And that about wraps it up for the Lib Dems...

To conclude what has been a mini-series of Liberal Democrat commentary lately, here is my feature post on the LibDem Voice website urging them to be more ambitious. And to my Labour friends out there - you guys have a WHOLE 'nother set of problems. Perhaps I'll do some Labour ruminations next week.

To my Tory friends, however, I'm sorry but I have no advice for you.

Am I Getting Defensive?

So last weekend at my Obama fringe event in Harrogate, one of the speakers was Mark Pack - Head of Innovations for the Liberal Democrats. Being determined to find something that was unlikely to be said by any of us, Mark decided to focus on a list of things Obama got WRONG in his election.

Well, hats off to you Mark, for sheer originality. Even I am beginning to grow weary of the endless recitation of our campaign's manifest perfections.

Still, being the shameless Kool Aid drinker that I am, I couldn't find it within me to entirely agree with all of Mark's criticisms. Here's a quick recap and response:

Alleged Failure No. 1: That the Obama campaign did not involve people in the formation of policy online.

Response: This is absolutely true. They didn't do much of this. However, the complaint contains within it the assumption that this is something a Presidential campaign OUGHT to do - and I'm not sure that assumption is valid. The function of a Presidential campaign is always and only to win an election. If an online policy formation could help us do this, then (as my former President liked to say) bring it on. But I think the judgement was that we specifically didn't want our activists spending their time on this during the eleciton season, we wanted them to hit the ground and get out the vote. It might arguably be a good idea for the DNC to be doing this as part of our ongoing platform process - and I think it very much is something that Organizing for America, the DNC's new grassroots group that grew out of the campaign organisation will do. But Democrats in the US had a pretty fair consensus about the direction we wanted the country to go in. The challenge wasn't finding good policies it was getting into power so that we could implement them (the Liberal Democrats may learn from this what they choose...).

Alleged Failure 2: That the campaign did not successfully respond to the massive numbers of e-mails that they were sent.

Response: I think Mark has a point here, but I'd call this a mixed success rather than an outright failure. Speaking from my personal experience, I found that although I didn't get a personal response to every e-mail I sent, I did get promptly added onto the mailing list as soon as I contacted the campaign. Similarly, I responded several times to feedback requests and surveys where I got an auto-response follow up, which is at least more than others were doing. Still, I think this is definitely one area where future campaigns can do better - the mixed blessing of an overwhelming enthusiasm from supporters is a serious challenge to cope with - DNC General Election Director Paul Tewes called it "drinking from a firehose," which I think conveys some of the sensation of being on the other end of those thousands of e-mails!

Alleged Failure 3: That despite the hype the turnout was not improved by as much as was advertised.

Response: I have to beg to differ with you on that one, Mark. Or at least, to clarify one very important detail that changes the whole landscape: Yes, overall voter participation was only up by only a little more than one percentage point over the already massive 2004 voter participation (although, before I say "only", do you have any idea how hard it is to achieve a 1% increase in nation-wide voter participation? That's millions of people!) but the DEMOCRATIC turnout was up by a little over 2%. Republican turnout, in other words, was depressed compared with 2004. But some will say - why then did Barack Obama only win by 52% of the vote? And this is where it gets depressing - a Democrat has not achieved an outright majority of the US popular vote since Jimmy Carter, and Obama's margin of victory was the biggest Democratic margin of victory since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In other words, Americans for some inexplicable reason don't vote for us very often in large numbers, even though they tend to agree with our policies (surely the Liberal Democrats can relate to that?). I truly think we achieved almost the best achievable level of participation for our voters.

Alleged Failure 4: That the Obama army of small donors was not as large as was advertised.

Response: Mark actually explained the happy cause of this seeming anomoly in his talk, but for those who weren't in the room - the background is that when final financial tallies came in it was discovered that there were a lot more midlevel donors (from $250 to $1,000) than everyone expected and a lot fewer small donors. Simple answer - they were very good at getting additional donations from the initial small donors, turning them into big donors. I started with a $20 donation with no intention to give more. In the end, though, I did wind up giving quite a bit more, although how much more is an Open Secret (that was a hint).


Alleged Failure 5: The campaign did not develop and use new technology, relying instead on perfecting the use of existing technology.

