Two for the price of one was not a chant that was winning back Reagan Democrats and indies. I'm not even sure if he won many of those back. 43%, that's what he got. When the clear majority of voters do not vote for you, you may be the legitimate POTUS, but it doens't mean you have a mandate for your policies.



No one on the right doesn't think it's an issue, but many of us do believe that the majority of the price increase simply represents all the new options available to keep the average person alive longer and the ill person from premature death. The abuses, well, those do need to be dealt with but the problem with this bill is it didn't address the one nearest and dearest to the GOP and right next to the Dem's campaign coffers - tort reform. Reid, Pelosi, and Obama botched it. There was a mandate for reform, but that didn't mean 'their reform', and nobody trusted a bill that couldn't get a single GOP vote, well, one out of the house who then said no to the senate bill. Lot of complaints about the Bush Tax cuts, the wars, and Patriot, but lots of democrat votes for all of them. Bipartisan doens't mean an equal number, it means convincing around a quarter to half of the other side to come on board. 60 votes or not, everyone noticed the utter absence of even tentative support from any GOP. On something new and untested, people want to know that the opposition at least thinks it might be viable.



When a poll says Bush lost and he picks up 50.7%, the most a POTUS has gotten since his father was elected, it's more an indicator that the poll was wrong.




It isn't hard to demonize trial lawyers, look at Edwards. Anyway, our standard of living doesn't slip by saying 'relative to theirs' because theirs is still lower, and ours has continued to rise, unless you start using funky math to come up with the SoL. The only solid ways to get it are to compare GDP/capita and average lifespan, a lot of those SoL's people produce include weird and bizarre standards with little room for objective analysis. I've even seen people try to get 'percentage of land devoted to parks' in there, which is a legitimate effect, but not realistically measurable, the sort of thing people just cram in there. Has SoL risen, relative to the US's? Sure, yeah, Thank God, not hard to raise your standard of living when you're coming out of a disatrous war that took over a generation to repair and half the land was under communist rule. Now, when some country of comparable size (not Lichtenstein) actually exceeeds our SoL on an objective and not entirely short term basis, sure, then you can compare. Trying to compare and contrast with others when you're number one tends to be an exercise in futility.