Axelrod to Leave White House Soon?

Posted: November 23, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Democratic Politics, Elections | Tags: , , , | 28 Comments

Fox News:

President Obama’s senior advisor David Axelrod is planning to move up his departure to sooner than originally planned, a senior White House official told Fox News on Monday, heading out in late January or early February.

The purpose is “to leave enough time to spend time with family before the next project begins,” the official said.

As recently as Nov. 14, Axelrod told “Fox News Sunday” that he’d probably stay about six more months before leaving to work on the president’s re-election bid.

Really? You mean this has nothing to do with the “shellacking” Obama received in the midterms?

CNN’s Ed Henry reports that:

President Obama is planning to bring former campaign manager David Plouffe onto the White House staff at the beginning of January to work alongside senior adviser David Axelrod for a brief time before Axelrod moves on to help run the re-election campaign, according to a senior administration official and a senior Democratic strategist familiar with the plan.

The sources added that Axelrod is now planning to leave his White House post as soon as immediately after the State of the Union address, which is an earlier departure date than originally expected and could be part of a new round of departures at the White House.

While there have been reports suggesting Plouffe will directly replace Axelrod, the working plan right now is actually for the two veterans of the 2008 campaign to work together for at least a short period as sort of a handoff, as the White House continues to reshape itself to deal with a Republican-controlled House and a shrunken Democratic majority in the Senate.

Well, there’s no time to lose with the President’s approval rating at 39% in the latest Zogby poll and only 28% strongly supporting him in the Rasmussen daily tracking poll today.

Yikes! Look at those disapproval numbers.

Meanwhile, at Huffpo, Sam Stein continues his reporting on disgruntled Democratic donors:

In the wake of an electoral drubbing and fearing another one in two years, some deep-pocketed Democratic donors have decided to essentially go rogue with respect to the Obama White House.

In meetings this past week, some of the top financiers in the party advanced discussions about building a third-party apparatus to counter that on the Republican side of the aisle.

I’m not sure how “rogue” these donors are really willing to go, since they are mainly talking about David Brock’s new project. James Carville sounds skeptical too:

“There probably is some kind of need [for a third-party outlet]. The one thing about us though is when we lose we have a lot of meetings. We are not even getting started on the retreats or retrospectives,” said James Carville, a longtime Democratic strategist, during an unrelated breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. “There is probably going to be one now, it is just the nature of what it is. Undoubtedly the Democrats will have symposiums and retreats.”

Big whoop.

Still, at least the Dems are recognizing that things don’t look so rosy for Obama. It appears that David Axelrod is worried too.

President Obama Phones New GOP Senators and House Members

Posted: November 11, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Surreality, Team Obama, WE TOLD THEM SO | Tags: , , , | 46 Comments

If you were wondering what President Obama has been up to during off-hours during his trip to Asia, wonder no longer. The New York Daily News reports that

President Obama has reached out to most of the incoming GOP lawmakers victorious on Nov. 2, telephoning many of them while abroad traveling to meetings in Asia.

“It’s a step in the right direction,” said Speaker-in-waiting John Boehner’s press secretary Michael Steel.

[….]

the President has also spoken to many of the incoming GOP House committee chairmen, including Rep. Pete King (R-L.I.), who will take the gavel of the Homeland Security Committee.

The same Peter King who recently said that George W. Bush “should get a medal” for approving waterboarding?

“There was no harm done,” King said Wednesday, referring to the waterboarding of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohmammed, who was subjected to simulated drowning 183 times in March of 2003. “In the big picture, to hold someone’s head underwater, the chance of permanent damage is minimal and the rewards are great.”

The Daily News did not report whether President Obama called new Democratic Senate and House members.

In other new of White House weakness, Sam Stein reports that The President and his top advisers had no warning about the release of the draft report of the Catfood Commission chairmen yesterday. In fact David Axelrod had to look up the report on-line.

Hours after the commission’s two chairs — former Sen. Alan Simpson and former White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles — unveiled their 50-page list of deficit reduction recommendations, White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod admitted that he had to find a copy of the report on the Internet.

