The Power of Mid-term Elections and Time Sensitive Propaganda

Midterm election = Congressional elections 2 years (midterm) after the Presidential election. Why do you care? It's a time when the electorate can stymie a President in the Executive Branch by electing opposing views in the Legislative Branch. These elections happen in November 2010.

Why is Obama pushing so hard for the current health care legislation to happen now? It is because the closer a vote on this type of issue gets to the 2010 congressional election campaigns, the less likely it becomes that those US Congressman in the House and Senate will want to put their name to this bill. Why? Because they know the bill will continue to drive up our national deficit and increase taxes for individual and corporate taxpayers. They would rather vote on this now, and have the electorate forget about their vote 16 months from now.

Keep in mind that the US House and the Senate is closed for summer break for the entire month of August. So, essentially, if nothing is done before summer adjournment, than the entire nation has several weeks to get caught up to how bad this legislation actually is. Voting will be pushed out. The closer the vote gets to midterm elections, risk adverse legislators are more likely to keep a low profile because they do not want to get voted out of office 12 months later.

One other point, the Obama administration is keeping other bad news outside of the public eye so it can try to push this health care legislation through without continuing drubbing in public opinion polls. We learned on July 20 that a key report on the status of the deficit will be moved out to August and that Obama's report on Guantanamo has also been pushed out.