1000 Days In: Update II

Top: Gallup approval/disapproval data for President Obama visualized via scatterplot and regression line from his 1000th day in office (10/17/11) to the present (12/30/11). Above: observe the data points in the lower graph; in only 28% of samples has disapproval risen to or above the 'crucial' 50% mark, and it should be noted that the range of disapproval below 50% is much greater than the range above (either three or five times greater, depending on whether you count the single data point at 45%).

Click here to read the original article. Click here to download the complete trend.

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McConnell's Threefold Miscalculation — Update

On the surface, two months of payroll holiday extension for a decision on Keystone XL is not a victory for the Dems — this was Mitch McConnell's calculus. He had no reason to believe Speaker Boehner would turn down such an offer; the problem is that he did. Had he not, the eventual (and inevitable) outcome would almost certainly be seen as a GOP victory. The victory for the Dems is not a legislative one, though it will almost certainly parlay into one two months from now. Rather, Obama and the Democrats have won the message war (or more accurately, Boehner has lost it). Until now, the GOP strategy was to play to the general public's relative disengagement from the details of politics… when there is gridlock, 'Washington' in the abstract gets the blame which hopefully trickles up to Obama. This time, however, the public was tuned in and the performance was overacted and lacking in nuance, and due to unprecedented viewership there's no reason why the sequel two months from now can't be a shameless lift of the original (just with a bigger budget).

To answer the question of why Boehner blinked, it may not be so much a matter of his having been strong-armed by Cantor's goons. The initial miscalculation was, once again, McConnell's. It became apparent once the senate passed their bill with 89 yeas that forcing a Keystone XL decision may actually be doing Obama a favor (as outlined in the original post). Way to go, guys!

McConnell's Threefold Miscalculation

1. The payroll tax narrative has been dogging the GOP. It would benefit them to put it to rest, not revisit it in two months. Part of the Dems' strategy was to force the initial vote, now the senate has voted with 89 'yeas' to force congress to do it all over again. This will essentially be a redux of the very display that has helped isolate the GOP as the brinksmen and obstructionists in a historically unpopular congress. As it turns out, the party of tax cuts is not equal-opportunity, and if anybody missed that this time around, they'll have another chance to tune in.

2. President Obama is eventually going to say 'no' to the Keystone XL pipeline. If he had just come out and said it without first appearing to weigh the costs vs benefits, the decision would have seemed rash and political… but the GOP has has done that job for him; he will now will have no choice but to come out and say (through a surrogate, of course) "due to time constraints, we will be unable to adequately evaluate the environmental impact of the Keystone XL pipeline and are therefore unable to grant permits."

3. President Obama came before the press yesterday professing satisfaction with the senate bill — it's only right that he should be deeply satisfied for the reasons mentioned above, and Speaker Boehner, who now has to either eat this bill or risk making his party seem factious at best and obstructionist at worst, knows this. Good job, Mitch McConnell.