New Jersey, and I suppose others, are abuzz about the potential of Governor Chris Christie entering the GOP Presidential primary race. I have no idea if he will run or not; but I’m confident that he will win if he does. The problem is that he might win even bigger if he doesn’t.

Currently, the Republican primary is dominated by Rick Perry and Mitt Romney. The rest are also-rans. They might each get a bit of time in the sun or not, but none of them will be standing on the winner’s platform when it’s done.

Which one is on top? Let’s look at the primary calendar. There are three contests in January: Nevada, South Carolina, and Florida (which is in violation of primary rules, but who cares?). Currently, Perry leads in Nevada by 5 and in South Carolina by 12. He gets both of those. But Perry gets walloped by Romney in Florida.

This gives Romney a lead in delegates, but Perry has picked up two unofficial wins and has some shine going into February. Perry will continue to hang on through the southern and western states, but Romney will get all of the big states left – New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Possibly even Virginia. By the time Romney takes California in June, it will simply be confirmation of the inevitable.

But Christie is popular in Florida. So maybe Romney still wins, but Christie shows he’s a major candidate with a close second finish. He’ll finish second in Texas, behind Perry. Christie will win in New York and Pennsylvania. If he can take Ohio and Wisconsin from Romney, and can take Georgia, Iowa, and Tennessee from Perry…he’ll make it a three-way battle. And he’s going to look a lot better than either of the other two Governors.

Here’s a blunt assessment of each candidate’s downside: Romney’s a Mormon and is linked to his own health-care plan on which Obama based the national plan. Perry is a little too much hat and not enough cattle…or an abundance of style with an absence of substance. Christie is fat.

I’m willing to be enough Americans will look at their own waistline and get over any problems with anyone’s weight.

So give Christie the nomination, if he wants it.

Then there’s the general election. Unemployment is still around nine percent and isn’t going down substantially. In ’92 and ’80 and ’76, unemployment was between seven and eight percent, and each time voters turned out an incumbent President seeking re-election. There isn’t much Obama can do about the unemployment rate, and there isn’t much chance of anyone forgetting the economy.

Obama isn’t even popular within his own Party. Fully twenty percent of Democrats in California aren’t happy with him. In the last three months, his approval in that state has fallen from 54 to 46 percent. In Florida, Obama is within the margin of error in a head-to-head with Romney and Ron Paul. Obama holds 79% and 80% approval among liberals, but among moderates, his approval dives to 64%. Only 15% of Democrats disapprove of his job performance, but 52% of non-affiliated voters hate it.

He’s sunk.

Want an obscure and meaningless reference? We haven’t had three back-to-back two-term Presidents since Jefferson-Madison-Monroe. Clinton-Bush-Obama? I just don’t see it.

So from where I see it…the race is Christie’s for the taking. So why wouldn’t he?

With apologies to Mel Brooks, sometimes it isn’t good to be the king. Whoever beats Obama next year is going to get an economy on life-support, and a mandate to let it die. It’s a good way to ruin a promising career. It’s better to be the king-maker and store up chips for a run another year.

So I expect Christie will eventually say that he enthusiastically supports Romney and head up his Northeastern campaign. Then he’ll step up into the Attorney General’s position. From there, he can decide whether or not he wants to knock off Frank Lautenberg in the polls or wait for Father Time to do his dirty work (Lautenberg looks healthy, but had a cancer scare not long ago – and he’s OLD!). Or he could quietly investigate any of about a thousand rumors of wrongdoing by NJ’s other Senator Bob Menendez. Christie could quietly step into the role he filled so well during the Bush Administration and, in doing so, broaden and deepen his political connections across the country while burnishing his credentials as a law-and-order kind of guy.

Even if he never decides to take the plunge for the Big Job, that seems to be the kind of reputation that Governor Christie would enjoy building. It’s the kind of job that’s almost impossible to build an argument against him taking.

Zachary Roth has an article for The Lookout that gives us the other side of the story of poverty. As it turns out, poverty doesn’t actually mean one is poor because:

…that measure, developed over 40 years ago, is inexact at best. It doesn’t include non-cash benefits–things such as food and housing subsidies–that can play a key role in supporting families.

