Good news for the President and Dems from a new bipartisan survey of 800 LV’s conducted 3/12 and 14 by Public Opinion Strategies in conjunction with Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research for National Public Radio. According to GQR’s executive summary (audio here):

The first bipartisan survey conducted for NPR by Public Opinion Strategies and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner since the 2008 election shows Barack Obama with high overall approval ratings and strong marks on handling the economy, but much more important, Democrats winning the big debates surrounding Obama’s first budget on taxes, energy, health care, and the deficit by significant margins.

Further,

On both energy and health care the Democratic message wins by 53 to 42 percent, a margin nearly twice the Democrats’ 6-point partisan advantage. A majority of voters also side with the Democratic argument on taxes (52 to 43 percent) and the deficit (51 to 45 percent).

And,

President Obama’s approval rating remains strong. Nearly six-in-ten voters (59 percent) approve of the job President Obama is doing while just 35 percent disapprove…Indeed, by a near two-to-one margin, voters think that Obama’s economic recovery package will help rather than hurt the economy (40 to 21 percent with 34 percent believing it will have little impact on the economy) and a strong majority favor the recovery package passed by Congress and signed into law by the President (55 percent favor to 42 percent oppose).

The poll findings indicate that retirement and job security are now the top priorities for LV’s. The survey found that “worries about the declining stock market and investment losses” matches “the number who mention loss of work, pay cuts or the inability to get a job” as the two leading concerns of respondents. For more, detail, see the PDF here.

The growing frenzy over AIG’s insistence on providing $165 million in employee bonuses, mainly to securities traders in the company’s catastrophically disastrous financial products group, reflects an entirely legitimate belief that this scandal will serve as a popular tipping point between widespread unhappiness and marching-in-the-streets popular outrage over government bailouts of the financial sector. The President and Treasury Secretary spent much of the day trying to get in front of this fast-moving train, not only expressing their own outrage but discussing the possibility of ways to block the bonuses without creating a whole new financial crisis.
It’s an example of the visibility of this issue that it completely overshadowed Obama’s rollout of initiatives to help small business secure access to credit, itself an important symbol of the administration’s efforts to help worthy victims of the financial meltdown rather than its perpetrators.
It’s obvious that many people from opposite ends of the ideological spectrum are perpetually angry about corporate bailouts. And as for the general public, similar sentiment is definitely growing, as Mark Blumenthal reports today at Pollster.com:

In the survey released just today by the Pew Research Center, nearly half of Americans say they are “angry” about the government “bailing out banks and financial institutions that made poor financial decisions” (39% say they are bothered but not angry, only 12% are not bothered). Not surprisingly, this anger translates into considerable skepticism about bailouts of banks and financial institutions:
62% say the federal government has spent too much on “large banks and other financial institutions in danger of failing,” 8% say it is spending too little and 21% say the amount is about right (Newsweek [pdf]).
59% oppose “giving aid to U.S. banks and financial companies in danger of failing,” while 39% favor it (USA Today/Gallup).
50% disapprove of “the federal government providing money to banks and other financial institutions to try to help fix the country’s economic problems,” 39% approve (CBS/New York Times [pdf]).
Note that the expression of disapproval is slightly lower on the last question, which justifies assistance as way “to help fix” the economy. Nonetheless, the opposition as measured over the last month is still considerable, even before the latest AIG bonus story.

As this last poll finding cited by Blumenthal illustrates, it’s critically important that the Obama administration be viewed as only being willing to help “banks and other financial institutions” when it’s absolutely necessary to “fix the economy,” while fighting like hell against any further abuses or misuses of taxpayer dollars. And that’s why the administration’s response to the AIG bonus issue, even as it prepares to make another $30 billion infusion of cash into the company, is so dicey but so important.
One theory among progressives, well articulated today by TNR’s Noam Scheiber, is that the administration needs to shift to a more radical strategy of temporary takeovers of troubled banks and financial firms, whether or not it’s billed as “nationalization.”
This approach, of course, will immediately be labeled as “socialism” by conservatives, and that may be why the administration has avoided it. But as the AIG furor has documented, there’s some serious risk now that the President will be viewed as both enabling and deploring financial sector abuses, drawing attention to the waste of taxpayer funds even as he’s promoting more bailout money in the very near future. Even as gifted and popular a communicator as Barack Obama will struggle to maintain that balancing act, given the crossfire he will get with each new revelation of the causes and consequences of Wall Street misconduct.

