truesee's Blog

Republican leader reiterates hope for Obama to be one-term president

November 4th, 2010

8:53 pm PT

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell held a press conference Thursday once again saying he wanted to make sure President Barack Obama would be a one-term president. This comes a day after the president called for the parties to work together.Photo: Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

One day after President Barack Obama held a press conference to say he hoped Republicans and Democrats could work together, a top Republican official once again said that would not happen.

A week before the midterm elections, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Republicans’ No. 1 priority was to make President Obama a one-term president. Well, on Thursday he said the same thing again. Instead of saying he was willing to work with Democrats to solve the problems this country faces including high unemployment, increasing deficits and an economy that is sputtering along in its recovery, he said Obama needed to move toward the right or he would get no compromise.

“Over the past week, some have said it was indelicate of me to suggest that our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term in office,” McConnell said in his press conference. “But the fact is, if our primary legislative goals are to repeal and replace the health spending bill; to end the bailouts; cut spending; and shrink the size and scope of government, the only way to do all these things is to put someone in the White House who won’t veto any of these things.”

He said he wanted President Obama to be defeated in 2012 because Republicans “can’t plan” on the White House listening to the American people and cooperating on some of his party’s top political priorities – although him thinking the American people specifically want conservative ideas over liberal or moderate ideas is a little out of touch and not listening to the American people either.

McConnell said he wanted the Senate – which is still Democratically controlled – to vote multiple times on repealing the new health care law. Because he did not expect President Obama to sign a repeal though, he wanted to work with the House on denying funding for its implementation, he said.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pushed back against McConnell’s suggestions by pleading with him to stop the partisanship and work together because that was what the American people wanted in order to get the country moving again.

“It means that we are going to have to work together, and anyone who tries to take more out of that, I think there’ll be a big mistake,” Reid said. “It’s not going to be our way or the highway. It’s not going to be their way or the highway. It has to be our way to get us down the road to success.”

Independent thoughts

What the American people need and want is for this economy to get moving again, for the unemployment rate to go down and for them to know kids will have a better chance at success than previous generations.

People can argue over Obama’s policy ideas and more often than not liberals and Democrats will say they were necessary to keep this country from going into a second Great Depression. Conservatives and Republicans will say the policies were a waste and have not helped – clearly ignoring and not wanting to admit the fact that before the stimulus this country was losing 700,000 jobs a month and after the stimulus once money started trickling through the economy the private sector has seen job growth every month for almost a year.

The solutions then fall with the independent voter – remember those people who are moderate thinkers and who do not vote always with the Democrats or always with the Republicans, but with the candidate they think will best serve this country. Those voters, although they might not like how Democrats handled things, do not necessarily like how Republicans handle things either. Not all independent voters went against the Democrats for the same reasons. Some might have said Democrats did too much while others might have said Democrats did too little.

That means McConnell should not take the Republicans regaining the House and almost regaining the Senate as a sign voters full-heartedly agree with their agenda. For him to suggest President Obama needs to go with their ideas or they will not compromise is not what is best for this country.

Fight for principles

Just as Republicans have said they will not compromise on their principles if they think policies are harmful, President Obama and the Democrats should do the same. It is admirable President Obama wants to continue trying to compromise and work together with Republicans, but if he is going to keep running into complete opposition then he needs to stick with his principles and what he believes is correct as well. After hearing McConnell’s message yet again, most in the Democratic base would say OK it is absolutely time to fight.

President Obama needs to use McConnell’s words and go on the offensive. Not in a year, not months and weeks before the 2012 election, but now. McConnell has effectively said he is not going to do what is in the best interest of the American people for these next two years just because he wants the Republicans to get control of the White House.