I’ll try not to be overly sarcastic here. Through our collective representation, we, as a society, decided that people who earn less than a certain amount of money are considered poor and live in poverty. We also found that, in a country with as rich of blessings as we have, that is unacceptable. So we created programs – like food stamps and rent subsidies – that help make up the gap between what a family actually earns and what is considered minimally acceptable. Find that the programs that are intended to “help make up the gap” actually do “help make up the gap” only means that our programs are successful – so remember THAT the next time someone tells you that government can’t accomplish anything.

There are two purposes to telling such a story. One is to say what I have just said – “Look! We are making progress in the War on Poverty (remember that?)! We are successful!” But that isn’t what’s going on here. What’s happening is an attempt to minimize the problem of poverty. Take, for example, this quote from the same article:

…many or most poor Americans have things such as internet service, cable TV and dishwashers–not luxuries, to be sure, but not the picture of destitution that the word poverty often brings to mind.

Yes, people are not truly poor if they have a dishwasher…which, in case it isn’t known, is generally standard issue for modern (built in the last twenty years) housing projects. Of course, it is possible to get by without one – I never had one until I was an adult. But if we are going to use this argument to debate if we give too much aid to the poor (and make no mistake, that IS what it is for); then we need to do a cost-benefit analysis that shows if using a dishwasher is cheaper over the life of the appliance than it would be not having it. To do that, figure in the fact that dishwashers use less water and less soap, and because they tend to use hotter water, they cut down on communicable diseases. These, incidentally, are arguments any appliance salesman can repeat.

And the internet? Anyone who doesn’t have access is in danger of being seriously disconnected from work and school. Would it be more adaptive to hinder the poor from developing job skills, or to give them a tool they can use to break into the digital age? If we truly want to compete with the world economy; then we are going to have to invest in doing so. And providing high-speed internet for those who can’t afford it is the modern equivalent of building thousands of public libraries.

Cable TV is a different matter – but only because of the way we choose to use our televisions. Television could easily be used to supplement education, and there is no shortage of educational television programs. As a father of pre-schoolers, I absolutely LOVE educational television. But I can only get it on cable. The major networks simply do not see any return on their money. Captain Kangeroo and Mister Rogers are gone and Sesame Street is struggling (my personal opinion). But my kids get lessons on colors and shapes and math and phonics…from cable TV.

This has its basis in the belief that people absolutely deserve anything and everything that comes down the pike. If a person is poor or fat or anything less than absolutely perfect; then it is their fault. All they have to do is change! There is no such thing as simply not having as many resources as someone else. There is no such thing as not having the opportunities as someone else. It is radical individuality.

It’s why people will now unabashedly clap when the topic of letting someone die because they can’t afford health care comes up. People don’t deserve to live! If they wanted to live; then they would get a better job that gave them insurance…which, incidentally, is an expense forced on employers by governmental over-regulation.

The truly sad thing is that what should be a “Let them eat cake!” moment failed to even make a dent on our national psyche. God save us from ourselves.

Via the Washington Post I hear that Mitt Romney thinks corporations are people:

“Corporations are people, my friend,” Romney said.

Some people in the front of the audience shouted, “No, they’re not!”

“Of course they are,” Romney said. “Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people. Where do you think it goes?”

Corporations are not people. They are a legal instrument to protect people (and their profits) from unlimited liability claims for actions taken as a group…for the purpose of achieving profit. People are born. Corporations are chartered through state governments. People live and work and love and eventually die. Corporations do none of that.

The topic was taxation, and, of course, Romney doesn’t want to raise taxes on people – even the wealthy. And what better way to protect corporate interests from taxes than to claim they, too, are people?

The Washington Post says that Democrats want a “bolder” Obama. Dee Dee Myers is quoted:

“The president has shown himself unwilling to just dig in on a position,” said Dee Dee Myers, who was Bill Clinton’s White House press secretary. “He’s for jobs. I’ve heard him say that. He’s for being the grown-up in the room. But beyond that, I’m not actually sure what his bottom line is.”

