Democracy | News-Opinion
TOP NEWS: Democracy: June 18, 2012
- After Chorus of Protest, New Tune on Deportations
- Obama: Keep the Change
- The Obama Campaign Needs Intervention
- The Folly of ObamaCare
- The Morning Plum: Details, details
Excerpts and more top stories
After Chorus of Protest, New Tune on Deportations
Julia Preston and Helene Cooper, NY Times – President Obama decided last week on a major policy shift to stop deportations of young illegal immigrants after administration officials saw that he was losing the initiative to Republicans on an issue he had long championed and that he was alienating the Latino voters who may be pivotal to his re-election bid.
Obama: Keep the Change
E.J. Dionne, Washington Post - He had just been through the roughest patch of President Obama’s re-election struggle and yet senior adviser David Axelrod seemed, if not quite serene, then at least amiably stoic.
The Obama Campaign Needs an Intervention
Albert R. Hunt, Bloomberg - During a focus group in Denver last week, Jeffrey Penny laid out his “criteria” for giving President Barack Obama his vote this year as he did in 2008. “I just want to see specifics and quit the trash talk,”the 31-year-old web designer and construction worker says in the session conducted by the pollster Peter Hart for the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. “Just get down to business and figure this thing out.”
The Folly of ObamaCare
Robert Samuelson, Newsweek – We pay our presidents for judgment, and President Obama committed a colossal error of judgment in making health-care “reform” a centerpiece of his first term. Ahead of the Supreme Court’s decision on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) — and regardless of how the court decides — it’s clear that Obama overreached. His attempt to achieve universal health insurance coverage is a massive feat of social engineering that, by its sweeping nature, weakens the economic recovery and antagonizes millions of Americans.
The Morning Plum: Details, details
Greg Sargent, Washington Post - On CBS yesterday, Mitt Romney attacked Obama’s new policy on immigration, but he refused to say whether he would repeal that policy or what he would do instead over the long term.. Romney has built his entire campaign on attacking Obama’s policies while refusing to detail what he would do instead.
===More News===
Canaries in the Coal Mine
Thomas B. Edsall, NY Times - Over the past few decades, working class whites – loosely defined as those without college degrees – have been a strikingly reliable indicator of the strength of the two main political parties.
Congress faces an agenda full of front-burner issues
Rosalind S. Helderman, Washington Post – Congress returns to Washington this week to confront some of the most substantive and politically nettlesome issues lawmakers will face between now and the November election. Unless Congress acts, the interest rate on federally subsidized student loans will jump from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent on July 1, raising the cost of college for millions of students.
Bain Capital: Barack Obama and Mitt Romney in a muddle
Alexander Burns and John F. Harris, Politico – The Obama campaign wants you to know that Mitt Romney took over companies, laid off workers, canceled health plans, shipped jobs overseas and walked away with millions
Third Time’s a Charm for Obama
Abby Huntsman, Huffington Post – For weeks the Obama campaign (and the always-relevant Super PACs) has hammered Romney for being a “job destroyer” and “Wall St. Guy” with little focus on anything else. It seemed you couldn’t turn the TV on without seeing another shuttered factory, purportedly at the expense of Romney and his investors.
Romney cultivates the rural vote in battleground states
Michael Finnegan, LA Times – Mitt Romney posed for a roadside photo with a herd of grazing cows in rural Pennsylvania. He scooped ice cream for locals in the quaint town square of Milford, N.H. In Brunswick, Ohio, he served pancakes at aFather’s Day breakfast.