President Obama failed to communicate his policies these past two years and how they were beneficial for the American people not just in the short term but also in the long term. He only started to go on the offensive and get his base enthusiastic in the summer but by then the damage had been done. Voters want this economy to get moving again and for the parties to work together, but if McConnell and the Republicans’ single most important thing is for President Obama to be a one-term president then President Obama needs to get out there and communicate to the American people now that the Republicans do not want this country to succeed and move out of this economic mess, they just want him to fail

Read more: http://articles.lancasteronline.com/local/4/307822#ixzz14Ng4Ad36

http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/brookline/2010/11/brookline_funeral_home_must_ex_3.html?p1=News_links

Domino's Pizza to pay $31,000 for one hour of work

The Associated Press • November 4, 2010

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/11/04/qantas.pilot/index.html?hpt=C1

Obama’s turn to change

What is the most damaging — Democrats losing control in the House, the GOP falling short of control in the Senate, the decimated ranks of centrist and conservative Democrats, the coming investigations, the loss of 19 state legislatures to the Republicans, who will now have a lock on redistricting, or the flight of independents, women and suburban voters to the GOP? For President Obama, preparing a reelection campaign for 2012, it would be hard to imagine a worse outcome to the 2010 midterm elections. 

Democrats have now vacated the South and the Midwest, and Republicans have reclaimed territory Obama won in 2008, including Pennsylvania, Florida, Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. The election shrank the Obama coalition that won in 2008, with women, independents, Roman Catholics and suburban voters all trending away from Democrats. Seniors showed up in high numbers, and a majority of them voted for Republicans. 

Rural areas represented by Blue Dog Democrats were wiped out, making them much harder for Obama to win in 2012. Moreover, the loss of those conservative Democrats, combined with a GOP takeover, will make Democrats remaining in Congress — liberals in safe, mostly urban seats — likely even tougher on Obama and more confrontational in the next two years. 

Polls continue to confirm that what began as a problem for Obama in his primary battle against Hillary Clinton in 2008 — the lack of support among working-class white voters — has only grown worse. A recent Associated Press-GfK poll found that white voters without four-year college degrees now support Republicans by 22 points, twice the margin they did in the 2006 and 2008 elections. 

A majority of voters oppose the healthcare reform law and punished Democrats who supported it. Republicans in Congress plan to de-fund as much as they can of the law, and any Democrats remaining from swing districts will be inclined to join Republicans to support at least some, if not all, of the rescissions.

Beyond joining with Republicans to pass spending cuts, and additional tax cuts, education reform is likely the only issue fellow Democrats would like to see President Obama push in 2011. Any ideas on energy reform that have already been rejected not only by Republicans but by Democrats, even when they had more votes, are out of the question — just ask Sens. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), Jim Webb (D-Va.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) and other Democrats up for reelection in 2012. Immigration reform that couples earned legalization with border security? Forget it. 

Finally, the 2010 midterms showed that the flood of outside money is only just beginning. After succeeding in spending more than $50 million on the midterm elections in 2010, conservative groups that harnessed the power of deep pockets supporting Republicans with the ability to raise funds in secret plan to aim their firepower at the presidential election in 2012. Obama — who has pushed for the passage of the Disclose Act to require more transparency — will find himself drowning, at a severe financial disadvantage should he not reverse direction so that groups on the Democratic side can hit up their own allies for large donations as well. 

With forces such as these at play, the White House can no longer rely on the hope that the Republicans nominate a weak candidate and the economy improves. President Obama can’t get reelected campaigning on college campuses. He will have to realize that the voters are asking him for a change, but this time they don’t want the country to change, they want him to change. To do that he must adjust, or he will lose.

Stoddard is an associate editor of The Hill.

Free coffee Fridays at Burger King

Associated Press

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/11/04/palin-celebrates-victories-in-web-video/

A young Democratic president comes into office with big ambitions, gets knocked back on his heels by Republicans in the mid-term elections, then makes some deft moves to recapture the center and waltzes to re-election two years later.

It sounds easy enough. And after Tuesday night’s humiliation, it must sound tempting to President Barack Obama and his battered political team. Some commentators have even suggested that losing control of the House might be a blessing in disguise for Obama’s prospects in 2012.

But the widespread speculation that what Obama needs to do now is simply “pull a Clinton”—replicating Bill Clinton’s comeback after being trounced by Newt Gingrich in 1994—grossly underestimates the challenge that Obama faces, even if he chooses to draw on a Clinton example he once disdained.

Clinton’s revival was hardly an easy process. It was a searing experience for him and his inner circle at both the personal and political levels. It came only after a stark—and intensely humbling—effort by Clinton to overhaul his White House team, recalibrate his ideological ambitions, and rethink his basic assumptions of how to be an effective president.