“I heard at noon that those guys were going to hold a press conference at 1 PM,” Axelrod told The Huffington Post. “And I pulled off the Internet the coverage of it.”

Asked if he was bothered by the lack of warning, Axelrod replied: “I think they set out to be an independent commission and they are being independent. But we will let them complete their work and we will take a look at what they’ve done. Maybe they will get consensus around some of these ideas, maybe they won’t. We will take a look at it.”

Apparently I spoke too soon when I suggested Axelrod is running the Obama administration. Perhaps John Boehner is now in charge?

This is an open thread.

Who is Really Running the Obama White House?

Posted: November 11, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: WE TOLD THEM SO | Tags: , , , , , , | 36 Comments

Who is really running the country anyway?

UPDATE: Axelrod does a switcheroo, tells National Journal he didn’t really mean what he said yesterday. Oopsie! Did Obama get wind of the overwhelmingly negative reaction, or did Axe actually exceed his authority?

Time will tell…In the meantime, I think we can assume the story is still valid, so let’s get back to ripping Axe a new one.

Zaladonis posted a link to this story in the comments on the morning post: David Axelrod has announced that President Obama will go along with Republicans on an extension of the Bush tax cuts for the superrich. Axelrod’s supposed “boss” is still out of the country, so who is really making the decisions for this administration?

From the Huffpo piece by Howard (ugh) Fineman and Sam Stein:

President Barack Obama’s top adviser suggested to The Huffington Post late Wednesday that the administration is ready to accept an across-the-board, temporary continuation of steep Bush-era tax cuts, including those for the wealthiest taxpayers.

That appears to be the only way, said David Axelrod, that middle-class taxpayers can keep their tax cuts, given the legislative and political realities facing Obama in the aftermath of last week’s electoral defeat.

“We have to deal with the world as we find it,” Axelrod said during an unusually candid and reflective 90-minute interview in his office, steps away from the Oval Office. “The world of what it takes to get this done.”

“There are concerns,” he added, that Congress will continue to kick the can down the road in the future by passing temporary extensions for the wealthy time and time again. “But I don’t want to trade away security for the middle class in order to make that point.”

Security for the MIDDLE CLASS? WTF?!! Give me a break!

This is all about trying to buy back the Wall Street whiners who have been donating to Republicans instead of Obama’s 2012 campaign. And it is just plain nauseating.

Emptywheel on Axelrod’s “quaint idea of “security” for the middle class:

Axe is defining “security for the middle class” as tax cuts. Not “jobs.” Not “access to health care, not just insurance.” Not “a guarantee a bankster can’t just foreclose on their house with a trumped up piece of paper.” Not “some basic safety net for retirement.” But “tax cuts.”

According to Axe, we have to shovel even more money on the already rich so as to ensure the “security” of the middle class by giving them a tax cut.

And while I agree that raising middle class tax cuts at this point would be bad for the economy, it’s not the worst thing that could happen to the economy.

In fact, the worst thing that could happen to this economy may well be passing legislation that continues to hollow out of the middle class and with it increasing the massive income inequality that continues to subject the American people to the craven demands of a few very rich people. That is, precisely what Axe and Obama have now agreed to do.

Michael Tomasky is only “slightly surprised”:

The slightly surprising element is that Axelrod appears to reject the idea of a temporary-only extension for households above $250,000. This has been the “compromise” under discussion here and there: make the Bush rates permanent for those under the 250 mark, and temporary for those above. [….]

Well, this is not surprising but it’s depressing all the same to see this little dog scurry over to the corner of the room and whimper like this.

Tomasky argues that $250K isn’t really “rich.” Really? Here are the stats for median income for a family of four, by state. The average is about $63,000. Regardless of what Tomasky says, $250,000 is in top 2% of incomes in the U.S. In my opinion, we need a more progressively graduated income tax structure, but that is a separate issue.

This decision is every bit as horrendous as the decision to escalate in Afghanistan. As Dakinikat suggested recently, why don’t these people just switch parties and be done with it?

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