The House Republicans’ decision to not allow a vote on comprehensive immigration reform, even though they have the votes to pass it, is going to have political consequences. Because most House Republicans would have opposed the bill, the party would have received little credit for passing it, while it would have exposed fissures within the Republican base and caused outrage among the xenophobes.
In the end, from a strictly short-term political point of view, Speaker Boehner probably made the correct decision. But only in the short term. The divisions on the right can be papered over in the interest of winning the midterm elections, but they will come to the fore with a vengeance when the presidential primaries begin in earnest. Fifty years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Goldwater Party is gearing up for a repeat shellacking in 2016.
But first we need the shellacking in 2014 so President Obama can sign some good legislation in the next 2 years.
We need the shellacking in 2014 to keep surviving. Why do you think Obama will do anything different in his last two years than in his first six? Namely disparage liberals and suck up to Republicans.
I don’t get the deep cynicism on the left. Progress comes in tiny steps. Obama’s been less than perfect but he’s certainly accomplished some real good. The ACA is miraculous. As a divorce attorney, I used to see 50 year old women with conditions like diabetes get booted off the husband’s health policies. If they were lucky enough to be able to afford Cobra, they had 18 more months of health insurance. After that, they stood a really good chance of being bankrupted by medical expenses.
That can’t happen anymore. Now I can steer them toward policies that are both affordable and, for many of them, subsidized. If this were Obama’s only accomplishment, in my book he’d be a hero.
COBRA and DADT were tiny steps. The problem with “tiny steps” is that they retain the systemic flaws that create the problem that requires a patch. The “patch” then masks the scope of the underlying core problem and the matter doesn’t get revisited for decades.
No question that the ACA is a lifesaver for many, but it’s a patch not a miracle.
The ACA is imperfect, but it’s a heck of a lot more than a patch. And I’ll bet that getting health care when it was unavailable to you before can feel like a miracle.
I don’t understand why some people feel they have to dismiss what’s good in order to make the point that it needs to be better.
A commenter on Balloon Juice posted this list of President Obama’s accomplishments a few weeks ago:
√ Regulating CO2
√ Ended the war in Iraq
√ Ending the war in Afghanistan
√ Keep the US out of war in Syria and Iran
√ Repealing DADT
√ Overturning DOMA
√ Raised car millage to 55 mpg
√ Rescued the Auto Industry
√ Prevented a 2nd Great Depression
√ Ended Bush’s tax cuts for the rich
√ Brought health insurance to 10s of millions of people
√ Ended rescission, pre-existing conditions, lifetime caps
√ Fair Sentencing Act
√ Ended gender discrimination in the Military
√ Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
√ Lilly Ledbetter Act
√ Mathew Sheppard Hate Crimes Act
√ Credit Card Reform Act
√ Food Safety Act
√ Eliminated banks from federal student loans
√ Captured bin Laden
√ Reduced Nuclear arms by 66%
√ Provided crucial financing for Telsa’s electric car
I could challenge the implicit assertion of almost all o these claims, but will limit myself to one:
Technically Obama didn’t do anything wrt to withdrawing US troops from Iraq other than comply with the agreement signed by GWB. How’s that working for you? Oh, and the number of troops that he’s sending back into Iraq is now 750.
You think President Obama couldn’t have changed that if he had wanted us to stay in Iraq after he took office?
And for the record, I have no problem with the additional 200 troops the president ordered for Iraq yesterday to help secure the embassy, etc.
Obama did try to change the agreement to extend the deployment of US troops in Iraq. From that I conclude that he did want to stay. So, yes he couldn’t change it although he wanted to. Why do you deny/ignore this?
For the record, the total new troop deployment is now 750 and not 200.
From the Washington Post:
President Obama has authorized another 200 U.S. troops to secure the American Embassy in Iraq as well as Baghdad’s international airport, bringing the total U.S. deployments to Iraq this month to 775.
In a letter to Congress on Monday, his third in the past two weeks, Obama said the new deployments were “a prudent measure to protect U.S. citizens and property.”
I was terribly disappointed to hear the president say recently that he had tried to change the status of forces agreement so we could stay in Iraq. I was shocked to hear that.
He tried to get one, but the demand he made of the Iraqis basically guaranteed they would reject the request. I have no doubt that if McCain had one in 2008, we would still have a very large contingent of soldiers in Iraq.
You can’t have it both ways, Marie.
Your snide “How’s that working for you?” implies that you think the withdrawal of troops from Iraq was a mistake.