Response: I'd actually dispute this on two levels. Firstly, there was new technology that was developed - Facebook and I-phone applications, clever data mining tools, and lots of others. In fact, one much talked about new application that was developed, called "project Houdini" was aimed at streamlining the Get Out the Vote process by removing voters from the call back lists as soon as they have been identified at the polling places. However, it wasn't a success on election day and wound up being switched off so that it wouldn't take away resources from the more traditional GOTV tools.

Which brings me to my second point. Developing and using new technology was never the goal of this campaign. The goal of this campaign was to win. If the best way to win was by chiseling aramaic letters on clay tablets, that's what we would have done. If new technologies can help, great. But if there's a simpler way to achieve the same outcome, and if it uses technologies that the volunteers and supporters feel comfortable with and can use well, then that's preferable. Technology changes the world by how it's used and that's the kind of innovation that Obama was going for.

Alleged Failure 6: Losing 160,000 friends on MySpace ("the Joe Anthony Incident").

Response: I had to look this one up. Sounds bad. Also seems out of step with the campaign's overall ethos, which was very much to keep hands off whatever anyone else was building for us. Weird.

And finally...

Alleged Failure 7: Did not effectively use Twitter.

Response: Yep, hands up on that one. In my case, I didn't even start using Twitter until after the election, and certainly no one from the campaign was urging me to. I can only speculate that it was a timing thing - Twitter really started to take off towards the end of the campaign, by which point we already had our tools in place and were going full speed ahead for the finish line.

Obama Revokes Bush's Signing Statements

In a radical reversal of established practice, Barack Obama seems to believe that when Congress passes a law the President should treat it as if they meant what they said.

Calling into question the legitimacy of all the signing statements that former President George W. Bush used to challenge new laws, President Obama on Monday ordered executive officials to consult with Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. before relying on any of them to bypass a statute.

....
Mr. Bush frequently used signing statements to declare that provisions in the bills he was signing were unconstitutional constraints on executive power, claiming that the laws did not need to be enforced or obeyed as written. The laws he challenged included a torture ban and requirements that Congress be given detailed reports about how the Justice Department was using the counter-terrorism powers in the USA Patriot Act.

Weird. What's next, actually not torturing instead of saying we won't torture? Oh wait, we're doing that too. Craziness!

LibDemVoice Panel Discussion

Do check out the very interesting panel discussion I participated in. Hosted by LibDemVoice website and featuring myself, Jake Rigg from Obama's speechwriting team, Mark Pack the head of Innovations for the LibDems, and Ed Davey who is MP for Kingston and Surbiton the topic was how to learn the lessons from the Obama campaign here in the UK.

There's good audio of the whole event on the site, and my talk starts just a few minutes in. The event turned out to be massively popular, resulting in much kerfuffle as we dismantled a wall to double the size of the room - and people were still standing at the back, as you can see.

I'm a liberal Democrat. But am I a Liberal Democrat?

So in America, for years I've been described as a "liberal democrat" by folks who thought that was some sort of crushing insult.

This weekend, I spent a few days in the company of some folks who have gone so far as to join a party CALLED the Liberal Democrats. Who are these raging radicals?

According to Wikipedia:

They support multilateral foreign policy; they opposed British participation in the War in Iraq and support withdrawal of troops from the country, and are the most pro-EU of the three main parties in the UK. The party has strong environmentalist values – favouring renewable energy and commitments to deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. Since their foundation, Lib Dems have advocated electoral reform to use proportional representation (a system which would increase their number of seats and those of other minority parties), replacing the House of Lords with an elected chamber, and cutting government departments.

They are also, bless their little cotton socks, a collection of fervently keen political geeks. What the brits call "anoraks", and the Guardian describes as the "beards and sandals brigade." Personally, I found them both good company and a credible political force now that the Labour party is desperately demoralised and the Tories are faced with an economic crisis to which they have no solution.

But the weekend was also a constant reminder for me of the fundamental difference in concept between British and American politics. Politics here is much more party centered - with policy debates held at Conferences like this very much forming the basis of what the party will campaign on in the forthcoming general election (whenever it is called).

Obviously, in the States the Democrats and Republicans both have party platforms that are formed in a somewhat similar way - through resolutions passed at local and national level - but to be frank they are widely ignored by Presidential and Congressional candidates. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Well, obviously from a democratic-with-a-small d perspective it's bad. It would be seem sensible for party members to have some say in the policies of their party. On the other hand, we do have very open and high profile primarie in which the candidates set out their policies, so you could argue (and I probably would argue) that this is when the voters express their policy preferences in their candidate selection.

