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Almost a year ago, President Obama vowed to use his pen and phone wherever possible to make a difference for middle class Americans, effectively promising to aggressively employ executive action to lift struggling Americans economic prospects in the face of implacable Republican opposition.

But now some liberals are beginning to worry that Obama may fall short in this regard, on an issue where he could perhaps give more of an economic boost to the middle class through unilateral action than on any other front. And if that happens, it could form the basis for another argument among Democrats over the partys economic direction.

The issue in question is how Obama will treat the issue of overtime pay, which is set to flare up next month. Senator Sherrod Brown, a leading member of the partys increasingly emboldened populist wing, tells me: As the party of the middle class and those seeking to join it, Democrats should stop the erosion of overtime pay.

The background: Last spring, Obama directed the Department of Labor to revise the rules that govern which private sector employees get overtime pay as part of the New Deal-era Fair Labor Standards Act. Under current rules, those who make $455 or less a mere $23,660 per year or less qualify for time-and-a-half pay if they work more than 40 hours per week. Many workers over that threshold do not qualify for that protection. That threshold is functionally lower than it has historically been, thanks to inflation: According to the Economic Policy Institute, only 11 percent of salaried workers qualify, which compares with 65 percent back in 1975.

The question is: How high will the Obama administration set the new threshold? The answer will determine how many people will benefit and could amount to differences totaling in the millions of people. Some liberals are pushing Obama to set the threshold at around $51,000 per year, which could mean overtime pay for 47 percent of workers who get salaries. Billionaire Nick Hanauer, who has forthrightly admitted that wealthy capitalists such as himself have been enriched in part by the current low threshold, wants it set even higher, at $69,000 per year.

But now the Huffington Posts Dave Jamieson reports that some of these liberals think the Obama administration is eying a much lower threshold, of around $42,000.

This is where the argument among Democrats could kick in.

Progressive Senators who have already criticized the administration on other economic issues Sherrod Brown, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Tom Harkin wrote a letter last spring to Obama, applauding his decision to revisit overtime pay.

But in their letter, the liberal Senators also set forth their desired threshold: Around $54,000 per year.

The differences here matter a lot. According to the EPI, raising the threshold from its current level to a sum in the neighborhood of what the liberal Senators want could mean higher overtime pay for at least 2.6 million more people than raising it to $42,000, the amount the Obama administration is supposedly eying.

Original post:
Sargent: The next big fight among Democrats?

The Liberal Democrats denied that the figures showed a drop in morale in the party or a sign of lack of enthusiasm. Photograph: Chris Ison/PA

The Liberal Democrats have still to select their parliamentary candidates in more than half the seats up for grabs in the general election in four months time, leading Labour to claim that Nick Cleggs party is in danger of forfeiting its right to present itself as a national party.

The Liberal Democrats have selected candidates in only 266 of the 631 seats British parties will contest excluding Northern Ireland, where the party does not fight elections.

By contrast Labour has selected candidates for election in 606 seats, Ukip in 358, the Greens in 310 and the Conservatives for 471. The figures have been compiled by the Political Betting website. The Labour MP for Chesterfield, Toby Perkins, claimed the Liberal Democrats were risking a collapse in their share of the vote.

The Liberal Democrats denied that the figures showed a drop in party morale or a sign of lack of enthusiasm.

An official said the party was behind compared with its progress in getting candidates in place in 2010, but that was partly due to the absence of a fixed-term parliament at the last election. There had also been an expectation in 2009 that Gordon Brown would go for an early election, which meant all the parties rushed to get candidates in place, even if many of them were paper candidates.

But Perkins said: Whether the Liberal Democrats get to a full list of candidates we shall see, but the election is a few months off, and it is revealing that when Labour is presenting a national list of candidates, the Liberal Democrats cannot find anyone to represent them in large parts of the country.

Everyone knows it is important to have a candidate in place for some time if you are to build your vote. It shows the extent to which the Liberal Democrats are likely to see their vote collapse to 30 or less seats. Its all a long way from the new politics of 2010 that the Liberal Democrats offered then.

Liberal Democrat HQ said it was for local parties to select candidates from a list of approved candidates, and had not set a deadline by which parties must select.

The last day for the nomination of candidates is 11 working days before the election itself, so parties can find paper candidates at the last minute that in effect mount no campaign, and expect to lose their deposit.

See the original post:
Liberal Democrats yet to select candidates in more than half of seats

Warning Republicans and Democrats are both Guilty!
Important to listen to last few minutes of the video to see how antichrist Francis will still be able to deceive many here in America.

By: FaithGuy

More here:
Warning Republicans and Democrats are both Guilty! - Video

The passing of Mario Cuomo brought bipartisan tributes appropriate to a rare political figure with a developed inner life. He was Catholic-educated, and it showed. How many other politicians grappled with Thomas Aquinas? Even the loser is dignified by such a duel.

But the intensity of affection for Cuomo, especially among Democrats of a certain age, comes from his ideological clarity. In the history of American rhetoric, there are orators of national unity such as Martin Luther King Jr. There are orators of national purpose such as John F. Kennedy. Cuomo was an orator of ideological definition. His 1984 keynote address at the Democratic National Convention provided progressives with the best version of themselves, as tribunes of the forgotten and excluded.

Populists must have felt similarly stirred at the Democratic convention in 1896, when William Jennings Bryan declared war on idle capital. Conservatives still regard a 1964 Ronald Reagan speech, A Time for Choosing, in much the same category. Cuomos Tale of Two Cities belongs in the company of speeches that defined a creed.