Fairer but hardly fair considering that the minimum sentence for crack cocaine compared to powder cocaine was only reduced from 100:1 to 18:1. Not exactly a respect for the science that finds no difference between the two forms of cocaine.
so you would have preferred leaving it 100:1? A step in the right direction is still progress and this was a big step in the right direction
WHY THE HELL ARE MY GRANDCHILDREN STILL UNEMPLOYED WHILE OBAMA PUSHES FOR UNLIMITED WORKER VISAS!!!
Is that clear enough?
Obama is not pushing for unlimited worker visas. That is incorrect.
If you’re engaging in hyperbolic satirical snark here, let us know. It’s hard to tell sometimes. đŸ˜‰
It’s in his immigration bill.
OK, let’s talk facts.
Presidents do not have the authority to author a Bill. Only members of Congress are allowed to do that.
If you want to talk about the broad principles the President proposed for comprehensive immigration reform soon after his re-election, here they are:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/01/29/fact-sheet-fixing-our-broken-immigration-syste
m-so-everyone-plays-rules
You’re welcome to comb through it and prove your claim. I went through the principles, and can’t find it. I also can’t find any public statement from the President or a member of his Administration which reference a demand, or even a preference, for unlimited work visas.
Either you’ve got the goods, or you don’t. If you don’t, please stop with the false claims.
Far beyond the reality or acceptable limits of hyperbole. (And the caps don’t help.)
Although did find this troubling:
Obama to ease rules for foreign high-skilled workers
well, for some people the ACA is a miracle. I even know some of them personally
Already stipulated that it has been a lifesaver for many. If they consider that a miracle, fine, but it doesn’t make it a miracle.
So your opinion is more correct than theirs. Got it.
So now governmental actions are miracles and that’s a valid opinion? Equal to mine that they are demonstrations of self-government as flawed as they may be. What are we a nation of five year olds believing that Santa (or the baby Jesus) brings the goodies?
The reality is that the ACA is just some law; your interpretation is that it is a patch. My interpretation may be that it is a miracle (the divine acting through human agency, pretty much a standard definition of miracle within certain schools of theology); that’s my interpretation. are you going to tell me my interpretation is wrong? on what basis? that’s where you get into the “my experience is normative” area that is problematic.
Beliefs aren’t testable.
But if I believed that all human activities flow from the will of a supernatural being, I’d be looking for a new god. Or not bother to discuss politics at all because god will take care of whatever happens and thus human agency is a fiction and irrelevant.
Will add that if one credits god for the ACA how doesn’t god also get credit for the Iraq War and the financial meltdown? Both of which were initiated by legislation.
well, if you believed that all human activities flow from the will of a supernatural being, so be it. I hope you aren’t suggesting that’s my belief, or that human agency is a fiction, or god will take care of whatever happens, because I certainly wrote nothing of the sort. Extrapolating from what I did say and ridiculing it is not helpful.
I’m not talking about beliefs I’m talking about interpretation of events. Interpretations, however, also are not “testable” but that’s not the point.
Here’s a link to a lecture by Richard Palmer, a guy who is really good in the area of hermeneutics; his book on hermeneutics is great
http://www.mac.edu/faculty/richardpalmer/relevance.html
Responding to your comment above I wrote that your comment is an interpretation, not reality – facts are facts, ok, but interpretation [the ACA is a patch not a miracle] is an interpretation of the facts and not “reality”. that’s my objection. ok, if you want to see is as a patch. some of us see it as a miracle.
as a general observation, I had thought the entire “my experience is normative” thing had been pretty much desconstructed and thrown out by critical thinking in the 90’s. I’m sad to see it reappearing in these threads; makes it very difficult to have a constructive discussion.
Obama’s going to sell us out on Social Security any day now!
He’s doing his best to do so in teeny tiny steps. It’s a tough nut to crack as GWB discovered.
Heard a liberal (he called himself a socialist) caller on Bill Press the other day. He was ranting about how money should be taken from the old age pension fund to shore up the SSI funds because it’s just old white Republicans collecting. Really encouraged me to vote Democratic.
That’s complete BS.
Posts like this are why your opinion gets dismissed as rank cynicism.
So, Simpson-Bowles had nothing to do with Obama? Or did you forget about that?
Guess Trumka and Grijalva can be dismissed as rank cynics as well.
And Obama didn’t support the “chained CPI?”
Guess all liberals are cynics in your eyes.
Or you’re just not well informed enough to note the factual basis of liberal comments.
