Obama's Counterfactual Problem

The Atlantic makes the observation that Obama is running on counterfactuals, i.e., how much worse things would have been without him. The problem with that is first of all, as the Atlantic points out, that counterfactuals make lame arguments. The other problem with that, which they don't delve into, is that the counterfactuals also weigh against him. As I pointed out in an earlier post, the case can be made the liberalism would have been better off if McCain had squeaked through with no coattails.

Facing a heavily Democratic House and Senate, he'd not be able to accomplish much in the way of Right Wing policy and it might have moderated the GOP overall. If anything, 2010 would have made the Congress more Democratic. The economy would suck worse, as whatever stimulus got through would probably (though not certainly) be less adequate, but McCain would have taken the blame (running against the Bush-McCain economy would be political hold) As things stand, we have a crazy GOP House which is forcing through draconian cuts at gunpoint, even threatening to abolish Medicare and replace it with a private insurance voucher scheme. Obama is in real danger of taking all the blame for the Great Recession, making Bush a faint memory. We're also in real danger of getting a Republican President+Congress when we haven't even begun to heal from the disastrous Bush years. We could've had 20 years of Democratic hegemony again after the fall of John McCain.

Maybe the problem is that Obama really wasn't experienced enough. He couldn't effectively get his agenda through Congress and ended up blowing everything on a healthcare plan that most of the country dislikes and will probably either be repealed or struck down by the Supreme Court. Both the crises with the GOP House this year were eminently preventable. If he had gotten Congress to pass a budget last year (which could have been done even over filibustering if he hadn't lost the MA Senate seat over healthcare or he hadn't blown the Budget Reconciliation in the Senate on ramming through Obamacare), there would have been no shutdown showdown. And we wouldn't be under debt of default if he'd taken the sensible position of making an increase in the debt limit an absolute condition of extending the Bush taxcuts (arguing that a decrease in expected revenue requires and increase in borrowing authority).