Victory Is Difficult If You Don't Seize The Initiative

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Ezra Klein has a piece where he notes that Obama really has set the agenda during his presidency. He has set the legislative agenda for his own party when they controlled the House, but he's also controlled it for the GOP.

Klein uses the example of RomneyCare's essentially identical aspects to ObamaCare and how everyone in the GOP, even or especially Romney, has to oppose it.  Why?  Because Obama supports it.

The GOP used to support "cap and trade" as the least effective way to deal with global warming that still did something.  Now they have to oppose it, because Obama's for it.  Witness Pawlenty completely reversing himself on cap and trade at the John Birch/South Carolina Seccesionist Ball Debate last week.

The bin Laden bounce (update: still dead) is obviously good news for McCain Obama.  We all assume that the bounce is mostly ephemeral.  And certainly he won't remain at 60%.  But it might hold up better than a purely event driven bounce.

First, gas prices are coming down, along with other commodities, as the speculatively driven commodities bubble bursts.  Interestingly, it looks like increased margin requirements helped push speculators out of the game.  But if gas is under $4.00/gl that will help free up consumer spending in other ways and generally increase people's feeling that things are headed up.

Secondly, Obama has all the initiative at the moment.  If you haven't seen the 60 Minutes interview with Obama, watch it.  (I can wait.)  You can't watch that from a neutral perspective and not be impressed.  But more than that, we can clearly see this is a guy who sees two or three moves ahead.

Which is why I think it was significant that he has suddenly made immigration reform an important issue.  Knowing - as he must - that the GOP is now simply the anti-Obama party, he has decided to take a position on a controversial issue that has zero chance of passing a Republican House.

Obviously, we have no idea what the political climate will be like in November 2012.   But right now, the GOP has greatly angered the old farts, union members and generally everybody who isn't in the Tea Party or the punditocracy.  My guess is that Obama will talk a lot about immigration reform, and we will likely get some sort of bill put forward in the Senate - Reid has been aggressive on this issue in the past.

The resulting, reflexive attack from the GOP on Hispanics will be immense and utterly predictable.

It seems to me Obama has already sewed up the Great Lakes battleground states, both with the highly successful auto bailout and with the antics of Scott Walker, John Kasich and Rick Snyder.

Right now, he's looking to bank Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico and put Arizona and Texas (and maybe Georgia) into play.

Of course, all bets are off if Palin, Bachmann or Gingrich wins the nomination.  If that's the case, all 50 states are in play for Obama.

OK, not Utah.