Simpson-Bowles never even produced a report that it approved, the only thing that came out was the manager’s report which was never a serious policy statement given the Republicans unwillingness to touch tax revenue
Aaaaand you just destroyed your credibility.
See my response to Erik Siegist above.
Sure wish some of you DFH bashers would come back with facts more often and less trashing of messengers.
Thank God the Republicans are there to stop Obama from destroying the safety net!
And I don’t get why reality is labeled “deep cynicism” by partisan Democrats and Republicans. Funny thing about what gets called “deep cynicism” is that all too soon it’s proven to have been correct.
because it’s not reality; it’s your interpretation to which, of course, you are entitled. that’s why we have a discussion.
No discussion is ever facilitated when my position is dismissed as deep cynicism. It’s just permission for those holding a different position not to bother looking at the facts that inform my position.
No discussion is ever facilitated when my position is dismissed as deep cynicism. It’s just permission for those holding a different position not to bother looking at the facts that inform my position.
See, the thing is, we have looked at your (the royal Your) interpretation of events and we’ve found them wanting. This line of argumentation isn’t novel or thought-provoking. You’re not planting a flag and you’re not the next Cassandra. You want to know why your complaints just get dismissed as rank cynicism?
For one, liberals in your vein can only maintain your narrative of ‘the country is getting worse and there’s no hope’ by eliding what was going on in the New Deal Days and deifying Johnson and FDR. Let me tell you, those days were vile and hopeless. Oh, sure, they were better than what came before but you can’t just handwave away the racism, the poverty, and the violence both foreign and domestic. But you have to do this, otherwise you’ll be forced to abandon a huge chunk of your cynicism.
Secondly, as any strategist will tell you, little victories add up to big ones. Why don’t you look at the history of gay rights in this country, one of the biggest success stories in this nation’s history. No one was able to just wave a pen and give gay marriage, but progress happened all the same even against that vile murderous fuck known as Reagan. First sodomy laws were torn down, then gays were able to resist arbitrary jobplace discrimination, then became a protected class against targeted violence, then were able to serve in the military first covertly and then overtly, then adoption + civil union, and now gay marriage. Everything up until that point were small-steps victories but added up to something great.
Thirdly, politics has inertia, especially in a country as ancient as the United States. Even after Reagan conclusively shattered the New Deal Coalition liberals were still able to get some judicial and even legislative victories. As I said in a reply below, don’t mistake unique events for the underlying trend.
I don’t think this is true:
And you demonstrate that with:
First, the dismissal with “liberals in your vein” as if we’re some stupid lump.
Second, with the assertion that the “stupid lump” claims that 1) the country is getting worse 2) there’s no hope 3) deifying Johnson and FDR.
Then the only evidence you present for what has slowly improved is that same sex marriage is now close to being the law of the land. (Not even acknowledging that the recent swiftness of the change was heavily funded by a number wealthy libertarian type Republicans. Or mentioning that it was “liberals” that decried DOMA advanced by the Clintons in 1996) Can you honestly say that women’s access to reproductive health care is better today than it was in 1976? More accessible, more affordable, more choices? It’s not only not better but it’s much worse and that was before the Hobby Lobby decision. But I guess that doesn’t concern you.
True liberals fully acknowledge that the New Deal was an incremental work in progress. And any time any of its provisions, either legal or conceptual, were rolled back made progress implementing the fuller vision that much more difficult. We hate the compromises that FDR made that excluded so many but appreciate that with the proper structure (which much of the New Deal had) adding those left out is simpler than holding out for perfection in the original. That ended up being a correct position for a period of time even if slower than it should have been. And it was LBJ that added the significant new pieces.
Since 1980 it’s been rollbacks. Reducing progressive taxation, reducing/eliminating regulation, cutting social social services and programs. How’s Gramm-Leach-Bliley working for you? Didn’t work so well for all those that lost their houses in the past eight years. Don’t think they would say that things are getting better. How’s the increased student costs for public colleges and universities not worse for the students and the national economy?
What isn’t racist about the US incarceration rate that began exploding in the 1990s? Why isn’t that worse? The latest reports on African American wealth at zero. How is that not the result of racist public policies? Not the overt forms that were endemic during the New Deal era but covert forms. As MLK, Jr. observed the covert forms are actually worse and more intractable than the overt forms.
But people like me are stupid lumps. Yeah, right.
Thank you President Roosevelt and Eleanor, Walter White, Sol Hurok, Harold L. Ickes for this in 1939:
You DO realize that Obamacare was the largest expansion of the American Social Safety Net that did NOT have..
in its DESIGN…
huge swaths of Americans left out.