And even then the outcome was a tenuous thing. Clinton caught a series of lucky breaks from events and from his own enemies. And the comeback only won him 49 percent of the vote: The man widely regarded as one of the most talented Democratic politicians of modern history never commanded a majority in a national election.

The evidence is mixed about how relevant Obama finds the Clinton example. Obama recently told the New York Times that he was reading a book about Clinton, including his dire circumstances in 1994. But the Washington Post recently quoted a “senior White House official” saying archly, “This president is not like that president.” It’s a sentiment Obama aides have often expressed, often with undisguised scorn, over the past three years.

One Clinton veteran, former White House adviser Doug Sosnik, said Obama allies should disabuse themselves of the fantasy that the Tuesday results are a blessing in disguise: “The single greatest luxury you have in politics is the ability to control your own destiny.” Obama has now sacrificed some of that ability to Republicans.

In any event, there are a number of reasons why “pulling a Clinton” is a more formidable undertaking than even many political analysts and strategists imagine:

The circular firing squad.

Clinton now is generally recalled fondly among most Democrats, and also regarded as a supremely effective politician. But in 1995, when he began a series of policy and messaging moves to move to the center—known as “triangulation” by his then-consultant Dick Morris—Clinton faced a resentful and bitterly divided party.

After he announced his support for a balanced budget, it was easy for reporters to fill up a notebook on Capitol Hill with hostile quotes from Democrats calling Clinton a quisling, especially after they learned he was being advised by a Republican consultant. Rep. Patricia Schroeder of Colorado said Republicans were playing with the president “like a kitten with a string.” Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin jeered, “I think most of us learned some time ago, if you don’t like the president’s position on a particular issue, you simply need to wait a few weeks.”

During the midst of a troubled war in Afghanistan and more polarized politics generally, Obama has a tougher challenge keeping his party unified and any moves that liberals interpreted as abandoning them for reasons of political expediency would probably earn a much harsher reaction than Clinton received.

Change is hard

Clinton’s political reassessment was carried out in tandem with an exceptionally painful personal reappraisal by both him and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. Days after the election, she broke down in tears in a conversation with Morris, confessing: “I don’t know which direction is up or down. Everything I thought was right was wrong.”

The president himself was so disoriented he looked everywhere for guidance. At Camp David, he played host to self-help gurus like Stephen Covey (“The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”) or Anthony Robbins (“Awaken the Giant Within”), whose late-night infomercials advised that people could train themselves to walk across hot coals. But he also opened his West Wing operation to talented outsiders who weren’t intimates or veterans of his campaign like then-chief of staff Leon Panetta.

Some of Clinton’s advice-seeking was eccentric, but it revealed a willingness to listen and an instinct for brutal self-critique that, at least to date, has hardly been Obama’s signature.

Out with the old

Obama advisers who suggest that he study the Clinton example do so at their peril. One of the first things Clinton did upon concluding that he needed to change was to change the people around him.

Like Obama, Clinton was initially surrounded with an exceptionally talented but sometimes brash group of advisers, who felt a sense of ownership of his presidency. They soon learned that they were tenants, not owners.

Without explaining his actions even to the people affected, Clinton simply dropped many of his advisers, such as pollster Stan Greenberg. George Stephanopoulos for months found himself coldly on the outs, fighting to get in meetings. One-time adviser Paul Begala left Washington for Texas rather than try to fight for influence with people he loathed like Morris. Clinton became weepy as he parted ways with people with whom he felt an early bond, like press secretary Dee Dee Myers.

“We hired too many young people in this White House who are smart but not wise,” Clinton told Stephanopoulos, as recounted in the latter’s memoir.

Some of the Washington operatives who are urging Obama to pattern his recovery after Clinton are also rooting for a West Wing shake-up. Obama has shown a willingness to change personnel like economic adviser Larry Summers or national security adviser Jim Jones, but he has not indicated that he thinks change is needed among aides he is more personally close to. If he eventually decides his political revival depends on this, the result may or may not be effective but almost certainly will be messy and full of Washington recriminations.

First principles

As bumpy as Clinton’s recovery was, he had an advantage. For the most part, he was returning in 1995 to a core set of values that had become obscured amid the clamor of his first two years in office.

