The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza has a piece looking at what President Obama would do in a second term. He writes: "Obama won in 2008 by seven points. If he manages to win this year, it is likely to be by less than that, which would make him the first President in a hundred and twenty-four years to win a second term by a smaller margin than in his initial election. Whatever a mandate is, Obama won't have one."
Not that that would stop him. Among the possible second term initiatives the article discusses are immigration reform, tax increases, an effort to combat climate change, nuclear arms reduction, "a renewed push for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians," and:
housing reform; the economy is still being dragged down by the seven hundred billion dollars in negative equity from homeowners who are stuck in houses worth less than their mortgages. The problem has bedevilled the White House since 2009, because any of the truly effective solutions requires a version of the awful politics of a bailout: people or institutions that acted irresponsibly will be rewarded.
"Somebody has to eat the seven hundred billion dollars," Goolsbee said. "There's no way to cover up the fact. Either the banks and mortgage holders have to take seven hundred billion dollars of losses or the government has to come up with seven hundred billion dollars of subsidies to cover these costs.
Link via Mike Allen's Politico Playbook.