Well, if Democrats wanted another Clinton in the White House, they had the opportunity to get one. They chose Obama – who never claimed he was going to fight tooth and nail for anything. Don’t remember?

This is what he promised:

Let’s resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.

The problem is that no one foresaw the Tea Party, which would give a ragged voice to those who are willing to do anything – literally, anything – to keep President Obama from accomplishing a single goal. One person cannot change the tone in Washington, because the tone is Washington is an amalgamation of the millions of voices throughout America. And because the President was not willing to get into the dirt and fight, he lost.

But this is what we voted for. So quit trying to pretend to be surprised. Bill Clinton lost Congress, but found his fighting spirit. Obama has no fighting spirit. And he never pretended to be otherwise.

Newsweek’s cover of Michelle Bachman is causing a stir. Of course, there is no shortage of conservatives/Republicans who are blaming ideology for a bad picture. But how short memories are.

The problem is, apparently, Newsweek doesn’t know how to hire a photographer who knows how to take a decent photo of a woman. Is it sexist? Well, once is a mistake. Twice is a trend. Thrice is a pattern.

Yeah, it’s sexist. There is nothing in the photos that would indicate any of these three women are serious contenders for anything.

What about the captioning? That’s a little uneven. Hillary’s War versus Queen of Rage?

But then it is hard to see this photo of President Obama as anything but insulting (not only to the President, but to Hindus, as well):

So maybe the “problem” is that Newsweek actually tries to get people to react with faux rage because…well, because it sells.

I haven’t had much to say about the “debt ceiling crisis” (or much of anything else) because there really isn’t that much to say. Dan Balz says it about as good as anyone:

Boehner was just as clear in casting the president as the obstacle. Obama, he said, came to office and led the country on a spending binge that included “a new health care bill that most Americans never asked for; a stimulus bill that’s more effective in producing material for late-night comedians than it was in producing jobs; and a national debt that has gotten so out of hand, it’s sparked a crisis without precedent in my lifetime or yours.”

The problem is that “most Americans” – before the overblown hype and hysteria – actually DID want a healthcare overhaul. If you will recall the 2008 Presidential election, even GOP can’t-quite-call-him-hopefull John McCain had a “healthcare plan.” Also, Democrats held a very slight voter preference in the realm of health care (48-46). It was a bona fide election issue.

So maybe Americans weren’t crazy about the bill that passed Congress…but that’s because it was truly a compromise. Each side gave up a lot to get something done. It’s how things are generally done.

President Obama put everything on the table – including Social Security and Medicare. But he insisted that he not be forced to cave entirely. For the GOP, it was capitulation, or nothing.

The Republicans cannot seem to understand that they control only one House of Congress. There were very specific reasons why our Constitution separated powers between both Houses of Congress and between Congress and the President. The biggest reason was to keep one party from winning a slender and temporary majority and using it to bum-rush the government and the American people and enact their partisan agenda.

And the Republicans are perfectly willing to destroy the economy in order to bring down Obama. They very simply care more about making him look bad than they do in the millions of people who are unemployed, underemployed, or whose livelihoods would be destroyed by their irresponsible actions.

This was not an accident. It was a specific and goal-oriented action as the new Republican majority rewrote the House rules. This was what they did in 1995, by the way, when they wanted to hamstring President Clinton. Same game, only the names have changed.

I’m not saying that runaway isn’t a problem – it is. But only a fool looks at one half of the equation. Remember that all those tax cuts were supposed to increase government revenues! If cutting marginal taxes would have balanced the budget and revved up our economy; then we wouldn’t be experiencing the economic doldrums we are now.

So why are we here? Because enough people elected Republicans to stop Obama at all costs…and that is exactly what they are doing.

I think the answer is an obvious, “Yes.”

