Obama’s Policies Likely to Fail

CNN Poll: Plurality say Obama’s policies will likely fail

Sixty-one percent of people questioned in the poll say they hope the president’s policies will succeed.

“That’s a fairly robust number but it’s down 10 points since last December,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “Twelve months ago a majority of the public said that they thought Obama’s policies would succeed; now that number has dropped to 44 percent, with a plurality predicting that his policies will likely fail.”

Obama to blink first on Social Security

By ROBERT KUTTNER, Politico

12/16/10 9:24 AM EST

(N)ow being teed up by the White House and key Senate Democrats, is a scheme for the president to embrace much of the Bowles-Simpson plan – including cuts in Social Security. This is to be unveiled, according to well-placed sources, in the president’s State of the Union address.

The idea is to pre-empt an even more draconian set of budget cuts likely to be proposed by the incoming House Budget Committee chairman, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), as a condition of extending the debt ceiling. This is expected to hit in April.

…

How to put this politely? For a Democratic president, this approach is bad economics and worse politics.

For starters, cutting Social Security as part of a deficit reduction deal is needless – since Social Security is in surplus for the next 27 years. The move also gives away the single most potent distinction between Democrats and Republicans – Democrats defend your Social Security, and Republicans keep trying to undermine it.

If you think the Democratic base feels betrayed by Obama’s tax-cut deal, just imagine the mayhem when Obama proposes to cut the Democrats’ signature program.

…

Beltway Washington – the editorial writers, columnists, centrist policy organizations, Blue Dogs and, of course, the Obama administration and its Wall Street advisers – has become an echo chamber of bad advice.

As paradox at The Left Coaster puts it-

It has been stated here before, and is equally true today, that should any cut of any Social Security element proposed by the Democratic Obama Administration the United States is unequivocally, screamingly in the utter throes of a shock doctrine evolution. Social Security is abundantly, vastly in surplus by generations of over-taxation, there’s a $120 billion annual war on with incredible tax cuts just passed, it is beyond lunacy for Social Security to be cut, it’s outright theft, an act of amazing arrogance and contempt that could only happen by the enormous distraction and manipulation of unemployment. Times are tough, we all have to sacrifice, that’s what the thieves will seriously say.

…

Leaks are extremely useful in a variety of ways: they coddle and ensnare the reporter to a clubby insider status, they manipulate various political actors, they offer reaction gauges to proposed ideas, and steer the political conversation of the Village (DC) in a desired direction. Given this, just why would the Obama Administration leak that cutting Social Security story to Politico?