school graduates because of the decay of the educational system, couldn’t pass a citizenship test.

Now he denies blowing a racist dog whistle, saying he's "never said" anything at all "racist" about President Obama. And maybe he thinks talking about reimposing Jim Crow-era poll tests has nothing to do with race. But if that's the case than "Professor" Gingrich would have to admit that he himself doesn't know enough American history to vote, let alone run for President.

• A resolution has been introduced in Madison, Wisconsin:

  Honoring the life of Bennett "Ben" Masel, his contributions to our community and declaring April 20th as "Ben Masel Day" in the City of Madison.
  

• Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) was on hand to watch the space shuttle Endeavor, commanded by her husband Commander Mark Kelly, blast off on its final mission.
• An ass and a coward:

  Recently, an observant Capitol Hill staffer alerted Mother Jones to a 2007 Lincoln Navigator in a congressional parking lot that was sporting eyebrow-raising license plates. The Texas tags read: "WTF 44." The staffer helpfully snapped a photo (see above) and sent it along.  [...]

  Based on where the SUV was spotted, in the parking lot of the Longworth House Office Building, it seemed likely that the vehicle belonged to a congressional staffer, or perhaps a House member ...

  It took several weeks, and further back and forth with the Texas DMV, but I finally obtained the title and registration information connected to WTF 44 ... it lists the owner of the Navigator: Scott Graves of Bronte, Texas.

  Graves is the legislative director for Rep. K. Michael Conaway, a Texas Republican who represents a district in the western part of the state and who serves as a deputy Republican whip. [...]

  Graves did not respond to a request for comment. But when I reached Conaway's spokesman, Sam Ray, and described the license plate to him, Ray said, "This is the first I've heard of that." He told me it was unclear to him what type of statement Graves is making: "To be honest, I get where you're going, but I'm not sure that's what that means. That's like conjecture to me because you don't have any proof that's what that means." He added, "I don't know, maybe that was his number in football" ... Ray promised to look into it. He never got back me and didn't respond to a follow-up call. WTF, indeed.

• It's too bad that this even qualifies as a news story ... that said, kudos to Rick Welts:

  Phoenix Suns president and CEO Rick Welts, in an effort to breach what he sees as the tiptoed-around topic of homosexuality in men's team sports, recently met with friends, associates and a newspaper reporter to reveal he is gay.

  Welts, believed to be the first man in a prominent position in men's sports who has declared his homosexuality, says he wants to now mentor other gay people who seek to pursue a career in sports, according to The New York Times.

• Where they're pushing for government spending?

  Almost a third of the Blue Dog Democrats who retired or were defeated in 2010 have gone to work for organizations that lobby their former colleagues in Congress, according to an iWatch News review.

• As long as everybody's happy:

  Most Americans fear Osama bin Laden’s death will increase incidents of terrorism or have “no impact” on terrorism worldwide, according to the new POLITICO-George Washington University Battleground Poll out Monday.

• And speaking of bin Laden, his death has created SEAL-mania:

  Joe Stumpf snaps the 115-pound barbell up to his chest and swiftly lifts it over his head, holding it with gritting teeth and locked arms as sweat streams down from his gray hair line.

  The barbell hits the ground in a clang seconds later. After eight reps, the 54-year-old businessman dressed in camouflage pants rushes to the next excruciating exercise.

  Stumpf is one of a growing number of Americans putting themselves through grueling fitness programs modeled after Navy SEAL workouts as interest in the elite military unit has soared since one of its teams killed Osama bin Laden. Everyone these days seems to be dreaming of what it's like to be a SEAL, know a SEAL or at least look like one.

  Book publishers say they cannot order the printings of the memoirs of former SEALs fast enough, while people are dialing 1-800-Hooyah! like mad to get their hands on T-shirts emblazoned with the SEAL insignia and sayings like: "When it absolutely, positively must be destroyed overnight! Call in the US Navy SEALs."
  

• Good luck with this:

  THE HAGUE, Netherlands – International war crimes prosecutor asks judges to issue arrest warrants for Gadhafi, 2 others.

• Doing the right thing in Minnesota:

  Minnesota Democrats introduced a bill on Monday that would repeal the state’s Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits same-sex couples from benefiting from the rights and responsibilities of marriage. The bill, the Marriage and Family Protection Act, was offered just as heated debate at the Capitol continues over a proposed constitutional amendment that would write a ban on gay marriage into the state constitution.

• In case you were wondering:

  A federal judge in Chicago says there’s no evidence President Barack Obama knew in 2008 that then-Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich might have attempted to exchange an appointment to Obama’s vacated U.S. Senate seat for a top administration job.