It’s not exactly news that South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford has decided to stake out the most extreme Hooverite position available on the federal government’s efforts to stop the downward spiral of the economy via fiscal stimulus. He’s been ranting about this on every available national platform for months, and scolding his fellow governors, and his fellows Republicans, for wanting “bailouts.” And it’s also no secret that Sanford would like to run for president in 2012.
But it’s interesting to see the lengths to which Sanford is willing to take his crusade for deflation. His latest stunt was to demand that President Obama give him some sort of super-waiver to devote $700 million in federal stimulus dollars (about a fourth of the state’s total allocation) slated for SC not to their intended purposes, but to a pre-financing of future state debts. Gee, that’s just want you want to do in the middle of a recession, particularly in a state whose unemployment rate just jumped to 10.4%.
Sanford made this completely symbolic demand secure in the knowledge that the people of SC wouldn’t actually have to suffer, since SC congressman Jim Clyburn, knowing his governor, inserted into the federal legislation language allowing state legislatures to apply for the stimulus funds if any governor failed to do so by April 3. And after some hemming and hawing, the SC legislature’s Republican leadership is moving to do just that.
Just to make sure, however, that the whole political world understands there ain’t nobody getting to the Right of Mark Sanford, the governor has chosen to analogize people who want to spend the stimulus money for stimulus to the Zimbabwean supporters of Robert Mugabe, as reported by Politico’s Glenn Thrush:

Sanford told reporters in South Carolina that he still intends to turn down millions in stimulus cash, despite the likelihood of his state legislature accepting the cash — and criticism by House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC) that rejecting any payments would disproportionately harm African American residents.
“What you’re doing is buying into the notion that if we just print some more money that we don’t have, send it to different states – we’ll create jobs… If that’s the case why isn’t Zimbabwe a rich place?”…”why isn’t Zimbabwe just an incredibly prosperous place. Cause they’re printing money they don’t have and sending it around to their different – I don’t know the towns in Zimbabwe but that same logic is being applied there with little effect.”

As Oliver Willis observed: I’m sure him being from South Carolina had nothing to do with this.” And among the things that Mark Sanford is willing to sacrifice to his “principles”–or more likely, to his ambitions to run for president as the King of the Right–you’d have to list not only his own state’s economic conditions, but its longstanding efforts to rid itself of the legacy of the Confederacy and Jim Crow.
As a native of the Palmetto State, let me say: Nice work, governor.

Read Zuraya Tapia-Alfaro’s post today at NDN Blog for a link-rich update on the current politics of immigration.
In the Sunday New York Times, John Harwood weighs the pros and cons of President Obama abandoning the bipartisan consensus strategy and using filibuster-proof “budget reconciliation” rules to achieve his legislative goals for health care reform and energy independence.
The Associated Press has a report on the growing clout of the moderate New Democrat Coalition.
David Sirota’s “Harkin Delivers The Perfect EFCA Message” at OpenLeft is a good read for those seeking a “succinct smackdown” of the conservative argument that EFCA must be stopped to save the economy.
Crisitunity’s ‘Daily Digest’ at Swing State Project reports that Sen Arlen Specter will stay a Republican, according to Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, who tried to persuade him otherwise.
Newsweek financial columnist Daniel Gross makes the case at Slate.com that Obama “should pay no attention to stock prices” in developing his economic reform strategy.
Sheri and Allan Rivlin have an insightful analysis up at Pollster.com today comparing public opinion towards health care reform in 1993 vs. today
WaPo‘s Chris Cillizza reports in ‘The Fix” that Team Obama is ready to launch “an unprecedented attempt to transfer the grass-roots energy built during the presidential campaign into an effort to sway Congress” to pass the Administration’s $3.55 trillion budget.