But it is worth recalling that Cuomos version of the liberal faith did not prevail, at least immediately. The year he gave that speech, a progressive Democratic presidential candidate lost 49 states. It was Bill Clintons New Democratic overhaul of liberalism that ended his partys long slump in presidential politics.

Democrats still debate whether this was really an overhaul or more of a facelift. Like most effective party reformers, Clinton made significant shifts in tone and policy, without completely alienating his partys base. Rhetorically, Clinton emphasized growth and opportunity over equality. Substantively, he embraced community policing, strong defense, reinventing government and welfare reform the latter a truly dramatic deviation from progressive orthodoxy.

President Obama has now effectively undone everything that Clinton and the New Democrats did in the 1980s and 90s. Issue by issue, todays Democratic Party is about where it was in 1979.

Obamas initial political appeal was personal rather than ideological; he would transcend ideological debates without actually engaging them in any creative or interesting way. He ran for office in 2008 on the aesthetics of politics rather than policy or political philosophy. But he has governed as an utterly conventional, backbench Senate progressive (which, in retrospect, he was). He won reelection by motivating a fundamentally liberal coalition of minorities, young people, women and the college-educated. And he has fully embraced this strategy as a cause. His second inaugural address is among the strongest assertions of a progressive vision uttered by an American president in a century.

In 2012, Obama demonstrated that the New Democrat accommodation is no longer required to win a national election at least for him. It helped, of course, to face the chief executive of Bain Capital in the aftermath of a financial crisis. It also helped that the Republican economic message was stuck in 1979 as well. But unlike a generation ago, when Obamas liberal record would have cost him dearly, he was able to win reelection easily. We are a different nation. Middle America has shifted on some social issues, and the white portion of the electorate has steadily decreased.

Obamas political triumph has been mainly personal. Since 2009, Democrats are down 70 seats in the House and 14 seats in the Senate. Obamas positioning of his party has involved ceding groups and regions particularly white voters in deep and border South that once were coveted objects of New Democratic appeal. But Obama has demonstrated that a progressive can win a national election without making this outreach. He has proved, it seems, that Clintonism is no longer necessary.

Just as another Clinton (Hillary) has become the Democratic front-runner.

Read more:
Are Democrats stuck in 1979?

The passing of Mario Cuomo brought bipartisan tributes appropriate to a rare political figure with a developed inner life. He was Catholic-educated, and it showed. How many other politicians grappled with Thomas Aquinas? Even the loser is dignified by such a duel.

But the intensity of affection for Cuomo, especially among Democrats of a certain age, comes from his ideological clarity. In the history of American rhetoric, there are orators of national unity such as Martin Luther King Jr. There are orators of national purpose such as John F. Kennedy. Cuomo was an orator of ideological definition. His 1984 keynote address at the Democratic National Convention provided progressives with the best version of themselves, as tribunes of the forgotten and excluded.

Populists must have felt similarly stirred at the Democratic convention in 1896, when William Jennings Bryan declared war on idle capital. Conservatives still regard a 1964 Ronald Reagan speech, A Time for Choosing, in much the same category. Cuomos Tale of Two Cities belongs in the company of speeches that defined a creed.

But it is worth recalling that Cuomos version of the liberal faith did not prevail, at least immediately. The year he gave that speech, a progressive Democratic presidential candidate lost 49 states. It was Bill Clintons New Democratic overhaul of liberalism that ended his partys long slump in presidential politics.

Democrats still debate whether this was really an overhaul or more of a facelift. Like most effective party reformers, Clinton made significant shifts in tone and policy, without completely alienating his partys base. Rhetorically, Clinton emphasized growth and opportunity over equality. Substantively, he embraced community policing, strong defense, reinventing government and welfare reform the latter a truly dramatic deviation from progressive orthodoxy.

President Obama has now effectively undone everything that Clinton and the New Democrats did in the 1980s and 90s. Issue by issue, todays Democratic Party is about where it was in 1979.

Obamas initial political appeal was personal rather than ideological; he would transcend ideological debates without actually engaging them in any creative or interesting way. He ran for office in 2008 on the aesthetics of politics rather than policy or political philosophy. But he has governed as an utterly conventional, backbench Senate progressive (which, in retrospect, he was). He won reelection by motivating a fundamentally liberal coalition of minorities, young people, women and the college-educated. And he has fully embraced this strategy as a cause. His second inaugural address is among the strongest assertions of a progressive vision uttered by an American president in a century.

In 2012, Obama demonstrated that the New Democrat accommodation is no longer required to win a national election at least for him. It helped, of course, to face the chief executive of Bain Capital in the aftermath of a financial crisis. It also helped that the Republican economic message was stuck in 1979 as well. But unlike a generation ago, when Obamas liberal record would have cost him dearly, he was able to win reelection easily. We are a different nation. Middle America has shifted on some social issues, and the white portion of the electorate has steadily decreased.

Obamas political triumph has been mainly personal. Since 2009, Democrats are down 70 seats in the House and 14 seats in the Senate. Obamas positioning of his party has involved ceding groups and regions particularly white voters in deep and border South that once were coveted objects of New Democratic appeal. But Obama has demonstrated that a progressive can win a national election without making this outreach. He has proved, it seems, that Clintonism is no longer necessary.

Just as another Clinton (Hillary) has become the Democratic front-runner.

More here:
Gerson: Are Democrats stuck in 1979?