You do understand that it took a Black President to do that…
Because Social Security left out – BY DESIGN- just about every profession that Black folk were employed in at its creation..
thus, the ramifications are today that my Elders receive far smaller SS checks than they should have because they were working all those years..
You DO understand that the reason 65 was chosen as the age for Medicare, is because Black folks didn’t live to that long, when it was designed.
Obamacare is the first expansion of the American Social Safety Net, that , in its design, does NOT exclude huge swaths of this country.
It took John Robert’s Supreme Court to do that.
I don’t have time for people who won’t even be honest about the President’s accomplishments.
And, won’t admit that President Obama spent his first term cleaning up shyt that originated in Bill Clinton’s Presidency – and I include the financial collapse in that.
Medicare and Medicaid by design included all Americans. Not only didn’t by design exclude Black Americans but hospitals were told in no uncertain terms that they could no discriminate based on race and if they did so, would receive no Medicare/Medicaid payments. The Medicare/Medicaid social safety net expansion was much larger than the ACA. But don’t let facts get in the way of your argument. (And iirc, LBJ was white.)
Age 65 for retirement was how it was defined by the first state based retirement system in Germany. An age chosen because by then most Germans were dead. By the time Social Security was crafted, age 65 had been accepted as a standard retirement age. Seriously doubt that it was subjected to a “we’ll keep that age because more Blacks are dead by then than whites.
Excuse me but I’ve been nothing but honest about the Clinton crap that Obama inherited. OTOH, honest critics of Clinton’s crap, also recognize that Obama has done the least possible to clean it up. Sorry but throwing gobs of money at the banksters and doing little for those that lost their homes to foreclosure, a huge percentage of which were Black Americans, isn’t worth clapping about. Banksters still haven’t gone to jail and reinstating the financial regulations that that Clinton destroyed that set up the conditions for the meltdown (not to mention the theft from poorest Americans) remains undone. Nor have I seen any robust employment policies that would tackle the unacceptably high youth and black unemployment rates.
I need no schooling on the racism embedded in the original Social Security legislation. Nor the long-term ramifications for those workers. (A bit of that was alleviated with Medicaid for indigent Medicare beneficiaries.) But what’s your suggestion for remedying that injustice? Has Obama even made mention of it?
You seem to be under the impression Obama can wave a wand and make stuff happen.
Not at all.
why do you think that Medicare was a NATIONAL program..
while Medicaid is not?
I’m just curious.
Both are federal programs and if I said anything suggesting they weren’t then I wasn’t precise. However, only Medicare is a national program. Fully funded and administered at the national level. Part A, hospitalization, is funded through employee and employer taxes. Part B – D funded from general revenues and beneficiary premiums.
Medicaid is a federal and state partnership program. Federal funding (pre-ACA) from general revenues ranged for states from something just under 50% to somewhat near 70%. Medicaid is administered by state agencies. The Medicaid expansion under the ACA is fully funded by the federal government in the first few years, but states continue to administer the program.
I think it true that small steps can run both forward and backward. I would just assert that few of the backward steps are Obama’s doing. There are a lot of forces at play and most of those backward steps occurred when Republicans were in the White House or due to Supreme Court decisions handed down by justices appointed by Republicans. Obama has been a voice for and a force for good, albeit often in frustratingly small ways.
I’m actually fond of small solid steps as long as they are a piece of the long-term goal/vision and not isolated temporary fixes, particularly if such a fix has easily predictable downsides.
I loathe Obama’s public education policies and Ed Sec. Big steps backwards here.
Loathed his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.
Loathe the expansion of the NSA snooping and drone strikes. The covert funding and activities for regime change in Libya, Syria, and Ukraine.
Oh, and the secret TPP negotiations that has excluded voices other than the elites.
The White House garden is nice. And it’s good that school lunches are focusing more on nutrients and reducing fat, salt, and sugar.
Read my sig and you’ll understand.
correction: cynics are …. who claim they’ve collided with reality; more
“my experience is normative” and it deserves to wither away
As I recall, when the ACA was being written, Congress desperately wanted White House input. Obama refused to state what he wanted only that he would sign whatever they passed, but he was adamant that there be no public option, nor even a vote on a public option and Joe Lieberman had to be happy with it. So the one signature accomplishment was not even really his baby.
