The lame duck wins are adding up for Obama

[babylonsister]

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/us_senate/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2010/12/21/lame_duck_congress_obama

The lame duck wins are adding up for Obama
By Steve Kornacki

AP

Vice President Joe Biden and President Obama


Despite their leaders' bluster, Senate Republicans do not have the votes to block ratification of the New START treaty. When a vote to end the GOP's filibuster was called on Wednesday afternoon, 11 Republican senators broke with their party. With a total of 67 senators voting to kill the filibuster, the path now seems clear for the chamber to formally ratify the treaty, which calls for the U.S. and Russia to pare back their nuclear arsenals over the next seven years, on Wednesday.

Needless to say, this represents a significant political victory for Barack Obama -- and not his first one this lame duck session. The White House worked intently to win over Republican support, which was more crucial than usual on START because of the two-thirds requirement for treaty ratification, and overcame a series of increasingly creative objections from some GOP senators who were intent on denying Obama a key item on his December wish list.

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The lame duck session isn't over yet. START still needs to be officially ratified, and the fate of the 9/11 bill is still up in the air; there are signs that Democrats have the votes to pass it, but Republican Sen. Tom Coburn is threatening to kill it with procedural delays. If the bill ends up clearing Congress, it will serve as another clear victory for Obama. The lame duck session hasn't been perfect for Obama and Democrats -- they did, after all, have to fold on extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and they were unable to push the DREAM Act through -- but it's been a lot more productive than expected.

Think of it this way: If you had said in the immediate wake of the November election -- in which Democrats lost more than 60 House seats, nine Senate seats and a boatload of governorships and state legislatures -- that by the end of the year, the START treaty would be ratified, DADT would be history, and $300 billion of new stimulus would be authorized by Congress (with Republican support), you probably would have been laughed at. But it will all soon be a reality -- and there's a real chance that passage of the 9/11 healthcare bill will be too.

[hollowdweller]

1. Personally feeling much better about the Dems and Obama

Still wish they'd have let the Bush tax cuts expire and pushed for banning derivatives and for the public option, but they have all tipped the scales more favorably for me.