But we also have a very different political context in the USA. All three British political parties in the US would fit pretty comfortably within the US Democratic party. So a lot of the policies and approaches of the Democratic party in individual states are going to differ from each other. Therefore national policy setting at a party level isn't really going to be meaningful to folks in Utah or New York.

Anyway - it's all very interesting. A good Conference, and worthy addition to my own political education, for sure (next, I'd like to try some Labour party events...). My major complaint is the hideous, hideous yellow branding. I get that the other two primary colours were already taken, and that the Greens have a claim on the best non-primary alternative but seriously guys, against a yellow backdrop everyone looks jaundiced.

As a side note, one of the stars of the conference was our own Howard Dean, who gave a well received lunchtime keynote address. Dean and I had actually met at a drinks reception a couple days before and he was telling me his thoughts about the LibDem party ("They have a problem that is a lot like the problem my campaign had - their supporters are typically young, highly educated middle class kids. How to you reach beyond that?"). Most interesting, but to forestall any wild rumors I should clarify that the scandalous pictures posted here do not signal a change of orientation.

You can watch his speech online here.

Bush's Lawyers Revoked Fourth Amendment

Apparently the First Amendment was also considered subordinate to the needs of the President to do what he wants.

Words fail me. Watch Rachel Maddow explain it all for you:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

You know, I'm ready to stop being angry. I don't WANT to spend the next four years still angry at things that happened before my guy got elected. So why do these things keep coming out and killing my Audacity of Hope Buzz? Sigh.

The Beautiful Mess that is Democracy

Yesterday afternoon Democrats Abroad UK had its biannual meeting and election of officers. I'm honored and delighted to report that I was unanimously elected Vice Chair (this sounds better than it is since I was unopposed! Guess I scared off the competition) and that Bill Barnard was overwhelmingly re-elected Chair. Alicia Skubick is now our Secretary - elected by a massive majority - and Eileen Taylor ran unopposed for Treasurer.

For the most part the meeting went smoothly - the big exception being a heated debate and some confusion about the election of our Executive Committee.

After the event, I spoke to quite a few people about their perceptions of the day. A couple people who are "old timers" - ie, have been around for a few previous election cycles - came up to me and said that was one of the least chaotic of these meetings that we've had. Several others, for whom this was their first meeting, told me that they found it confusing, they couldn't understand why things were being done the way they were.

Here's the situation as I see it - the DAUK bylaws were drafted for a very different organisation than we are today. They are vague in some areas, unwieldy in others, and altogether better suited for a small member organisation than for the large political organisation that we are today. One of the areas where they are vague and unhelpful is in the election process - this was exacerbated by some amendments that were made a few years ago with the laudable intention of opening up the voting process to more people, but which failed to consider the implications of imposing those revisions on top of a structure designed for the more closed voting system. In short, it's a bit of a mess - the Nominating Committee and the Executive Committee each time try to set rules that will clarify some of this confusion, but it's always imperfect. And yes, we are working on getting this stuff sorted out, but the revision process is slow and nobody wanted to focus on it during an election year (we were a little busy!).

Anyway, my larger point is this: this is all very "inside baseball" stuff, the details of DAUK internal election processes and such like. But these types of problems aren't unique to us - more often than not Democracy is pretty messy stuff. The best thing we can do is approach this with some humility and some patience combined with a determination to make it work - and maybe some duct tape to stick the whole thing together.

It's not just us - the US Constitution has some of the same problems. It too, was designed for an organisation very different than the one we live in today. It never envisioned universal education, or direct election of Senators, or international air travel, or the Internet. But we've been patching it together for years, with ad hoc updates via court rulings or clarifying legislation, or just custom and traditio. Somehow, it all works. Because we all want it to. In my view it's that collective wanting that makes up a democracy, as much as the specific rules and laws.

I'm sure that all of us newly elected officers will make mistakes over the next couple of years. But if you'll keep wanting this organisation to work, we'll keep trying to make it work better. Thanks for your patience!

Yesterday's Presentation

Yesterday I had the chance to talk to a group of business folks about Obama and the US Economy. Since I am, essentially, totally unqualified to discuss economic issues, I concentrated my talk on the recently passed stimulus package, and a few thoughts about the political dimension in which Obama (and therefore all companies seeking to offer services to the government) are currently operating.

