Andrew Sulllivan notes in a short but must-read post that a variety of polls overwhelmingly show President Barack Obama’s call to tax America’s wealthier Americans with substantial support. He adds:
What the president proposed this morning is simply where the American people are at. If he keeps at it, if he turns his administration into a permanent campaign for structural fiscal reform, I don’t see how he loses the argument.
The problem is this:
I am concluding that Barack Obama and the political team around him could indeed win an argument — and easily lose an election.
I have sadly concluded that they are in no way in the same league with a political operation headed by a Karl Rove or a James Carville. They like a B league baseball team. They are constantly on the defensive and seem constantly involved in crisis-coping — crisis that might have been avoided if they had made smarter policy or political choices in the first place.
2012 could evolve into which side is the most flat-footed and repulsive to swing voters.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.