Clinton was a centrist Democratic governor who learned in Arkansas how to navigate a conservative political environment. His speeches from the triangulation period may have seemed like lurches to the center compared to 1993, but for the most part they were lurches back to the rhetoric he had used when he began his bid for the presidency in 1991.

Some of Clinton’s moves from the period of his recovery were easy to mock, such as allowing Morris to poll where to take the family vacation and giving speeches on such non-traditional presidential topics as support for school uniforms. But these seemingly trivial moves had a serious purpose. They were part of a sustained effort to reestablish Clinton’s connection with middle-class values and concerns. Almost every day brought a new speech or new presidential directive designed to show that he could still be a robust leader even without a legislative majority behind him.

Obama, who ran for president mostly on the strength of his biography and personal qualities, does not have the same set of clear first principles to guide his political rehabilitation. And he and his aides have been vocally critical of what they regard as Clinton’s instinct for “small-bore” politics. For the Obama team to adapt Clinton political techniques would require a radical shift in their own assumptions about how to use the power of the presidency.

Luck matters

Clinton’s comeback benefited immeasurably from some well-timed bounces.

Ghoulish as it is to contemplate, the reality is he and his political team took advantage of the horror of the 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City to invite people to reassess him as commander in chief. The incident also put the most extreme anti-government rhetoric of Washington conservatives in a menacing light.

In Obama’s case, by contrast, no one during an age of terrorism is unaware that he is commander in chief—but issues of national security are much more contentious than in the 1990s.

Clinton was most fortunate of all that his main antagonist among the Republicans was a flamboyant and undisciplined figure like Newt Gingrich, who announced modestly, “I think I am a transformational figure.” When Gingrich whined that Clinton had made him exit from the back of Air Force One rather than invite him upfront for budget negotiations, the New York Daily News depicted him on the cover as an infant in diapers holding a baby rattle.

Obama has no reason to suppose that such stolid and conventional politicians as John Boehner, the presumptive next House speaker, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell will present him with quite the same opportunities to draw politically winning contrasts.

This points to what may be the most important reason it will be hard for Obama to easily draw upon the Clinton lessons. To this day, there is considerable debate even among Clinton aides themselves what those lessons are.

People like pollster Mark Penn, a centrist and one-time Morris ally, believe the essential ingredient was Clinton reclaiming the center through such steps as endorsing a balanced budget and signing welfare reform—as a way of showing that he shared the values of swing voters. People like Begala, James Carville, and Stephanopoulos believe the more important element was Clinton’s willingness to show spine during the budget showdown with Republicans, in which the GOP took the blame for two federal government shutdowns.

Tom Freedman, a Clinton 1996 campaign hand who remains an adviser, said both conciliation and conflict are important—so long as a president keeps the conflict on favorable political and policy terrain.

"The three keys: get the policy right, welcome cooperation, but be on high ground for a possible fight and be ready to win," Freedman said.

So, despite the obstacles, is the Clinton experience relevant to Obama? Veterans of that White House say it is—within limits.

“I don’t think it’s a perfect match, but I think it has some relevance,” said Don Baer, a former White House communications director. The most important similarity is Obama’s need to show he can be “the nation’s leader even beyond what [he] can do with Congress,” where he and Republicans aren’t likely to allow many legislative victories.

“It took a long time over many months, with lots of trial and error, and lots of internal battling, to get to something that was eventually successful,” Baer said.

As Sosnik sees it, what Obama must recover from 2008—more important than the debate over whether he should be more liberal or more centrist—is the widespread belief that he represents a clean break from what many voters regard as a broken political culture: “What’s most important for him is to keep himself separated from the same-old, same-old in Washington.”

John F. Harris, POLITICO's editor in chief, is author of "THE SURVIVOR: Bill Clinton in the White House."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/11/03/fiorehowto.DTL

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/11/03/fiorehowto.DTL

You think ’10 was tough? Check out ’12

 

For the first time in two cycles, Democrats will have more seats up for grabs than the Republicans, and the party could see its shrunken majority erased altogether.

Several of the senators up for reelection came in on the 2006 Democratic wave, when the party picked up six GOP seats and won control of the chamber. 