In order to pass the ACA into law, smart observers could see early in the process that it would be necessary to have the votes of all 60 Senators in the Dem Caucus, despite the quixotic and futile search for a GOP Senator with integrity. So, asking that Senator Lieberman be taken care of in the negotiations was what we call “smart politics”, “reality” and “vote counting.” Feel free to name your alternative path to ACA passage.
As far as the ACA being “his baby,” our President pounded on his bully pulpit from the time he took office until the moment he signed the Bill into law. Many Presidents had worked with their Congresses on comprehensive health care reform since the early part of the 20th Century, and other than LBJ’s success in getting Medicare/Medicaid into law, all had failed. So I give Obama his share of credit. The Republicans sure have, and then some.
Citations, please, for the highly specious claim that Obama said he would veto a public option which involve more meaningful proof than anonymous sources.
Widely reported on the major political blogs, particularly by front pagers at DailyKos. I don’t have the time (days?) to search for particular citations from years ago.
I didn’t use the “veto” word. I said he didn’t want a vote on a public option. I do recall him insulting liberals at the time. This may imply veto, but I never saw that particular word used. There are lots of other ways that Presidents can threaten. “You know that highway you want? Forget it!” You know that bill you want? It’s dead.” Lot’s of ways. LBJ was a master at it.
I don’t remember that happening at all, and there would be solid evidence online if Obama did as you described here. News started to leak that the public option wasn’t going to be included in the ACA Bill that Sen. Baucus’ Finance Committee would vote on. My memory is that firebaggers started yelling “Obama cut a secret deal the same way he cut a backroom deal with Big Pharma!!!”
Look, the Administration admitted that they cut a deal with Big Pharma; it wasn’t secret at all. There just wasn’t the votes in the Senate to get the public option in the Bill. Read this reporting which was specifically geared to get to the bottom of this question:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/obama-never-secretly-killed-the-public-option-its
-a-myth/2011/11/17/gIQAZQt0UN_blog.html
If you’re looking for the Senators who betrayed us on the public option, look to Baucus, who didn’t work hard/well enough to corral the votes out his crucial Committee; Conrad, who authored the co-op concept which Finance voted on; and sack-of-shit Dems like Ben Nelson, Lieberman, and Lincoln who probably were never going to vote for the public option for their various terrible reasons.
I remember it. You don’t. To google for six year old postings at DKos seems pointless. So, we are at an impasse.
Well, the “impasse” is that you’re choosing to believe something that is not found in the factual record, and deciding that you don’t need to respond to a journalist with integrity who has looked into your claim and found it lacking.
And, your concession that the President never threatened a veto is a crucial one. If Obama wasn’t going to veto an ACA with single payer, then if the Senate had the votes to put it in there, it would have become law.
There’s some things Obama really has done which deserve criticism. His creation of the Simpson/Bowles commission helped support the really shitty rhetorical climate re. the Federal budget which existed during his first term. The Chained CPI proposal for Social Security in two of the President’s budgets gave Republicans more fodder for their propaganda (hypocritical propaganda, to be sure, as no Republicans voted for his budgets). Offering to cut a bad budget deal with Boehner in 2011. Failing to more aggressively and publicly rein in the NSA/CIA/FBI, even in the face of the abuses each has committed. And more.
Why create problems that don’t exist? Doesn’t Occam’s Razor deliver the more likely conclusion that the Senate was the problem re. ACA negotiations? You look at a Senate where we needed the votes of Lieberman, Ben Nelson, Lincoln, Baucus and Conrad and decide that OBAMA must have been the biggest problem? Why would you do that?
Did you really investigate all the front page posts during the whole ACA debates? There was not only one, but many. The front posters were frothing about it for weeks if not months.
If you choose to call me a liar, I’ll return the favor.
I totally believe, and generally remember, that the front page of DKos had people complaining about Obama during the ACA negotiations. I’m not calling anyone a liar. What I’m saying is that a complaint based on perception does not make that perception a fact.
There is plenty in the public record to show there were multiple Senators who were not willing to support the public option. Here’s another one:
“Remember the public option? It was, for many Democrats, their absolute top priority during the health-care reform debate. But they didn’t get it. A handful of conservative Democrats, led by Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, made clear that if there was a public option, they would filibuster the final bill. And so it died.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/03/22/whatever-happened-to-the-public-option/
Filibuster! Now THAT’s opposition!
What, did Obama browbeat former top health insurance executive Ben Nelson and other Senators into threatening to filibuster the public option? That’s a little implausible, isn’t it?
There are plenty of Obama actions to be angry about or disappointed in, without having to ignore all the great things he has done.
