What You Really Voted For

If you’re wondering whether President Obama’s ambitious second-term agenda has a chance to make it through Congress, this little fact might be worth keeping in mind. Pessimistic analyses of the prospects for the Obama agenda have mostly focused on the recalcitrant, GOP-led House of Representatives. But Obama’s problem may actually be with the house of Congress his party controls. House Speaker John Boehner has signaled that he’ll consider proposals that make it through the Democrat-controlled Senate. Based on recent history, that could be a tall order.

Lest you think this is about Republican obstruction of the Democrats’ Senate majority via the filibuster, which requires 60 votes to overcome, that’s only part of the problem. Note that this period of inaction doesn’t quite correlate with the last time Democrats had 60 votes, which was January 2010. And the Senate has actually done plenty of things in the past two years and seven months — the deals that ended the 2011 debt-ceiling fight and the recent “fiscal cliff,” for example, as well as contentious items like the highway bill and the reapproval of the Export-Import Bank.

“The Colorado Democrat is urging the commission to refrain from taking any actions that could negatively impact Google’s services or otherwise slow innovation at the search giant, and he’s threatening to lessen the FTC’s reach if regulators proceed. “Application of antitrust against Google would be a woefully misguided step that would threaten the integrity of our antitrust system,” he warns in a pointed letter to FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz. He goes on to say a lawsuit “could ultimately lead to Congressional action resulting in a reduction in the ability of the FTC” to enforce antitrust matters.”

Google does not appear among his top contributors.

Mitt Romney has the lowest favorability of any Presidential Candidate in the last 30 years, including the losers. These numbers pre-date the 47% fiasco.

(As always click the picture for more details.)

“Even as Countrywide’s CEO Mozilo mocked Fannie Mae and top executives for its crony capitalism business model, he would nonetheless personally intercede to ensure executives had access to discounted Countrywide loans,” Issa said in his statement. “These relationships helped Mozilo increase his own company’s profits while dumping the risk of bad loans on taxpayers.”

“In Philadelphia, where Democrats outnumber Republicans by about 6-1, 18 percent of the city’s registered voters do not have the state photo ID, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

The data could have implications in the presidential race, in which presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney has been trailing President Obama in Pennsylvania by an average of 8 percentage points.

To win the state, Democratic candidates traditionally must pile up big margins of victory in Philadelphia to offset Republican vote totals elsewhere in the state.”

“New Hampshire’s Democratic governor on Thursday vetoed a bill passed by the Republican-controlled legislature that would legalize medical marijuana in the state, bucking a trend towards legalization in New England.”