Apparently, at least some in House leadership have decided to double-down on the whole "our Medicare plan isn't unpopular, just misunderstood thing, and have decided that all they really need is new messaging to make the American people realize how much they'll love having next to worthless vouchers instead of actual insurance. That's the report from TPM, which says that Rep. Paul Ryan and his team are out again, trying to sell the plan.

House Republican leaders plan to relaunch their proposal to turn Medicare into a privatized voucher program. Leading the charge will be the GOP budget's architect, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), who is scheduled to deliver an address on the topic at the Economic Club of Chicago on Monday....

Ryan will have to choose his message carefully in order to reassure the conservative base that the GOP's appetite for cuts is undiminished while reassuring moderate Republicans in swing districts that the issue won't wreck their re-election prospects....

Republican freshmen, who powered the GOP to the majority last year, did not abandon the budget, but became increasingly alarmed that criticisms of their plan were gaining traction. At one point a group of Republican lawmakers held a press conference calling for a bipartisan truce on attacks over entitlements. As participants conceded in a joint letter, many of them had run campaign ads reassert their support for the plan. But Speaker John Boehner hinted the same day that "political realities" made it difficult to gain traction. The Medicare proposal looked close to dead after a crucial House chairman, Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI), announced he would not advance Ryan's plan through his Ways and Means committee.

This has all been very interesting to watch and will get more so this week if Republican senators are forced to take a vote on the plan, which is likely. Then we'll see just how effective the new "messaging" on this Medicare debacle has been.

Having succeeded in his two main goals—making an ass of himself and the Republican Party who embraced him with open arms—Donald Trump today announced he would not run for President of the United States.

No doubt Tim Pawlenty is wondering if this is the thing that finally gives him a chance of getting some attention, but I don't think this will help him shed the image of being a boring (but mandate-free) version Mitt Romney.

Instead, the person who will benefit the most from The Donald's withdrawal is Sarah Palin, herself also a likely non-candidate. With Trump out of the picture, Palin can go back to making news by writing Haiku-lets on Twitter...at least until she officially quits the race.

Maybe then T-Paw will get some attention. Unless he gets overshadowed by Herman Cain and Gary Johnson.

WSJ:

The U.S. government is expected to hit the $14.294 trillion debt ceiling Monday, setting in motion an uncertain, 11-week political scramble to avoid a default.

The Treasury Department plans to announce Monday it will stop issuing and reinvesting government securities in certain government pension plans, part of a series of steps designed to delay a default until Aug. 2.

The Treasury's moves buy time for the White House and congressional leaders to reach a deficit-reduction agreement that could clear the way for enough lawmakers to vote to raise the amount of money Congress allows the nation to borrow.

Gene Sperling, director of the National Economic Council, said reaching the debt ceiling "should be a warning bell to the political system that it's time to get serious about preserving our full faith and credit." The Obama administration says a default would tip the U.S. back into a financial crisis.

But meanwhile, even as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce lobbies them to regain a grip on their sanity, Republicans are doing nothing, pretending that the debt limit is no big deal at all.

Speaking of the do-nothing House Republicans, today's Politico poll offers insight on how advocates of raising the debt ceiling (aka rational people) should frame the issue, despite the unpopularity of raising the debt limit. Here's the question they asked:

As you may know, the federal government has a limit on how much debt it can incur. The Treasury Secretary estimates that this limit will be reached in August. Exceeding this limit requires a vote of approval from Congress. If Congress does not approve an increase in this limit, the US could default on its debts and be unable to pay its creditors. Which of the following best describes the implications you believe will occur if Congress does NOT vote to raise the debt limit: (ROTATE CHOICES) It will be disastrous to the U.S. economy, OR It will not have a serious impact on the U.S. economy

56% said disastrous while 32% said it wouldn't have a serious impact. Given that large majorities have generally said they oppose raising the debt limit, I have to think that the numbers in this case are a result of question wording, and the key thing about this question wording is that instead of focusing on the unpopular thing (adding debt) it focuses on the implications of Congress failing to act.

That not only keeps the focus on why the debt ceiling needs to be lifted, it describes it as something that Congress might be dragging its feet on. And if there's one thing that's less popular than adding more debt, it's politicians in Congress—specifically, the new House majority.

It looks like Newt Gingrich is as faithful to his words as he is to his wives.

Yesterday, he came out against Paul Ryan's plan to end Medicare as we know it because he said it was too "radical."