First of all, have a reminder look at the 2008 electoral map. Now consider the changes in the electoral college. States that have gone to Democrats for the past three Presidential elections have lost a net of six votes. While states that have gone for Republicans in that same time have had a net gain of six votes. So instead of 365 electoral votes, Obama would have only 359 – still a safe margin – if he could manage to win every state he won in 2008.

Will Obama win those states? Well, 2008 was the first time in quite a while that Indiana, Virginia, and North Carolina went for a Democrat at the Presidential level. Those states account for 11, 13, and 15 votes, respectively. 39 votes total. Obama’s vote total is down to 320.

Then there’s Florida. With 29 votes, an Obama loss in Florida is vital for Republicans’ hopes. That outcome would drop the President’s vote total down to 291. That means that Republicans only need Pennsylvania’s 20 votes, plus one more state, to win.

It’s that easy for Obama to lose. Indiana, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Pennsylvania, and one more state. How likely is that?

Well, recent polling shows Obama’s job approval is upside down. Indiana, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Florida all had US Senate elections in 2010 – and every one of them voted Republican. (Incidentally, so did Ohio, Wisconsin, and Iowa – states that also went for Obama in 2008. Illinois did too, but I’m not even considering that Obama might lose his home state.) To the extent that the US Senate race is any predictor of Presidential voting – which is only a slight connection – then it’s bad news for Democrats.

Then take a look at the national horserace polls. Obama is leading potential Republican challengers, but the races are fairly close and show high numbers of undecided voters. In 2008, those undecided voters probably would have broken in large numbers to Obama – because he was an unknown and voters wanted change. But now? Well, exactly what has Obama given them to vote for?

State-level info is hard to come by. But what there is doesn’t look good for the President. Pennsylvania disapproves of him by a margin of 42-52. The author of the linked post makes a point of the margin-of-error, but I think a better indication of Presidential weakness is that the President only reaches the 50% mark when head-to-head with Sarah Palin. The President loses to Mitt Romney, wins by one point over Mike Huckabee, and two points over Rick Santorum. That’s weak, anyway it gets spun.

Obviously, they can only poll against known candidates. My feeling is that GOP will actually come up with someone who hasn’t announced yet (no, not Donald Trump). If they really wanted to mix up the map, they could pair Marco Rubio at the top of the ticket with someone like Susan Collins as VP. Rubio appeals to Hispanics and to Conservatives, and has already shown he knows how to win in Florida. Meanwhile Collins shows that the GOP is friendly to women, other than an antention-seeker like Palin, and has enough moderate credentials to say that they aren’t trying to turn the country to the hard right-wing.

This weekend, I went to see Steve Earle and Joan Baez in concert. During his introduction of the song “Christmastime in Washington”, Steve Earle explained that his song was about his heroes. He explained that it wasn’t about all his heroes because he could have put Joan Baez in there. She stood up at Woodstock and dedicated the song “Joe Hill” to her husband because he was sitting in jail for refusing to go kill anyone and refusing to shut up about it. When he couldn’t talk, she gave him a voice. He went on to say that changing the world is not a spectator sport.

Then I read two things yesterday. One is by Jodi Jacobson, entitled “Why a Soccer Momma for Obama Hung Up Her Cleats.” The other is by James Vega, but “has no title. Ok, so I have something to say now.

I left a comment on Vega’s post, and I won’t repeat it here. What I will say is that Democrats never understood what Obama was saying he wanted to do. The one thing I remember him saying, over and over again, is that he wanted to change the tone in Washington. I think he may have given up on that, but even if he hasn’t, it’s a useless goal. One person cannot change Washington. Especially when about half of the people there depend on the current tone remaining exactly as it is.

What many Democrats see as Obama’s timidness and willingness to barter away the house is really his inclination to not vilify the side. It was his hope – and I use the word intentionally – that Republicans would actually take up his call to responsive dialogue. That’s the same hope that moved Jon Stewart to hold his Rally to Restore Sanity, where he gave one of the most moving speeches I’ve heard since 2008. Yes, we can work together. But too many people won’t.