Sens. Bob Casey Jr. (D-Pa.), Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Jim Webb (D-Va.) defeated GOP incumbents that year but will have to win reelection in 2012.

And two senators who won special elections Tuesday, Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), will face voters again in two years.

 Democrats lost at least six Senate seats Tuesday, with results in Washington and Alaska undetermined as of press time, but they retained control.

That could change in two years, when Democrats have 21 seats up for grabs, compared to only 10 for Republicans. Also up for reelection are Sens. Joe Lieberman (Conn.) and Bernie Sanders (Vt.), the two Independents who caucus with Democrats — meaning the party has a total of 23 seats to defend.

“The numbers are really working against them, no question about it,” said Jennifer Duffy, a senior Senate analyst at The Cook Political Report. “It will come down to what it always comes down to: retirements and recruiting.”

Many of those Democratic seats up next cycle are in purple or red states, including those of McCaskill, Manchin, Tester, Webb and Sens. Kent Conrad (N.D.), Ben Nelson (Neb.) and Bill Nelson (Fla.).

Webb saw several House Democrats in his state lose reelection Tuesday, and McCaskill saw her party lose a Senate pickup opportunity when Roy Blunt (R) won retiring Sen. Kit Bond’s (R-Mo.) seat.

Some senators could opt to retire in 2012. Among those observers will be watching are Ben Nelson and Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.).Nelson is expected to face a difficult race, and Kohl saw his home-state colleague, Sen. Russ Feingold (D), lose on Tuesday.

Casey and Conrad also saw Democratic colleagues lose in their home states on Tuesday. And Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who’s up in 2012, watched fellow California Democrat Barbara Boxer fend off a tough challenge from the GOP. 

“It is certainly true that the landscape will be tilted in 2012 in terms of the seats at risk,” said Stuart Rothenberg, editor and publisher of The Rothenberg Political Report. “[Democrats] will be defending more seats, so they could have more losses. On the other hand, it depends on the mood of the public.”

 The other Democratic incumbents up next cycle are Daniel Akaka (Hawaii), Tom Carper (Del.), Jeff Bingaman (N.M.), Maria Cantwell (Wash.), Ben Cardin (Md.), Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Robert Menendez (N.J.) and Debbie Stabenow (Mich.).

 The 10 GOP senators facing reelection are John Barrasso (Wyo.), Scott Brown (Mass.), Bob Corker (Tenn.), John Ensign (Nev.), Orrin Hatch (Utah), Kay Bailey Hutchison (Texas), Jon Kyl (Ariz.), Richard Lugar (Ind.), Olympia Snowe (Maine) and Roger Wicker (Miss.). 

Of that list, the only senator who could be considered in a “dangerous” position is Brown, who represents Massachusetts, a blue state.

Hutchison could retire. She ran for Texas governor in 2010 but lost in the GOP primary. At the time, Hutchison hinted she could resign her seat; she never committed to running again in 2012.

Ensign could leave the Senate if he faces charges stemming from the fallout of an affair he had with a former staffer.

An unknown factor for the Republicans is the Tea Party. The grassroots movement took down several party favorites in GOP primaries this year and has threatened to do the same next cycle.

Already, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), a Tea Party favorite, has said he’d consider challenging Hatch in the 2012 GOP primary.

Additionally, Republicans could always be doomed on pocketbook issues. If the economy rebounds, President Obama could be credited in the eyes of some voters. If it stays sluggish, voters could blame the GOP.

The top three Senate Democrats launched a strategy on that front on Wednesday, putting Republicans on notice that they expected cooperation now that the minority party is more powerful.

 “We have made the message very clear that we want to work with Republicans,” said Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). “If they’re unwilling to work with us, there’s not a thing we can do about that, but the American people can see that like a very slow curveball.”

Curtis Gans, director of the Center for the Study of the American Electorate at American University, notes that the Republican revolution of 1994, ushered in by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.), dealt a major blow to President Clinton — though Clinton won reelection in 1996.

“My thesis is, we’re going to have a miserable two years, but this time not all the blame will go to the president,” Gans said. “Nobody knows what the climate will be in 2012.”

