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How to Stop the Bleeding

by Howard Kurtz

Surveying the midterm wreckage, Democrats now have to find a way to dig themselves out. Howard Kurtz talks to party strategists about what went wrong, who's at fault, and the way forward.

The Democrats seem dazed and confused, unsure what to do after the electoral mugging that left them battered and bruised.

Some of the party's top strategists and activists are offering advice to President Obama, some of it incremental, some of it sweeping, much of it contradictory.

"His economic team needs to resign en masse," James Carville declares. "They may have saved the country from a depression, the history books may treat them kindly, but the electorate didn't treat them very kindly… None of our economic team could explain anything to anybody." Tim Geithner, take note: The Cajun is on your case.

Obama's signature failure, in Carville's view, was failing to crack down on "greedy" Wall Street bankers: "That's why the Democratic Party exists, to deal with that, and we just bailed them out and threw a Band-Aid over it." (Emphasis added)

Al Sharpton offers a more measured view, saying the left must recognize that Obama needs to do business with the likes of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell.

"We have to give the president room to seek some compromise on things where there's common ground," Sharpton says. "It'd be bad to create a climate where we attack him for trying to work with McConnell and Boehner. There's been unrealistic sniping."

Others point fingers directly at the occupant of the Oval Office.

"The problem is Obama," says Joe Trippi, who this fall helped Jerry Brown win his old job back in California and was a mastermind of Howard Dean's 2004 campaign. "I don't think he's going to change. I don't think he's as adaptable as Clinton was." Dean, he says, "could end up being one of the guys who continue to challenge Obama from the left as Boehner and the Tea Party are pulling him to the center." (Emphasis added)

Continues @ The Daily Beast

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Carville nails it.  For a Dem POTUS + Dem Senate + Dem House, they could not curb the banks. 

Yes, the economic circumstances were dire; they HAD TO bail out the banks. Ok. Dont like it, but can accept the action in the context.  But the financial regulation, especially derivatives regulation, needed to be a LOT swifter, and a lot steeper.  Instead, we still have fictitious derivative "assets" being traded.  It is the worst bandage on a huge cancer in the financial system that continues to ail the economy.  And, now, the GOPers want to undo even the bandaid fix.


-- Edited by Sanders on Friday 5th of November 2010 06:24:04 PM