Get Down Or Lay Down!

Everyone is saying that Scott Brown's election to Teddy Kennedy's vacant senate seat spells disaster for President Obama's health care initiative and other Democratic platforms because it gives the Republicans the power to fillibuster any bill that comes up that they don't like. The truth is, they were going to do this regardless so, if I were the President, here is what I would begin doing...

I would rally my troops, explain to them what has been acomplished so far that is good, and make sure that unlike the Health care initiative (which most people didn't understand), I would get this message out to the public and in a big way. I would tell everybody around me not to panic and remind them that Scott Brown is just one person and he in no way can hold up the show by himself.

I would borrow a play from the Republican playbook and get people's minds off of health care for the time being. I'd talk about jobs, employment, and pledge that (for the next year, at least) the sole domestic focus will be on job creation. It’s already clear that the president will focus on this during his State of the Union address next Wednesday. The fact that this is regarded as news and a change of strategy proves the problem. The unemployment problem has deepened since he was sworn in exactly a year ago! So, it would behoove his administration to get on this right away.

I'd try to reduce the deficit. Create a real, substantive, and powerful deficit-reduction commission. Yeah, the days of Ronald Reagan (Thank God!) and Tip O’Neill are long gone but there is no reason not to try to recreate that part of it. Deficit reduction... most Americans do care about the country going bankrupt, even as they demand more benefits from government. That's soooo "American" of us, aint it?

I'd take a play from the Bill Clinton playbook and beat the Republicans at their own game. They seem to be trying to set themselves up as populists right now. So, Mr. President... be a real populist. You ran as an outsider even though many of us knew that, except for your race and your relative youth, you weren't really one. You were heavily credentialed and well-connected from the start, but that doesn't have to be an albotross. Use it to your advantage. Call in a few markers... THEY do it all the time.

I know that you're not really comfortable with that us-against-them rhetoric (or , at least, you like to cover it up with that smooth cool of yours) but that is the mood the American people are in right now, and understandably so. They’ve been screwed royally by the "Big Boys" in the corporate world and on Wall Street. So, Mr. President... you need to pick a real fight with some real enemies (try the brokers and the banks). Force the supposedly populist GOP Tea Partiers and tea baggers to go along or join the establishment of their own party. As we used to say in West Philly... "Either get down or lay down!"

And finally, getting back to health care... it's now become a disaster. You tried, but not hard enough. So, as much as I hate to say this, cut your losses, baby. Perhaps the best thing to do is to break the massive legislation into pieces and dare the Republicans to vote against the best parts of it, like the requirement that insurance companies permanently cover all patients. Let's see who blinks first!

There is clearly no referendum as the joyous Republicans think or a need to panic just yet. President Obama, you can still pull yourself and your party out of this... but you've got to act fast and decisively. Tell the Republicans simply to "Get Down with my program or lay down... in other more eloquent words "shut the f%@k up!" (Yeah, I said it!)