One of the odder phenomena of contemporary public life is the enthusiasm of conservative gabbers and even elected officials for the idea of “Going Galt:” the suggestion that the oppressed wealthy of America withdraw their vast contributions to the commonweal in protest against the supposedly confiscatory taxes and redistribution of income to the morally depraved underway at the behest of the Obama administration. The allusion is to John Galt, the hero of Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel, Atlas Shrugged, that massive tome that represented the Summa of her rigorously capitalist, atheist, and anti-altruist philosophy of “Objectivism,” which has captured a vast number of adolescents and an impressive number of adults over the last several decades.
I’ve written about this in the context of U.S. Rep. John Campbell’s (R-CA) claim that “we’re living through the scenario” laid out in Atlas Shrugged, wherein the industrial leaders of the West, sick of subsidizing “parasites” and “looters,” drop out, take to the Rockies, and finally, through Galt’s voice–a radio address that took up 90 solid pages in the novel–chastise an economically helpless nation.
But Campbell was just surfing the right-wing zeitgeist, where excited talk about “going Galt” has spread like kudzu. It’s merged, in fact, with the Rick-Santelli-spawned Tea Party “movement” of “productive” people fed up with the poor-and-minority scum who cause the financial collapse by living beyond their means, and who now refuse to shuffle off into the ranks of the homeless and instead are instituting a socialist tyranny.
I don’t need to summarize the “going Galt” literature; that’s already been done quite well by David Weigel of the Washington Independent and Roy Edroso of the Village Voice (the more Galt-sympathetic Stephen Gordon of The Liberty Papers also has a long list of relevant links from various points of view). I also don’t need to analyze the absurdity of well-heeled, not-going-anywhere conservative bloggers and pundits like Michelle Malkin or Helen Smith to encourage others to “go Galt,” or of the self-congratulatory people who think it’s a license to cheat on their taxes, lay off a few underlings, or stop tipping (no, seriously!). Hilzoy has succinctly demolished the clownish and entirely un-Randian nature of these latter-day Galtists.
What I’d like to do as a public service is simply to remind folks tempted to “go Gault” or to gush ignorantly about the subject in blogs or on Fox that they are flirting with a philosophy that is profoundly and expressly hostile to anything that could remotely be described as “conservative.” And before anyone even thinks of offering the “you-don’t-have-to-be-a-fascist-to-love-Ezra-Pound’s-poetry” defense, it’s important to understand that John Galt, Atlas Shrugged, and their creator Ayn Rand represent a remorselessly unified and logical world-view that can’t be sliced and diced into bite-sized portions you can take or leave. Galt’s speech, in particular, which is the supposed inspiration for all this excited Tea Party chatter, was a painstakingly wrought distillation of Rand’s all-encompassing philosophy of Objectivism, which few “conservatives” could stomach, much less endorse. And Rand, if she were alive, would be the first to object to promiscuous use of her words and character, especially by political “conservatives,” whom she largely despised as life-hating slaves to an imaginary God, or as unprincipled demagogues little better in practice than all the other “collectivists.”
The following are a sprinkling of quotes from Rand’s work that ought to make any self-conscious conservative think twice about scribbing “Who is John Galt?” on the nearest whiteboard.

Read more…

I’ve done a couple of posts (here and here) on Stan Greenberg’s fascinating new book, Dispatches From the War Room–enough, I hope, to interest folks in reading Stan’s unique memoir in its entirety.
But I’d be remiss in failing to write a few notes about the central issue of Dispatches: the relationship between public opinion and political strategy, and beyond that, with political leadership.
Throughout the book, Stan challenges the common stereotype that public opinion research ruins political leaders by making them tactical, reactive, and basically gutless. That may be true with some leaders relying on some strategists and pollsters, he acknowledges, but in the right hands knowing public opinion is essential to principled leadership, and to actual change. As he puts it in a post at Pollster.com:

I come out of this believing that strong political leaders build a special bond with people, rather than flying in the face of it. Strong leadership is not defying the public, but engaging with it — using support to get things done; mobilizing the public, educating the public on challenges and goals and working to shift opinion. I look at the example of Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt who were both intensely solicitous of public opinion. Engaging with the public was a precondition for boldness. That contrasts with Bush and Cheney who thought they were strong because they pursued bold policies, never guided by polls and focus groups, but I think we can look now at the consequences. President Obama’s special bond with people is part of his leadership but he will struggle like these leaders to keep people with him and enhance his chances of success. That makes for stronger and more democratic leadership and produce greater civic engagement.