Since a couple people have expressed an interest in the presentation, I've posted the slides below as JPEGs. The presentation would be, of course, far better with the benefit of my witty reparte, learned commentary and devastating joke - but I guess we'll just have to make do with these.

Rejoice: Birth Control Funding is Back

Turns out, when I speculated that the funding for state provided birth control that was cut from the stimulus package over Republican objections wouldn't be dropped for good, I was right.

Three cheers for rational policy making!

Next Week's Democrats Abroad Elections

I've just sent around a note to my lists about next week's local elections here at Democrats Abroad, UK and thought I would post it here as well, FYI:

Dear Friends,

Next Sunday, the Democrats Abroad General meeting and elections will be held here in Central London. For those of you who are eligible voters (Americans and DA members), I'm hoping that most of you have chosen to RSVP and are planning on attending the meeting.

As you all hopefully know by now, I will be running for Vice Chair. I'd welcome and be enormously grateful for your support! But some people have started to ask me some questions about the way the elections will run, exactly who or what is being elected, and even some thoughts about who I might be voting for in different positions. So in the interest of full transparency, here's what I know about the election, how I expect it to work, and my thoughts on the different races.

OFFICER POSITIONS

At the meeting, DA will elect 4 officers. The Chair, Vice Chair, Secretary and Treasurer. To comply with the strict Equal Opportunities rules set by the DNC nationally, the Chair and Vice Chair must be of opposite gender. Therefore, we will elect a Chair first and all candidates of the same gender as the Chair elected will be eliminated from consideration as Vice Chair. (So if a woman wins the Chair role I am automatically ineligible and will take my place on the sidelines!)

Fortunately, I didn't have any trouble deciding who I wanted to support as Chair, and fortunately (for me) that person happens to be of the opposite gender - our current Chair, Bill Barnard, is running for re-election, and he has my support. He's been a kind, thoughtful and hard working Chair in a very stressful time, and has led us with a lot of grace and courtesy. I'd be glad to continue working with him.

For Vice Chair - well, as I say I'm hoping for and would be very grateful for your support!

For Secretary, there are two outstanding candidates. Alicia Skubick and Lizza Moya have both been nominated, and are both outstanding individuals.

Lizza has been a Zone Captain for the Obama campaign, organising an effective and high energy group in Hampstead to track down US voters. She has ample campaign experience and is a professional communications expert - which would bring much needed skills to the organisation.

Alicia I have known as a dedicated volunteer for even longer than I've known Lizza, and she has been active in a wide range of Democrats Abroad projects, from the Database to the Newsletter to various events.

Both would be great Secretaries. I would vote for either, but since I can't I'll keep silent on the issue.

For Treasurer, we have a somewhat similar situation. Karen McClean and Eileen Taylor have both put themselves forward, and both are high quality individuals with exceptional skills. Karen was instrumental in organising the Debate screenings earlier this year, and in the process demonstrated remarkable skills of project management, creativity, and leadership.

Eileen is a successful professional in the field of Finance (yes, there are some left). She has been a tireless worker on voter registration, a dedicated phone banker, an energetic canvasser and a good humoured, thoughtful and intelligent voice throughout the campaign. I actually first met Eileen when she was representing the Hillary Clinton position and I the Barack Obama position on CNN during the primary, but she was gracious, warm and open minded, and when the primary came to an end she was the first person to call me and say that she was excited to help.

In fact, I specifically called Eileen and asked her to run for this position, because I believe that she has a wonderful attitude as well as an impeccable skill set. For that reason, I personally will be voting for her - despite my deep respect for Karen who could also do a great job.

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

As well as the Officers, during this meeting we will elect members to serve on the Executive Committee, which guides the organization and provides oversight and approval to the actions of the officers. This is an important role, and it is important that the Committee function well as a group, as well as having excellent members within it. The size of the Committee is not pre-determined, but it is expected that the Nominating Committee will recommend we keep to the existing situation where we have 8 at-large members, plus the four officers. There are 30 people who have put themselves forward to be Executive Committee members - making this an extremely competitive race.

I have thought long and hard about who I personally will be voting for, and to be honest I am STILL struggling to come up with a precise list of 8 names. Any list would inevitably leave out a lot of good people whose work I admire, and who I hope will remain involved no matter what.

