Word: voting
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Working with Russia to block Iran's nuclear program will not be easy. Obama will have to do much better than he did when trying to win Russian support for Chicago's Olympic bid: he called Putin two days before the crucial vote, when Moscow was already committed to Rio, and offered nothing in return to the rather unsentimental Russian Prime Minister. Sadly, this too little, too late approach to Moscow on Iran's nuclear program may force the Administration to make precisely the decision it hopes to avoid: between a nuclear Iran and a new and dangerous...
...President Barack Obama did what he does best: he gave an inspirational speech meant to rally recalcitrant House Democrats. Many in the room credited Obama with swaying the last of the fence sitters. "A few members that were leaning no told me afterward that they'd been moved to vote yes," Representative Rob Andrews, a New Jersey Democrat, told reporters after the meeting...
...bending the arc of history," a phrase he first invoked in his election-victory speech a year ago before 125,000 people in Chicago's Grant Park. And though there was cheering and chants of "Fired up, ready to go!" this was no easy sell for Obama. The vote came the same week as Democrats lost the Virginia and New Jersey governors' mansions, and a day after the Labor Department reported a 26-year record unemployment rate of 10.2%. Preaching altruism in such a climate to politicians bent on self-preservation is tough. In the end Democrats lost...
...early to really celebrate. Obama's speech, after all, was strikingly partisan, lambasting the GOP for doing nothing more than "saying no, stopping progress, gumming up the works." That change in tone from his fruitless attempts at outreach 10 months before in the run-up to the stimulus vote made it clear that Democrats are now resigned to going it alone both in the House and the Senate. Majority leader Harry Reid has moved away from the lone Republican still negotiating on health care, Maine's Olympia Snowe, and toward a plan to pass the bill relying solely on Democratic...
...House vote showed just how hard it is for congressional Democrats to pass anything on their own: the bill was nearly brought down by last minute objections from 64 pro-life Democrats who wanted to tighten restrictions to ensure that no federal funding of abortions could possibly occur as a result of the reforms. Likewise, in the Senate, Reid's toughest task in the coming weeks will be to convince moderate Dems to vote for a bill that includes a public alternative to private insurers in order to help keep down costs - a provision that Republicans have criticized...