This crucial distinction between the proper and improper role of public opinion research by political leaders comes out most clearly in the chapter of Dispatches about Ehud Barak. In one of the most emotional passages in the entire book, Stan defends himself against charges that he led Barak to abandon negotiations with Syria based on adverse poll results. But he then goes on to explain how in the midst of the famously intense negotiations with the Palestinians over a proposed “final status” settlement, Barak used constant polling not to determine his negotiating stance, but to measure his relative success in bringing Israelis along with him in his astoundingly bold course of action. And to Stan’s own surprise, public opinion in Israel moved significantly on issues long thought to be carved in stone. In the end, Stan suggests, it was the inability of Palestinian leaders even to attempt a similar feat of leadership and public education in their own community that doomed the whole enterprise.
To put it another way, political leaders who do what they are so often urged to do, and eschew public opinion research in order to avoid the temptation of following rather than leading, are actually denying themselves an essential tool for leadership: the ability to intelligently engage the public. To cite a prosaic parallel, those who tell politicians not to use polls are much like the baseball “traditionalists” who have spent much of the last three decades fighting the use of sophisticated statistical methods in evaluating the game and its players. As the baseball pioneer Bill James once observed, people who don’t want more information are almost certainly relying on assumptions and stereotypes that are no less imprisoning than “statistics.” It’s the same with public opinion research. Those who don’t want to know what the public thinks probably assume they already know without asking, or, worse yet, like Bush and Cheney, don’t really care. Wilfull Ignorance or arrogant indifference isn’t really a better option than knowledge when it comes to political leadership in a democracy.
I should also mention a corollary of this approach to public opinion that helps explain the title of Stan’s book: the War Room. The whole idea of a campaign War Room, which originated in the 1992 Clinton campaign, was to foster a highly integrated message and field operation with (literally) no walls. From the point of view of the campaign pollster, that meant sharing all the public opinion research, good or bad, conclusive or inconclusive, with everyone else, as part of an ongoing and highly collaborative effort. Stan doesn’t come right out and say it, but the War Room approach also helped insure that no one, and certainly not the pollster, was given an opportunity to become a backstairs Mephistopheles tempting the candidate to trim his or her sails and abandon the broader strategy and the broader “mission” in search of short-term advantage.
Thus this “pollster’s memoir” actually serves as a very rich and entertaining meditation on the nature of leadership in a democracy–particularly progressive leadership at a time when the public is demanding change. That’s why Dispatches, for all its value as recent history, is especially relevant for progressives right now.

More and more, the Republican Party seems to be chasing its own tail under the direction of its new national chairman, Michael Steele. And this week, the putative revolt against Steele transcended the grumbling about slow staff appointments and his clumsy dance with Rush Limbaugh, and became openly ideological, at a time when the GOP’s ideological rigidity seems to have reached an all-time high. As Ben Smith explained yesterday at Politico:

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele’s series of gaffes turned into something more serious Thursday, as leaders of a pillar of the GOP—the anti-abortion movement—shifted into open revolt over comments in an interview with the men’s magazine GQ.
Steele called abortion an “individual choice” and opposed a constitutional ban on abortion in the Feb. 24 interview, which appeared online Wednesday night. He echoed the language of the abortion rights movement and appeared to contradict his own heated assertions during his campaign for chairman that he is a committed soldier in the anti-abortion movement.
While he issued a statement Thursday affirming his opposition to abortion and his support for a constitutional amendment banning it, the damage appeared to be done as leading social conservatives publicly attacked the embattled chairman.

Some of the criticism came pretty close to the line that separates more-in-sorrow-than-anger rebukes from get-thee-behind-me-Satan anathemas. Mike Huckabee, for example, isn’t satisfied with Steele’s apologies for his heretical comments on abortion:

For Chairman Steele to even infer that taking a life is totally left up to the individual is not only a reversal of Republican policy and principle, but it’s a violation of the most basic of human rights–the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. His statement today helps, but doesn’t explain why he would ever say what he did in the first place.

And Smith quotes several other social conservative activists who clearly would like to drop Steele from the nearest cliff:

“Michael Steele has just walked away from the Reaganesque position of strong moral clarity on abortion to personify why the Republican Party continues to be in a ‘free fall’,” said another activist, Jenn Giroux, the executive director of the conservative group Women Influencing the Nation. “It is amazing that he cannot see and learn from the fact that Sarah Palin’s position on abortion and her unapologetic defense of every conceived child drew crowds by the thousands on that issue alone.”

