The Democratic slaughter Tuesday will make it harder for President Obama to govern -- but might make it easier for him to win re-election in 2012. The Obama White House will shift into re-election mode in a few months, and the 2012 presidential campaign headquarters will be Chicago again, if all goes as planned. But for now, a lot of attention on the political front will have to be on dealing with a GOP-controlled House and a Senate where Republican gains will make it harder to get the 60 votes needed to get anything done. Obama will reach out to Republicans during his press conference today.
The Democratic slaughter Tuesday will make it harder for President Obama to govern -- but might make it easier for him to win re-election in 2012.
The Obama White House will shift into re-election mode in a few months, and the 2012 presidential campaign headquarters will be Chicago again, if all goes as planned. But for now, a lot of attention on the political front will have to be on dealing with a GOP-controlled House and a Senate where Republican gains will make it harder to get the 60 votes needed to get anything done. Obama will reach out to Republicans during his press conference today.
The Obama team is bracing for what is coming under a GOP-run House, something we saw during former President Bill Clinton's years in office. There will be lots of House congressional investigations and subpoenas from committees with new Republican chairs. But sometime after the new year, the Obama political focus will not just be on presumed Speaker John Boehner, the Ohio Republican, but on the Republicans potentially in the running for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination.
Given the new climate Tuesday's election results created -- a repudiation of the Obama agenda -- one could argue that Republicans taking some responsibility for governing is not the worst thing for Obama.
Obama passed his major items -- health care and Wall Street reform, to name two -- only with Democratic votes. The contrast between Democrats and Republicans will be drawn more sharply as Republican leaders wrangle with new members in their caucus -- some of whom are in Congress with the help of Tea Party activists -- who will have their own strong ideas on what they want to do.
Heading into 2012 -- especially if unemployment and home foreclosures remain high -- not having sole ownership of the economy is not such a bad development for Obama.
Those who see Tuesday's results as an indication that Obama cannot be re-elected are wrong. An embarrassment, yes. But after House Republicans swept to power in 1994, Clinton won re-election in 1996 with 49.2 percent of the vote to 40.7 percent for then-Sen. Bob Dole and 8.4 percent for Ross Perot.
The Obama administration prudently loaded a lot of its major initiatives in the first two years, with Democrats in control of the House and Senate, so the shift will likely be an emphasis on regulations more than legislation. The era of passing major legislation may be over, leaving undone matters very important to the Democratic base: immigration reform, environment measures known as cap and trade, repeal of the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy and "card check," which unions want to make it easier to organize.
Republicans have vowed to repeal the new health care and Wall Street laws -- just as the Obama administration in the coming months will be writing regulations on how these new programs will be implemented. Immigration and climate change/energy proposals might stay shelved.
"Unless there is a dramatic change in Republican strategy," Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) told me, "where they are prepared to sit down and work with this president over the next two years, I'm afraid most of our efforts are going to be stopping bad things from happening."