In his book Discursive Democracy, John Dryzek explains that his job as a planner is to bring stakeholders together – even, or perhaps especially, when they do not want to be brought together. He explains that the first step in doing this is for one person to actually reach out to understand the other side. It isn’t enough to sit in an office and extend an invitation. You have to actually demonstrate that you have empathy for the person you want to speak with. Until they know you care, they don’t care about what you know.

Which is also what Dale Carnegie wrote so long ago: “Become genuinely interested in other people.” Or, as Stephen Covey put it: “Seek first to understand; then to be understood.”

The problem with Progressivism is that it has always been an elitist movement. Now, I have no problem with people working their way into the elite section of any arena of the public sphere. But they can’t forget, once they get there, that the people they’ve moved above (for lack of better way to put it) are intelligent and wonderful people – who don’t want to be told what to do with their lives. If Progressive leaders simply hand decisions down on high and say, “I’m doing this for your own good,” then people will continue to respond to them as a child to an overbearing parent.

That’s why the Progressive Movement of the late 19th and early 20th century resorted to poetry, songs, and novels to convert people to their cause. From Woody Guthrie to Upton Sinclair, their goals were to reduce the ideas and theories of the Progressive cause to memorable scenes and characters and songs that the average person could respond to on an emotional level – and then pass along to others.

I certainly respect people like Jodi Jacobson, and I stand in awe of her financial contributions and the time commitment that went with it. I certainly understand – and sometimes share – the sense of fatigue that nothing good is going to come of this. I feel as if I will batter myself like a moth against the light until my wings burn to dust and yet the light will endure unchanged. What then will I have accomplished?

Where people like Ms. Jacobson fail is in their understanding of our political system as a whole – not in the way that Mr. Vega wrote of, but in the way our system works against momentum. Our system of government was created by people who feared government enabled to work quickly. It is designed to slow things down so that actions can be made methodically rather than emotionally. It is designed to force actors to build broad consensus. That takes time. It takes patience. It takes concerted effort over decades. It takes caring about the people on the other side of the political divide long enough to engage them, demonstrate that they are valued as a person and as a people, and then maybe, just maybe, you can convince them you have their best interest at heart. That their best interest and your best interest is the same.

It isn’t that liberals need to understand the institutional pressures aligned against Progressive causes. They do. That’s why they are Progressives. The problem is that they don’t understand why everyone isn’t as Progressive as they are. They think that the vast numbers of Americans scattered between the coasts who identify as conservative are misguided, at best…and evil, at worst. They think that widespread outreach is a waste of time. That teaching Progressive principles is a waste of time. That anyone who can’t see the truth of their cause isn’t worthy of the benefits of the cause – or even the time needed to convince them that the cause is worthy.

And that’s why Conservatives have continue to dominate the political landscape. They have think-tanks and grassroots organizations that link up to disseminate information, right or wrong, and policy ideas and continually hammer down the nails of common values and principles. Progressives don’t. There are wonderful Progressive film-makers and authors who languish in obscurity because there is no existing means of promoting their products and supporting their art.

We have no Woody Guthrie. We have no Upton Sinclair. We have no way to demonstrate, as Sinclair wrote, how difficult it is to convince someone that the system is stacked against them when their livelihoods depend on believing that it isn’t. Until we do, we will win a few hit-and-miss episodes, but we will never turn the ship of American politics from its ultra-conservative drift.

I don’t think I’m the person who can do that. I don’t have the talent or drive of either Guthrie or Sinclair. But I can continue to insist we need someone like them until that person shows up. That’s why I write.

But probably not the way he wants to.

After spending $787 billion to bail out the financial industry and stimulate the economy via infratstructure projects, the President is now talking about spending another $50 billion on…more infrastructure.

That would be wonderful if the problem with the economy was not being able to get goods from one side of the country to the other. Or if the infrastructure business had collapsed and led us into the Great Recession. But neither one of these things is true. And even if it was, $50 billion is a paltry number to build bridges and highways with.

The problem with the economy is two-fold. First, Americans have been spending more than they make for several years. The only way that is possible is to use credit – and a whole lot of it. Now credit is a wonderful thing, but every dollar spent on credit reflects a claim against future earnings. And, since credit generally costs us interest, it is a higher claim against future earnings than if the spending were done with actual in-the-hand dollars. Eventually, the piper comes calling with an open palm and asks for his due.