Trouble is, of course, that dumping Steele as RNC chairman isn’t a very easy or appetizing prospect, either. The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza today offers “Five Reasons Why Steele Stays.” To boil them down: (1) The last thing the GOP needs now is more chaos at the top; (2) Dumping the first African-American RNC chairman so quickly would constitute “symbolic suicide;” (3) There’s no obvious successor; (4) Removing an RNC chairman is procedurally tricky; and (5) Steele is finally getting things moving again at the RNC.
That all makes sense, though Republicans could dragoon some generally acceptable elected official into chairing the RNC, at least as a figurehead, to minimize the damage if they want to show Steele the door. My guess is that Steele stays, but with a muzzle firmly attached to his face. And while that might keep him out of the newspapers and out of trouble, someone who never gets noticed is not exactly what you want these days in a national party chairman.

You’d sort of think that Citigroup, perhaps the biggest public assistance recipient in history ($50 billion or so and counting), would be a little careful about meddling in politics right now. Logical, but apparently wrong.
First came the news that Citi was downgrading its rating of Wal-Mart’s stock on grounds that the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA)–which was just reintroduced in Congress this week–might pass and damage the retail giant’s profits. Then it transpired that the same analyst who pulled that bizarre scare-tactic stunt, one Deborah Weinswig, actively participated in a conference call among EFCA opponents to strategerize about defeating the infamous socialist legislation that would let a majority of employees in a workplace form union bargaining units without formal NLRB elections.
As explained by Sam Stein at HuffPo, the conference call was organized by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, represented by Gordon Spencer, who explained its highly nuanced position on EFCA as follows:

“From the Chamber’s perspective, and I would say probably from the whole business community’s perspective, there are really no amendments you could make to this bill that would make it acceptable.”

So much for the spirit of compromise and bipartisanship.
In any event, the hysteria level among business lobbyists about EFCA is very high, strange as that may seem at a time when you would think they have a lot of bigger fish to fry.
As for Ms. Weinswig and Citi’s involvement in the anti-EFCA cabal, they aren’t the only corporate welfare loafers who think it’s okay to beg the Obama administration and a Democratic Congress for money while lobbying against legislation they support. According to Stein in an earlier article, Bank of America hosted its own anti-EFCA conference call three days after receiving a $25 billion subsidy from the feds.
It’s unclear at this point if EFCA has the votes to get through the Senate. But even if it does, and without the sort of amendments that the Chamber is already ruling out, the only way it would affect the business community is if it made it a bit easier for workers to organize unions. If the position of the anti-EFCA crowd is that unions are so intolerable that they ought to be outlawed, then they should come right out and say so without all the crocodile tears about preserving the sacred right of workers to vote against unionization via secret ballots after long, employer-dominated campaigns. But those who are accepting vast public subsidies to stay in business ought to have the decency to stay out of lobbying efforts based on the idea that corporate America should be allowed to do whatever it damn pleases, or they’ll plunge us all into penury.

The Center for American Progress has released two very meaty new studies on progressive trends in the American electorate.
The first, by TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira, is entitled “New Progressive America,” and documents “twenty years of demographic, geographic, and attitudinal changes across the country” that “herald a new progressive majority.” Texeira’s basic conclusion is:

At this point in our history, progressive arguments combined with the continuing demographic and geographic changes are tilting our country in a progressive direction–trends that should take America down a very different path than has been traveled in the last eight years.

The fundamental question Teixeira asks in this study is how the country moved from a 53-46 Republican victory in the 1988 presidential election to a 53-46 Democratic victory in 2008.
In terms of demographics, the study focuses on pro-Democratic shifts in the population, especially an 11 point increase in the minority percentage share of voters in presidential electionsa 4 point increase in the percentage of voters who are white college graduates, and a 15 point drop in the percentage of voters who are non-college-educated whites. The first two groups have become solidly pro-Democratic, and while Democrats made small gains in the “white working class vote” between 2004 and 2008, this remains the most conservative major voting demographic.
Other pro-Democratic demographic trends include the impressively progressive outlook of Milennials (those born after 1978), which are adding 4.5 million adults to the voting pool every year, and the growing tilt of professionals, who are “now the most progressive occupational group.” Religious diversity, or more specifically “rapid increases among the unaffiliated”–is another pro-Democratic factor.
In terms of geography, Democrats have become dominant in most major metropolitan areas, primarily because they have made vast improvements since 1988 in fast-growing suburbs.
Texeira also offers detailed analysis of trends in nine states usually thought of as “swing states”: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Colorado, Nevada, Ohio, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina and Indiana. All these states were carried by George H.W. Bush in 1988 and by Barack Obama in 2008.
The second big CAP study, by John Halpin and Karl Agne, is entitled “State of American Political Ideology, 2009.” Using new definitional categories and a detailed examination of voters’ actual views, this study challenges the static impression of ideological positioning in the electorate that has been produced by the many surveys that simply ask voters whether they consider themselves “liberals, moderates or conservatives” (the basis of all that “center-right nation” talk after the last elections).
Its basic conclusion is:

After nearly three decades of public acceptance of the Reagan-Bush model of conservatism–limited government, tax cuts, traditional values, and military strength–a broad and deep cross-section of the American public now holds markedly progressive attitudes about government and society.

