Hver søndag oppsummerer vi uken som har gått, og linker til aktuelle og leseverdige artikler. Denne uken: helsereform, fundraising, og veien til november.
Uken som har gått har vært en av de mest begivenhetsrike i amerikansk politikk på en lang stund, og vi klager ikke. På torsdag tok Høyesterett bladet fra munnen, og Obamas helsereform overlevde. Du leser Hilde Eliassen Restad, Alf Tomas Tønnessen og Are Tågvold Flatens umiddelbare reaksjoner her. Senere samme kveld skrev Svein Melby fra Institutt for forsvarsstudier sin analyse, og dagen etter skrev Hilde om en mulig Tea Party-renessanse som følge av høyesterettsdommen.
Perspektiv fra Washington Posts Dan Balz: En seier for Obama i juni, men hva med november?
William Galston, a Brookings Institution scholar, noted in the run-up to the decision announcement that “winners celebrate and losers mobilize.” Mobilizing is what Republicans intend to do. They asserted that their setback will provide the motivation in the GOP base to produce a big victory in November. (…)
For the time being, the court ruling put health-care reform back in the center of the political debate. Romney will no doubt make “repeal and replace” a continuing part of his message. But Romney’s team long has assumed that jobs and the economy will determine the outcome in November, and other Republicans said he should never lose his focus on that issue. (…)
“This is going to be the biggest week of the campaign,” Republican strategist Vin Weber said, referring to the court decision, “until we get to the June jobs report next week. The economy issue writ larger is going to be the dominant issue of the campaign.”
Ezra Klein skriver for sin del om det som for mange ser ut som en politisk genistrek fra høyesterettsjustitarius John Roberts:
It’s as if an umpire tweaked the rules to favor his team in the future, but obscured the changes by calling a particular contest for the other side. ”John Roberts is playing at a different game than the rest of us,” wrote Red State’s Erick Erickson. “We’re on poker. He’s on chess.”
By voting with the liberals to uphold the Affordable Care Act, Roberts has put himself above partisan reproach. No one can accuse Roberts of ruling as a movement conservative. He’s made himself bulletproof against insinuations that he’s animated by party allegiances.
But by voting with the conservatives on every major legal question before the court, he nevertheless furthered the major conservative projects before the court — namely, imposing limits on federal power. And by securing his own reputation for impartiality, he made his own advocacy in those areas much more effective.
Fundraisingdeadline
Slutten på en ny måned betyr slutten på en ny fundraisingperiode, og både Obama og Romney gjør alt for å «vinne» junikampen. The Daily Beast gir oss i så måte et meget interessant innblikk i hvordan presidenten ordla seg overfor rike donorerer her om dagen:
«The president’s 18-minute pleading—a recording of which was provided to The Daily Beast by an Obama contributor—hardly sounded like a man doing a victory lap after Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling upholding Obamacare, as the Affordable Care Act has come to be known. Or, for that matter, like a candidate who has been beating his Republican opponent in recent polls of key battleground states.
Rather, Obama sounded like a dog-tired idealist forced to grapple painfully with hard reality.»
VP-audition
Denne uken har Are Tågvold Flaten fortsatt med sin «VP-audition» serie, en gjennomgang av Mitt Romneys potensielle visepresidentkandidater og deres styrker og svakheter. I forrige uke skrev han om Tim Pawlenty, Rob Portman og Marco Rubio. Denne uken: Paul Ryan (24. juni), Bobby Jindal (25. juni), John Thune (26. juni), Bob McDonnell (27. juni), og Chris Christie (29. juni). Serien fortsetter i uka som kommer, og du kan sende tips om potensielle kandidater til flaten at amerikanskpolitikk.no. Først ut: New Hampshire-senator Kelly Ayotte.
Og appropos VP-audition: «If history repeats, Everyone’s VP Guess is Wrong,» av Scott Conroy.