What that means is that we must begin paying in today’s dollars for economic growth that already happened. We see that through people paying down their outstanding credit – also known as “paying off their cards.” This is often cited as one reason why the Bush Administration’s stimulus checks to individuals didn’t stimulate the economy – people used them to pay bills rather than to go out and buy useless stuff they didn’t need or want.

The “debt bubble,” if you will, swallowed that round of stimulus spending. And because it did, it was looked upon as a failure. This, I’m sure, played heavily in the considerations for making future stimulus packages reliant on “shovel-ready” infrastructure improvements. Hey, if we can’t get the American people to buy crap, then let’s build ‘em a bridge!

So, if you happen to be in the bridge building business, baby, business is a-boomin’! If, like the vast majority of Americans, you have no connection to the building of bridges or the widening of highways, then it has done little or nothing to help you. That is the second part of the problem with the stimulus package.

Anyone with their head on the bright and shiny side of their anus could see this would be the case. Or, anyone who took a brief look at the history of the Great Depression. You see, good ol’ Herbert Hoover tried exactly that. Hoover, you might remember, is pilloried by history for doing nothing to stave off the Depression. Because, you see, you can’t build an economy on infrastructure projects.

FDR was slightly more successful with infrastructure projects because by the time he started throwing them out there, no one had a job or a house to live in. It was a good idea, at that time, to give up on being a mechanic or a Fuller Brush salesman and move halfway across the country to work for the Tennessee Valley Authority or the Rural Electrification Agency. Now?

First, we aren’t yet desperate enough to do it. We, as a society, would rather continue to pay and receive unemployment benefits than to see families uprooted and migrated halfway across the country. So Republicans are right that those unemployment benefits keep people from taking jobs. That’s why we aren’t having bridges built by out of work computer programmers.

The other issue is that employers are not yet ready to actually value labor enough to entice people into the labor market. A computer programmer with a $250,000 mortgage is simply not going to move to Nebraska to help build an overpass at minimum wage. But if you start offering more money, at some point that same programmer will suddenly decide that it is in his best interest, or the best interest of his family, to love corn and wide open spaces.

So we sit here, with double-digit unemployment and declining real-worth wages…and CEOs are still earning usurous reams of money.

Is it any wonder our economy remains in the doldrums when the working man and woman are scorned for taking their due and the wealthy are worshiped with ever greater offerings of unearned wealth? For those who believe we live in a “Christian nation” and long for a return to the “good old days” when people lived by the words of the Bible…this is the place to make that return. Because if we don’t, then nothing else will matter anyway.

My mentor, Micah Sifry, has one of the best dissections I’ve seen of the Jekyll and Hide phenomenon that has been the Obama Administration. Like a lot of my liberal friends, Sifry apparently feels abandoned by President Obama (and he provides a convincing case for that feeling being real). It’s interesting to look at it from my position, though, because Obama is doing everything pretty much just like I thought he would.

I received considerable negative feedback from all quarters during the 2008 primary when I said that Barack Obama was a conservative (I said the same of Hillary Clinton, too). I think I’d get much less flack for that statement now. I don’t mean that Obama is a retread of George W. Bush – though he has sounded a bit W-ish on a few topics. Obama is much more like Bush the First.

But I’d rather get to a comment on Sifry’s piece, because I think it highlights a problem that will lead to Barack Obama being a one-term President. It’s a real shame because he had the potential to not only win a second term, but to build an incredible majority for Democrats. Instead, he kicked his behemoth organization to the curb, or at least tried to ram it into the garage.

If he would have kept his campaign running – something that both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush did very effectively – Democrats would be looking at picking up another ten seats in the House and maybe three or four more in the Senate. Instead, Democrats are racing to retire in competitive districts because they are afraid they are going to get buried.

This is the danger of letting a politician head up a movement. Politicians should be our servants, not our leaders.