 Rothenberg agreed, saying much depends on the messaging and issues that will dominate the political landscape over the next two years.

 “There’s probably not likely to be as stark of a choice in 2012 as this year — however, it’s also true that most people think the president’s party runs things. It’s not as easy for Democrats to just say, ‘They share responsibility, too.’ ”

Dems find common ground: It's the White House's fault
Ben Smith
November 3, 2010 06:21 PM EDT

The bodies aren’t even cold yet in the House, but the Democratic Party has already opened up a bitter debate over who’s to blame.

The party’s bloodied moderates Wednesday released two years of pent-up anger at a party leadership they viewed as blind to their needs and deaf to the messages of voters who never asked for President Barack Obama’s ambitious first-term agenda.

Liberals pushed back hard: The problem, they say, was those undisciplined moderates, who won delays, unsightly compromises and a muddled message from a too-accommodating administration.

Yet a third group of Democratic politicians and operatives blamed not policy but a failed sales job for the party’s woes.

One thing all sides agree on: The White House blew it.

“It is clear that Democrats over-interpreted our mandate. Talk of a ‘political realignment’ and a ‘new progressive era’ proved wishful thinking,” the retiring Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh wrote in a New York Times op-ed posted online as the scope of last night’s losses became clear.

Bayh called the decision to focus on health care in a bad economy “overreach."

“We were too deferential to our most zealous supporters,” he wrote.

Bayh spoke for a wing of the party that had been, before the election, reluctant to criticize Obama’s management of the government, but which on Wednesday spoke loudly.

“Fundamentally, Democrats lost the middle,” the president of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, Ed Gresser, said Wednesday.

“The party's apparent lack of interest in a long-term path away from emergency stimulus toward fiscal balance revived a pre-Clinton reputation for carefree attitudes toward public money.”

And Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, a proponent of bipartisanship if not always a policy centrist, lamented “missed opportunities in the last two years” in terms of bipartisan initiatives from the White House, particularly on tax policy.

But if the center is speaking loudly, it speaks from a narrower platform. The nature of a wave is to shear off moderate members in swing districts, and the House lost half of its Blue Dog Caucus. And liberals were quick to note that Bayh could have chosen to stay in the Senate, rather than offering advice from the sidelines.

“Evan Bayh for the sake of being a patriot and for the sake of being a Democrat should have stayed in – he would have protected us,” Gerry McEntee, the president of the giant public workers union AFSCME – a key backer of Democrats this year – told POLITICO.

McEntee said he blamed both the White House and congressional Republicans for failing to act more aggressively to create jobs.

“I don’t think that there was enough effort – and may be there just wasn’t enough knowledge, or maybe there wasn’t enough support in the Congress to really truly attack this problem of jobs,” he said. “You can talk about the tea party, you can talk about the coffee party, you can talk about all kinds of things, but you’ve got to talk about jobs.”

Others said Obama had allowed moderates to distract and muddle his message.

“What killed us was the conservative [Democrats] dragging health care out too long,” said another labor leader Wednesday.

“Democrats who decided to play ball with corporate interests found themselves friendless,” said a spokeswoman for MoveOn.org, Ilyse Hogue, citing Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) and other defeated moderates while making the case for a purer, more confrontational party. “Claiming to support Democratic principles while quietly pandering to corporate interests is no longer a winning political strategy,” she said.

The criticism from within the Democratic Party may make some of Obama's goals all the harder. House members who walked the plank on a "cap and trade" energy bill vote and barely survived are all the less likely to take hard votes now. Legislators of all stripes may be more eager to show their distance from the White House, and legislative leaders less likely to cooperate.

Some internal critics are calling on Obama to reach out to Republicans, but any threat of factionalism inside his own party will likely push the president in the opposite direction. Democrats' best home, many believe, is uniting around a common enemy in congressional Republicans, and Obama's best bet for rallying both a restive base and skeptical moderates is pointing to a common enemy.

In his news conference Wednesday, Obama gave few firm clues as to which way he thinks he must turn – to the left or toward the middle. On the one hand, he acknowledged his "shellacking" at the hands of voters and offered to try to work with Republicans, but on the other, he said finding any common ground with the GOP would be difficult. And he defended his moves that inspired the most voter anger, his health care package and stimulus spending.