“Why do you think Obama will do anything different in his last two years than in his first six?”
Because Obama’s spent the last year + making an increasingly derisive set of statements which harshly criticize, very specifically, the Republicans in Congress? Because he’s been making a series of executive orders meant to move popular policies that the completely dysfunctional GOP Congressional Caucus is unwilling to address?
Your last sentence does not accurately describe the current situation, at all.
We’ll see by 2016, won’t we? But I’m betting a leopard doesn’t change its spots.
We don’t have to wait to the end of his term. Obama is doing things differently RIGHT NOW, and has been doing so for a while. You don’t concede this to be factually true?
No
So you’re staying home and not voting then?
One can only marvel at the political strangeness, if not downright retardation, of this country. The Dems are looking to get bonked (if not annihilated) in 2014 but the GOP will take a shellacking in 2016. All with no change in overall policy positions. OK. No wonder no other country makes much attempt to understand us: it can’t be done.
Yes, mid term vs. Prez election, as though it makes sense for this to be set in stone. Or that one should matter so much more than the other, given the power conferred on the Congress. This whipsawing still will be excessively weird, should it come to pass. Our constitution (as interpreted) has certainly erected a very peculiar form of politics in practice, and one has to say it seems an elaborate political failure in many respects.
The final conservative crack-up and the coming Democratic majority have been so long predicted that it is kinda hard to take the arguments seriously anymore, whatever the tea leaves may indicate. Failed political regimes (like the appalling Repubs) can simply look to survive the next six months, and they can endure a very long time, as they make sure the water warms slowly for the frogs.
The last conservative crack-up (2008) lasted about 6 months, and ended with an unprecedented rout of a majority party in two Congressional terms, with the Repub Supreme Court and the corporate media riding to the rescue. The result was the Great Repub Gerrymander of 2010. I fear an authentic realignment is just another mirage…
The last conservative crack-up (2008) lasted about 6 months, and ended with an unprecedented rout of a majority party in two Congressional terms, with the Repub Supreme Court and the corporate media riding to the rescue. The result was the Great Repub Gerrymander of 2010. I fear an authentic realignment is just another mirage…
Re-alignments don’t happen all at once, you know. It took about 12 years from the start of Nixon’s Southern Strategy before things really coalesced. And 1994 before it was complete. I mean, Watergate + Jimmy Carter made it look like the Emerging Republican Majority was just a frightening but ephemeral dream and that business as usual was going to resume. But as soon as things regressed to the mean the Democratic party was in for a sustained shellacking for the next 25+ years.
You’re making the same mistake that the Democratic Party of 1974-80 did. You’re disregarding the underlying trend in favor of exogenous shocks. Yeah, right now it looks like the Republican Party is able to hold parity or is even ascendant. But the long-term outlook for them is doomed unless the black swans keep coming in hard and fast in their favor. But if the second-largest economic shock in this nation’s history wasn’t enough to have them winning the Presidency, things are not looking good for this incarnation of the Republican Party.
There are a couple of different ways of looking at it. We obviously have an election coming up. If you’re making bets on the outcome, or just observing from the grandstand of philosophical detachment, then you will point out the strengths and weaknesses of each party and try to predict the outcome.
If, on the other hand, you have something invested in the outcome, then you look at the Republican strengths and the Democratic weaknesses as challenges and start talking about how to meet them. There’s no point denying the challenges, because then you’re just fooling yourself, but we all know there’s one way to guarantee you will never win: Don’t even bother trying.
People think the President (any President) is a dictator. A caller on a talk show recently why Obama didn’t just change laws and spend money without even asking the Congress, like they were an advisory board.
True for all definitions of ‘shellacking’ that include a House majority of at least 20 and control of the Senate.
If it happens, 1964 is the wrong historical precedent. There may no even be a precedent for such an outcome. 1958 does come close.
How many people are going to vote for Democrats in 2016 because Republicans didn’t pass immigration reform?
Seriously, I just don’t see it. If they aren’t worried about immigration reform in 2014 with an election coming up, they aren’t going to be worried about it in 2016. The only reason the Republicans may get whooped in 2016 is because a whole hell of a lot of Democrats are still looking for a A̶m̶e̶r̶i̶c̶a̶n̶ ̶M̶e̶s̶s̶i̶a̶h̶ President who will come and make everything pretty and better. And you only get to vote for the A̶m̶e̶r̶i̶c̶a̶n̶ ̶M̶e̶s̶s̶i̶a̶h̶ President every 4 years.