The thing is, a week earlier, he had declared his support for the plan. And long before that, he'd proposed a plan which would have worked pretty much the same way as the Ryan plan.

But just in case your head isn't already spinning from Gingrich's journey from proposer to supporter to opponent of ending Medicare as we know it, brace yourself because with Paul Ryan accusing him of disloyalty, he's already taken an entirely new position: now he sort of supports it again but not really, and when he said he didn't support, that didn't count, but he's still got some issues with it.

I pointed out that Paul Ryan doesn't see much difference between his plan and what Gingrich was calling for on April 20, and Gingrich's spokesman agreed. "There is little daylight between Ryan and Gingrich," he wrote. "But look how it gets reported. Newt would fully support Ryan if it were not compulsory. We need to design a better system that people will voluntarily move to. That is a major difference in design but not substance."

In other words, it was only a blow job. He still loves RyanCare. Really.

Reposted from Daily Kos Elections by David Nir

By now, you probably know the outline of the incident: A Republican "tracker" armed with a camcorder confronted Tea Party candidate Jack Davis, provoking Davis into shoving the camera away (and inspiring the tracker to howl as though his ankle had gotten caught in a bear trap). After the video made the rounds, it turned out that the tracker wasn't some random young punk volunteer but actually the legislative chief-of-staff for Republican candidate Jane Corwin. Even worse, Corwin tried to deny any involvement, claiming that the entire affair had "nothing to do with me quite frankly."

Now she's being lacerated by fellow Republicans for getting herself mixed up in such a ham-handed affair:

“If I were Jane Corwin’s chief of staff, I wouldn’t have done that,” said Bob Davis, a former GOP chairman in Erie County who is unrelated to the congressional candidate. “I would have found somebody else to do it. If you had done that, this would have been an issue of Jack Davis’ temperament. But now you’ve got another issue — and it affects the other campaign.”

And there's more:

“I might have expected this person to be suspended from the campaign as the result of something like this,” said James E. Campbell, a Republican who is chairman of the department of political science at the University at Buffalo.

Saying Mallia’s acting “looked like it was a little over the top,” Campbell said the incident seemed contrived to make Davis look erratic.

“He is kind of erratic, but this seemed pretty trumped up,” Campbell said.

And still more!

Bob Lonsberry, a popular conservative radio host in Rochester, put things much more bluntly.

“A legislative professional, the boss of Jane Corwin’s Assembly office, and he’s hassling a man 50 years older than he is in a parking lot at the fire hall,” Lonsberry said on his blog. “It was an ambush, a setup, and an insight into just how black and depraved the Republican heart is.”

A right-wing radio jock talking about "how black and depraved the Republican heart is"? Wow! There must be mass hysteria in the streets. Cats and dogs living together! What's going on here? Apparently, this guy really means it:

“Afraid that Jack Davis was polling too high, apparently unable to argue against his platform, the Corwin campaign and the Republican Party decided to use character assassination, and they got a state employee to do it,” Lonsberry wrote. “This isn’t the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan. This is the Republican Party of Richard Nixon. This is the dirty tricks party.”

The dirty tricks party — and the pathetic hacks party, too. Look at this looney tunes operation:

But WGRZ-TV also had a cameraman at the Davis event Wednesday, and it showed that there appeared to be another Republican staffer, with another video camera, tracking Davis.

Asked if he would release that video, Langworthy said the battery in the camera was dead.

I'd almost believe that some stupid Republican would be dumb enough not to realize his camcorder wasn't actually working. Almost. But Nick Langworthy, the Erie County GOP chair, managed to top even himself:

Questioning whether Davis has the temperament to serve in Congress, Langworthy added: “Why are we putting Mike Mallia and this campaign through Nuremberg over the fact that one candidate lashed out, lost his cool and misbehaved?”

Yes! The full Godwin! Media scrutiny over this affair is just like the Nuremberg trials for genocidal war criminals. That is just beyond priceless.

In the end, I love this parting shot that the Buffalo News gets in at Corwin herself:

Corwin refused interview requests from The Buffalo News regarding the incident, choosing instead to speak to National Journal, a publication and website for Washington insiders.

How perfectly arch — and perfectly accurate. The wealthy Corwin is in full panic mode — after dropping in a million bucks of her own money in the month of April, she tossed in another half-million just a few days ago. That brings her to an eye-popping $2.5 million so far, for a campaign that's only been a few months long. Add in six figure sums from Karl Rove's American Crossroads and promised spending by the NRCC and you know the Republicans are fiercely worried about this one slipping away. And right now, the person they most have to thank for this disaster is none other than Jane Corwin.