It’s a sign of Obama’s weakened position coming out of Tuesday that partisans on both ends of the party’s ideological spectrum felt free to take potshots – hoping they could still sway him as he tries to settle on a course for the last two years of his term.

Indeed, the broad Democratic defeat gave fodder to any number of arguments. Conservative Democrats lost – but they were tarred with Obama’s ambitious policy agenda.

And members’ attempts to maneuver away from the wave largely failed: Twenty of the 39 members who voted against the health care legislation the first time it came up in the House lost their seats anyway Tuesday.

The breadth of Obama’s defeat left some Democrats arguing that the White House’s real problem wasn’t policy and ideology but strategy and tactics.

“If you look at the stuff that we did, it was on an issue-by-issue level popular – but we have to do something different in the way we talk about the challenges we face and the way we deal with them,” said Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York.

“We clearly need much better air cover from the president,” he said, expressing skepticism of “this accepted wisdom that if you get things accomplished and explain them, you’ll win people over.”

To the degree Democrats had a bright spot Tuesday, it was their retention of the Senate, and one Democratic strategist argued that Senate campaigns kept their eyes on the ball when the White House wandered in the campaign’s final months.

“For a while there, they were focused on the oil spill, the Middle East peace process, Afghanistan, the anniversary of Katrina, the Ground Zero mosque, and redecorating the Oval Office,” said the Democrat.

And White House critics across the spectrum said the new focus would have to be almost entirely on core economic issues.

“Stop calling it ‘stimulus’ or ‘infrastructure’ or ‘R&E,’” former Clinton aide Paul Begala wrote Wednesday. “Call it jobs. Jobs. Jobs. Jobs.”

Neera Tanden, chief operating officer of the Center for American Progress, said: “Yesterday's elections were a vote of no confidence on Democratic stewardship of the economy. The President needs to both propose new policy proposals that will help foster economic growth and create new jobs and communicate every day that that issue is his priority. So that the American people understand that he knows their jobs are as important as his. "

WEST OC: Man says police wrong to arrest him while in baby costume

Staff Report

November 3, 2010

WEST OCEAN CITY — Maryland State Police arrested a 47-year-old man for disorderly conduct while he trick-or-treated on Halloween, saying he was wearing a diaper and shouting profanities at people. But Joseph David DiVanna, of Sarasota, Fla., said he was wearing a full baby costume for Halloween, complete with T-shirt, bib and bonnet, and was not simply parading around in a store-bought diaper.

He says he's angry a State Police press release implies otherwise — and angry that short news stories highlighting his odd dress when arrested spread across the country and overseas.

According to State Police, he was trying to get people to give him candy, and was cursing at adults and children. 

DiVanna said he had drinks earlier, but wasn't drunk, and said he was provoked by teens pelting him with candy. 

“I turned around and I go, guys, I don’t care if you follow me around, it’s Halloween, but you guys gotta stop throwing candy at me, this is ridiculous,” DiVanna said in an interview. "The kids were the ones who disorderly. I was running away from it all."

DiVanna has been living in West Ocean City for months while working on a long-term residential construction job. He had been invited by a friend, he said, to come trick-or-treat in the residential Fox Chapel neighborhood. 

“They said why don’t you stop by, work your way down, and have a beer?” he said.

He said he had worn the outfit out at two local bars a few hours prior to the incident, and that the fact his arrest has made national news is “outrageous.”

 “My phone’s ringing off the hook. This is amazing. I mean, just in a nutshell, the fact (police) didn’t mention I live three blocks down the road and I was going to meet somebody,” he said. 

He said there were adults in the neighborhood who were upset to see him trick-or-treating, and believes they alerted nearby police, who were directing vehicle and pedestrian traffic.

DiVanna is scheduled to face charges of disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace Dec. 10 in Worcester County District Court.

Joseph David DiVanna gestures at a costume he wore on Halloween night, when he was arrested for disorderly conduct. The baby costume includes a diaper, bib, bonnet, bottle and children's book. DiVanna says he's upset police charged him instead of the children he says harassed him that night, and he's also unhappy that news reports saying he was arrested while wearing a diaper have circulated widely. (Brian Shane photo)

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