Visdomsord fra Charlie Cook
En egen gren innen #ampolitikk nerding er opphengt i antall valgmenn som til enhver tid kan fordeles mellom de to kandidatene. Veien til 270 er viktig – med sitt store fokus på målinger i enkeltstater – men som Charlie Cook påpeker bør media heller fokusere på andre, og mer håndfaste ting i sin valgkampdekning.
«The Obama and Romney camps have tools for close examination unavailable to the news media or individuals. Comparing the caliber of state-level survey research that the presidential candidates have to what the average political aficionado has is like comparing the new Boeing 787 to a World War II-vintage DC-3.
All of this time and effort spent parsing state-level polls would be better spent more closely examining the national polling data, particularly looking at how the candidates are performing now compared with Obama and John McCain in 2008, and examining how likely the members of specific (and potentially decisive) demographic groups are to actually vote.»
Ukens Nate Silver
Ukens artikkel fra New York Times’ Nate Silver: «June 29: Obama rises to 67.8 Percent«
President Obama, who got good news in Thursday’s health care ruling, received more overnight on Friday when European leaders agreed to terms on a bank bailout. That sent the S.&P. 500 up by 2.5 percent on the hopes that this will reduce some of the downside risk in the economy.
Since the stock market is one of the economic variables the model considers, Mr. Obama’s probability of winning the Electoral College rose with the European news, to 67.8 percent, his highest figure since we began publishing the model this month. (…)It is much too soon to tell what, if any, direct effect the health care ruling will have on Mr. Obama’s polling numbers; the large majority of polls used by the model were conducted before it was announced.
Ukens høydepunkt fra POLITICOs PLAYBOOK:
PALACE INTRIGUE – WashPost A1, «High court speculation: Did Roberts switch vote?» by Robert Barnes and Del Quentin Wilber: «Some wondered whether [Chief Justice John] Roberts originally had joined the court’s four conservatives, pointing to oddities in the opinion. The dissent offered by the conservative justices with whom Roberts usually sides in ideological disputes – Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. – read more like an opinion for the court that had been abandoned, said David E. Bernstein, a law professor at George Mason University.
«The dissent did not engage in a debate with the controlling opinion offered by Roberts, as is usual in Supreme Court judgments. It contained a long section on whether the law can be severed from the individual mandate, unnecessary if a majority had already found the mandate constitutional. It went to great lengths to establish the reasons the four thought the commerce clause did not offer the powers the Obama administration claimed. It was territory that Roberts already had largely covered in his opinion.» http://wapo.st/N0VKGz
–THE LEAD EDITORIAL of yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, «The Roberts Rules,» had an even juicier clue: «One telling note is that the dissent refers repeatedly to ‘Justice Ginsburg’s dissent’ and ‘the dissent’ on the mandate, but of course they should be referring to Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s concurrence. This wording and other sources suggest that there was originally a 5-4 majority striking down at least part of ObamaCare, but then the Chief Justice changed his mind.
Våre artikler i uken som har gått:
- VP-audition: Paul Ryan
- VP-audition: Bobby Jindal
- Panelet: Helsereformen i Høyesterett
- Immigrasjonskampen: Arizona v. US
- VP-audition: John Thune
- VP-audition: Bob McDonnell
- Helsereformen overlevde
- Sven Melby: En seier for Obama
- VP-audition: Chris Christie
- Off Message: Høyesterettsdrama gir Obama seieren på overtid
- Hilde Eliassen Restad: Tea Party renessansen?
- Ukas beste politiske karikatur, 24.-30. juni
Nøkkeltall fra forsiden søndag morgen (endring fra forrige søndag i parantes)
- Real Clear Politics sitt gjennomsnitt av meningsmålinger: Barack Obama 47,5 % (+0,8 %) – Mitt Romney 44,3 % (-0,5 %)
- Holdning til Obama blant folket: Approve: 48 % (+0,1), Disapprove 47,6 % (opp o,2 %).
Søndagskaffen finner du hver søndag på AmerikanskPolitikk.no. Tips til neste ukes utgave kan du sende til tips at amerikanskpolitikk.no.
