Barack Obama’s fortunes look set only to get worse over the coming days. Following the "shock Victory" of the Scott Brown in Massachusetts on Tuesday, a move that deprived the president of his 60-seat super-majority in the Senate and left his legislative agenda in tatters, Mr Obama has just four days to restart the system.
Obama had originally delayed next week’s State of the Union address to Congress in the hope he would get his signature healthcare reform bill enacted in time. That notion was killed dead by the voters in Massachusetts. A growing number of Democrats believe the nine-month effort could collapse altogether.
The death of the healthcare effort would rob Mr Obama of what he had hoped would be the centrepiece of his first State of the Union message. It now looks extremely difficult, if not impossible, to get anything resembling a broad healthcare bill out of Congress.
However, even a more modest agenda looks tough for Mr Obama now. The difference is that with 41 seats in the Senate Conservatives are in a position to block almost anything Mr Obama proposes – including the Wall Street regulatory measures he announced on Thursday.
Obama has to decide whether he wants to be a transformational president, which looks optimistic at this stage, or merely an effective president
Obama cannot rely on unity within his own party, which has been in disarray, if not panic, since Tuesday. For example, Mr Obama’s more populist tack on Wall Street re-regulation failed to attract endorsement from Chris Dodd, chairman of the Senate banking committee, even though he was present when Mr Obama made the announcement.
Others were opposed to elements of Mr Obama’s regulatory proposals including the plan to establish a consumer financial protection agency.
Most people do not think Mr Obama can even command unity within his own administration on the Wall Street proposals amid growing speculation about whether Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, can survive in his job.
Finally, there is increasingly open Democratic dissatisfaction in the way Mr Obama is managing relations with Capitol Hill.
In fact, polls from Mr Obama’s election showed that almost two-thirds of the voters cited the economy as their chief concern, with less than 1 in 10 mentioning healthcare. The economy went on the back burner in favor of health care with the administration, further alienating voters.
Rightfully, in his victory speech in Boston, Scott Brown, the new Republican senator, cited voter disdain for the sight of lots of “old men” on Capitol Hill bickering over healthcare reform at a time when their priority was jobs.
In short, Mr Obama’s nightmare January could easily slip into a nightmare February. Unless the president changes the way his White House, works, things are going to continue to go badly for him.
For the past four decades, American politics has consisted of Republicans controlling Washington for eight to 14 years. Either from the White House or Capitol Hill, therefore allowing Americans to forget what it was they didn't like about Democrats, whom they carelessly vote back in. The Democrats then immediately remind Americans what they didn't like about Democrats, and their power is removed at the voters' first opportunity.
Obama has knocked down the "remembering what we don't like about Democrats" stage from two or four years to about 10 months. A record for virtually any politician.
Four years of Jimmy Carter gave us two huge Reagan landslides. Democrat distrust continued as Vice President George H.W. Bush, another republican, immediately followed Reagan. Two years of Bill Clinton gave us a historic and massive Republican sweep of Congress, which killed almost the entire Clinton agenda, and also gave us two terms for George W. Bush.
And now, only one year of Obama and a Democratic Congress has given us the first Republican senator from Massachusetts in 31 years.
In other recent news, last November, New Jersey voters, who haven't voted for a Republican for president since 1988, threw out their incumbent Democratic governor, Jon Corzine. In Virginia, which Obama carried by 6 points a year earlier, a religious-right Republican won the governor's office by 17 points.
Sen. Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, won his last election in 2006 by 28 points.
Since voting for the Senate health care bill last Christmas, the once-bulletproof Sen. Nelson not only gets booed out of Omaha pizzerias, but he has also seen his job approval rating fall to 42 percent and his disapproval rating soar to 48 percent. Meanwhile, the junior senator from Nebraska, Mike Johanns, who voted against the bill, has a job approval rating of 63 percent.