In terms of ideological self-identification, the study deployed a five-part scale that adds “libertarian” and “progressive” to the usual three-part menu. This approach showed 34% of voters self-identifying as conservatives, 29% as moderates, 15 percent as liberals, 16 percent as progressives, and 2% as libertarians. Follow-up questions designed to identify the leanings of moderates divided the electorate into 47% who were or who leaned liberal or progressive, and 48% who were or who leaned conservative or libertarian.
But when Halpin and Agne used 40 specific ideological statements to probe beneath self-identification, a different picture emerged:

On the domestic front, after years of supply-side tax cuts, support for corporations (especially extractive oil and mining companies), and deregulation of the economy, large percentages of Americans increasingly favor progressive ideas centered on: sustainable lifestyles and green energy; public investment in education, infrastructure, and science; financial support for the poor, elderly, and sick; regulation of business to protect workers and consumers; and guaranteed affordable health coverage for every American. On the international front, the legacy of the Bush years has yielded to an American public far more interested in restoring the country’s image abroad, fighting climate change, and pursuing security through diplomacy, alliances, and international institutions than in the continued pursuit of national objectives through the sole projection of military might.
Approximately two-thirds of Americans—reaching to 70 percent to 80 percent on some measures—agree with progressive ideas in each of these domestic and global areas.

Both these studies supply extensive details supporting the top-line findings. But the big news is that the trends–both demographic and ideological, and ultimately partisan–so evident in November of 2008 are truly trends, not emphemeral events. And while the success of President Obama’s and the Democratic Congress’ agenda will obviously have a major impact on what happens in 2010 or 2012, we Democrats do, finally, appear to have the wind at our backs.

The current (3/18) issue of The New Republic sports a nifty ’30s-style prole art cover and the articles are organized around the theme “Obama’s New Deal.” Inside, TNR features an interesting discussion of one of the more important grand strategy choices Obama must make half way through the first hundred days — focusing his agenda, with TDS co-editor William Galston offering a critique of “Barack’s Too Long Wish List,” and a response by TNR’s Jonathan Cohn, “The Case for Presidential Multi-Tasking.” A couple of nut graphs from Galston:

Roosevelt organized his first term around two principles that the Obama administration would do well to ponder. First, he kept his (and the country’s) attention firmly fixed on a single task: ending the crisis of confidence and restarting economic activity. While he was more sensitive than previous presidents to the links among seemingly disparate issues, these interconnections in his view did not warrant trying to move on all fronts at once. The people and the Congress had to be brought along with an agenda and a narrative that they could understand.
Second, although FDR moved quickly starting on inauguration day, he never believed that his capacity to legislate would wane after his first year in office. On the contrary, he used early momentum to build popular support, yielding further congressional gains in 1934 and a massive landslide in 1936. The creative period of the New Deal continued until Roosevelt overreached in 1937 with his ill-considered proposal to reorganize (or as his detractors put it, “pack”) the Supreme Court.

And a teaser from Cohn:

…Obama’s multi-faceted strategy has certain clear advantages. For one thing, it keeps the right wing unsettled. With so many initiatives going forward, there’s no chance for conservatives to coalesce in opposition to any one issue. Instead of the entire conservative movement hammering away in unison, you have some of them going after health care, some of them going after earmarks, some of them going after cap-and-trade, and so on. In that sort of environment, few attacks resonate because they don’tt get the sustained attention they need.
The converse is true, of course; Obama isn’t giving the affirmative case sustained attention, either. But if neither side can rally its forces, then the most likely result would seem to be status quo politics. And status quo politics right now, I would argue, favors the party that just won a landslide presidential election while building up huge congressional majorities.

An interesting dialogue, and the choices about focus to be made in the weeks ahead may well determine the success of the President — and his party.