But I do want to mention to you a few names who may not be well known to you all, but who I would respectfully ask you to consider voting for.

The first is Mark Mullen. If you aren't sure who Mark is, ask yourself if you remember coming across a 6 foot plus Texan in glasses and an O'Bama shamrock t0shirt - if you have, chances are that was Mark. Mark was a zone captain for the campaign in Bloomsbury, and he was an unstoppable force hitting the streets every weekend to get Barack elected. Mark actually travelled back to Florida to volunteer during runup to election day, and was an invaluable supporter for Barack starting very early in the Primary. Having lived all over the world, and with a professional background in democracy building, I believe he has a unique and constructive perspective to add to our work.

Another person I'd like to tell you about is Bill Rubin. Bill was an early Obama supporter here in London who went so far as to pack up himself and his wife to return Stateside starting early in the Primary as a full time volunteer in some tough states. Eventually he was hired on to be a Field Director, and in the General Election he performed miracles in the difficult but critical area of North Eastern Pennsylvania. Again, I think Bill would add crucial campaigning expertise to the work of Democrats Abroad UK. I mention Mark and Bill specifically because I suspect that these two people may be less well known to the group at large - precisely BECAUSE they have spent so much time and effort on behalf of Barack back in the States.

But there is one name that should be very well known to you all, who I would also like to give my strong backing to. And that's my co-organizer Rob Carolina. I've made a lot of demands on Rob over the past year or so - a lot of (frankly) unreasonable and over the top requests for help. But every single thing I've ever asked of him, he delivered, and then went on to do a lot more that I never would have dared to demand.

I'll be casting one of my Executive Committee votes for him on March 1 - I hope you will too! And finally....

THE COUNCIL

The DAUK Council has traditionally been a fairly large body of active members who feel committed to helping us deliver our goals. Their specific responsibilities are to approve changes to the bylaws, and to attend at least two meetings in the year. Jus tto clarify, there is NO reason why a member can't continue to be a strong, active and effective supporter of and volunteer for this organisation whether or not they have any elected role - some of our most active campaigners today are not on any of these bodies, but they do great work and we love and appreciate them for it. So if reviewing amendments to the bylaws and attending procedural meetings isn't your favorite thing, don't feel like you HAVE to stand for the Council (or ExCom) in order to be an active member.

But if you WANT to do that - bless you for it! The size of the Council is not stated in the bylaws, and my understanding is that in this election there will be no artificial limits imposed, but that as per the bylaws members will be required to earn a majority of the votes (ie get votes from more than 50% of the people in the room) in order to be elected. With that in mind, I personally will be voting for everyone on the list EXCEPT for a couple of specific individuals who I do not feel able to support. I would be glad to tell you who those two people are and why I can't bring myself to cast a ballot for them if you want to e-mail or call me privately - but I do not want to malign their names publically.

So there it is. Hopefully, that's everything you ever wanted to know about DAUK elections but were afraid to ask (probably it's a thousand times more than you ever wanted to know! Thanks for reading). If you do have any questions, or thoughts, or you just want to shoot the breeze about this (AKA gossip) - feel free to give me a call or drop me a line. E-mail me at karinjr at hotmail.com

All best wishes,

Karin J. Robinson
(Former) Americans Abroad for Obama Regional Field Director
(Current) DAUK Executive Committee Member
(Future?) Vice Chair of DAUK?
_________________________________________________________
www.obamalondon.blogspot.com

President tells Mayors to spend wisely....

Well, as Karin highlighted with pleasure, we've now got a head for the new Office of Urban Affairs. And you may recall that last week I was wondering aloud about how Mayors will be held accountable when it comes to ensuring monies invested in Recovery are well spent in our cities. Though the devil is always in the details, one thing is for sure - systemic change always needs leadership from the top. And I'm pleased to be writing today that we've certainly got that in terms of the messages getting out. The President recently spoke to the United States Conference of Mayors and stressed that the emphasis on greater transparency and accountability in terms of the public spend is going to be pushed down through the chain of command. He said: “I want to be clear about this: We cannot tolerate business as usual -- not in Washington, not in our state capitols, not in America’s cities and towns.” The Mayors have been warned.....

See the New York Times coverage for more details.

Office of Urban Affairs? I Like it Already

I wanted to publically thank Veena for her informed and informative posts on urban development.