UPDATE: Devtob points out that what Lonsberry, the conservative radio host, posted on his blog is even more incendiary:

In Western New York, the Republican Party has collapsed into Nixonian moral bankruptcy. The party leadership is worthy of nothing but indictments.

So venial and whoring is the party that it no longer pretends to care about what’s right, it bounces from con to con, screwing its principles, screwing its members, screwing our country. ...

I believe in the Republican Party, but only on the far side of the state line. I do not trust or respect its local leadership, and I consider that that leadership has neither integrity nor core belief.

They are a pack of corpulent knaves who have turned party politics into a petty organized crime. They are largely failed individuals who would have no significance whatsoever without the bossism of their offices. They whore the patriotism of others out for their own financial and ego benefit.

Jane Corwin is the straw that broke the camel’s back.

A one-term assemblywoman whose major campaign expenditures include her dues at “the premiere private social club in Albany” and a Minnesota firm that specializes in fund-raising, she became a Republican congressional candidate by waving a check under the noses of half a dozen weasels.

Devtob further observes that Lonsberry had originally endorsed Davis, then pulled his endorsement because Davis opposed the Ryan plan to destroy Medicare. So Lonsberry's right-wing credentials cannot be in any doubt.

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There's some intriguing new polling data out today from Politico-GWU Battleground, a consortium of  Celinda Lake (D) and Tarrance Group (R) polling firms. (The polling data can be found here, including this .pdf for complete results, MoE +/- 3.1)

On the subject of Obama, I noted on Sunday that he's had a good couple of weeks. The polling backs that up.

Republicans looking toward 2012 have consistently argued that the president’s reelection hinges on the economy — regardless of who emerges from the GOP field. That thesis is backed by the 15 percentage-point spread — 42 percent to 57 percent — between those polled who approve and disapprove of Obama’s handling of the economy.

But the president seems — at least for now — surprisingly immune to economic fears, the poll shows. Fifty-two percent of those surveyed approve of Obama’s handling of his job, up 7 percentage points from the most recent Battleground Poll, conducted in October. Additionally, 72 percent approve of Obama personally, up 7 percentage points since October.

The president’s strong approval ratings are buttressed by the 59 percent who said they will either “definitely” vote for the president or “consider” reelecting him. Thirty-eight percent “definitely will not” vote for the president’s reelection — giving Obama a higher ceiling of support than his Republican rivals would hope to see.

Enjoyably, Politico has the D and R pollster giving separate analysis. While Ed Goeas (R), from Tarrance, properly notes how crucial the economy is, Celinda Lake (D) notes this trend:

The Democrats lead in the generic Congressional ballot by a single point, 42% to 41%, with 16% undecided—well within the survey’s margin of error. And yet the trend is unmistakable, as this represents a six-point turnaround from the Battleground survey of late October 2010, where voters supported Republicans by a five-point margin, 47% to 42%. In addition, intensity of support favors the Democrats as well, with 39% supporting a generic Democrat strongly and 37% supporting a generic Republican strongly; also a noticeable shift from last cycle when an enthusiasm gap dogged the Democrats. Now, key swing subgroups of the electorate are veering away from the Republicans. Voters in the Midwest went from R+6 in October to D+8 today. Independents, who were R+14 in our October survey and whom Republicans won nationwide by 19 points in the previous election, now support a generic Republican by just three points. Voters age 35-44 were R+8 and are now D+20. Non-college educated men have gone from supporting the Republicans by 15 points to supporting them by just eight points. Republicans are losing ground among seniors as well and fail to win majority support among them today. Seniors were R+17 in our October survey and R+21 on Election Day and are now R+10. Democrats will still need to work to get their voters out to vote. There remains an intensity gap with 80% of Republicans extremely likely to vote compared to 74% of Democrats including only 53% of young voters, 60% of Latino voters, and 61% among single voters.

There is a lot of time between now and 2012, of course, but as of now the Democrats are in competitive position in Congress and ahead for the WH. Of course, the Congressional Democrats would do even better if they didn't keep trying to be Republicans and made sure the country understood what they stood for and how it differs from Paul Ryan and the GOP. It might help to be seen as being for jobs and Social Security, and let the GOP be seen as the Grinch party of austerity and l"et 'em eat cake". They'd better hope Obama has coattails and try not to distance themselves too much - that would be a recipe for disaster they are not incapable of instituting (see 2010.)

While Obama is in good shape. 2012 lines up as a political final to see if the Congressional Democrats have learned anything in their civics and politics class.