Time to move fast after the passage of unpopular healthcare. If we were the President, we’d be very pro-active about responding to the negativity the bill has spawned. We’d be sorely tempted to characterize many of our opponents, whether justified or not, and through proxies of course, as vile hatemongers who may be prone to violence. Then we’d get serious about financial regulation reform (it is an election year after all and those Wall street types must be made to cough up protection money).

But shaking down the banks is small beer. The real home runs would be immigration reform and cap-and-trade. Immigration reform should be sold as “securing 21st century borders with 21st century technology,” or some such rubbish, and should be said to offer to citizens the prospect of saving or creating millions of jobs through — well, given the nonsensical healthcare rhetoric, any old excuse just might fly. Many liberals as well as conservatives view such legislation as creating a sustainable Democratic majority, and what could be better than that?

As for cap-and-trade, it’s a no-brainer. It does for utilities and energy intensive industries what has been previously done for the auto makers, the banks, and now healthcare. And some Democrats have been remarkably open about how they will regard companies who resist the initiative. More centralization of power in Washington, more leverage in getting funds, compliant businesses — or else. What could be better?

As for tactics, we’d pass the bills in as ugly a way as required; after healthcare, what’s the point of avoiding doing so? The danger is that those angry teabaggers get so mad that their heads begin to explode, but we’ve already discussed how to handle them in the first paragraph. And even if the Republicans were to retake the House and Senate in November, what can they do? Besides, there are enough Republicans who still want to demonstrate their bi-partisanship that it might be years before they realize they are being played for suckers.

Update — And on April 8, the US signed an arms control agreement with Russia that Russia can opt out of whenever it likes. We expect that the President will implement whatever parts of the agreement that he can be executive order, before the Senate refuses to ratify the treaty. (Meanwhile we get ever unfriendlier towards friends and chummy towards enemies.)

This entry was posted on Friday, March 26th, 2010 at 3:15 pm and is filed under business, Democrats, General, Polling, Republicans, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.