In good news for us city folks, Obama has just appointed Adolfo Carrion, a former Bronx Borough President, to head up the newly created Office of Urban Affairs. In addition to his long service to New York City, he happens to have a Masters degree in Urban Planning, so it seems to me like we should be be in pretty good hands here.

More than anything else, after an election cycle in which the Republican VP candidate felt perfectly comfortable descibing the (majority of) people who happen to live in urban areas as "not real Americans", it's nice to see these issues are going to get some much needed TLC.

The Road to Recovery - where will it take our cities?

With the signing of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the White House also set up Recovery.gov to promote accountability and transparency. A key principle underlying the Recovery is that 'Programs meet specific goals and targets, and contribute to improved performance on broad economic indicators.'

Here's what I'm wondering: what will be the performance indicators for U.S. cities? What are the criteria for success at being a sustainable and equitable city, economically, environmentally and socially? How will we know the sum of the parts - the systemic outcomes of the various initiatives aimed at Recovery. The business world always says 'you can't manage what you can't measure' - exactly what are all our urban Mayors being held accountable for? And how will we know how well they are doing? This is important, because the President Obama and Vice-President Biden have emphasized how urban areas are at the heart of the economy. If the economy is going to Recover, then knowing how well we are doing in cities is key.

Can the U.S. learn from Great Britain's approaches to cities? Generally speaking, the London-based Centre for Cities thinks 'yes, it can!' Specifically, I hope Federal policy-makers look around both across different U.S. cities and abroad to consider how we can measure success when it comes to urban recovery and renewal. It is one thing to be fueled up and ready to go on the Road to Recovery, but we also need to know where we are going.

Confidential to Mitch McConnell...

I know a lot of folks who would really welcome "a dramatic move in the direction of indeed turning America into Western Europe," on account of it's longer life expectancy, higher literacy rates, lower rates of teen pregnancy and obessity and the fact that those millions of newly unemployed would still have health care.

Partisanship and Bipartisanship

So our President has made a solid effort, bless him, to bring Republican Lawmakers on board - sacrificing some popular programs, and spending a significant amount of time on the assumption that the other side is composed of reasonable people with reasonable concerns. The result has been... less than one might have hoped for. So is he going to keep on with these effort at bipartisan lawmaking?

"I am an eternal optimist," he says, "That doesn't mean I'm a sap."

Quite right. But the less on of this is not that bipartisanship is dead - the message is that we are going to have to do it without Republicans in Congress. Actual REPUBLICANS, however, are another story - right now Obama's approval rating is in the mid 60's. But he only won 52% of the vote - that means that an awful lot of people who didn't vote for him nevertheless are getting behind him and want to see him succeed, despite what Rush Limbaugh says.

So there are an awful lot of folks in the country who are going to support us, even if they never vote for us. Because everybody who has to live in this reality can see that if the economy tanks, it's going to take us all down with it. And those people, some of them even Republicans from deep red states, don't want to see their state laying off teachers, or watch roads and bridges crumble around them, or see their local business go under.

But Congress - well, Congress is another story. And this is where it's interesting to watch these developments from the UK.

Because, you see, here in Britain the Parties operate an incredibly strict system of vote whipping that means it is incredibly rare - newsworthy to a high degree - whenever a Labour MP, or a Tory peer doesn't vote along Party lines. But no one ever criticises the Government for failures of bipartisanship.

And this despite the fact that, arguably, the differences between the parties are much smaller here - in fact idealogically, all three British Parties could fit comfortably within the US Democratic Party. You'd think that this might lead to a lot of bi- or tri-partisanship as philosophically similar groups find plenty of overlap.

In practice, of course, this doesn't happen - for the simple reason that people understand the JOB of the parties is to draw contrasts. The main party not in Government is even described that way - they are the Opposition.

But people don't regret the loss of bipartisanship if (and this is a big if) they feel that the Government is broadly representing the majority in the country. It's when they aren't, such as in the invasion of Iraq, that opportunities are created for the opposition. In fact, with three viable parties in Parliament, it's been a long time since any one party had an outright majority of voters in hand. By definition, they can only represent a majority by coming to some sort of consensus with the voters.

In short, people aren't necessarily looking for leadership that straddles parties, as much as they are looking for leadership that represents voters.

THAT's why Obama is going to continue to find a consensus position on his policies. Not because he expects to win over Republicans in Congress, but because he needs to win and keep voters.