As John Cassidy notes in The New Yorker, President Obama has been on a roll since his party took another midterm shellacking on November 4th. Far from cowering from the onrushing conservative bull, he’s toying with it, working it up into a blithering rage.
If the midterms were essentially a mass outpouring of elderly white male angst, and I believe that they were, there couldn’t be anything more infuriating for this crew than to watch the president announce that he simply isn’t going to make it a priority to deport millions of Latinos who are in the country without legal authorization. That announcement is coming next week (most likely) and talk of impeachment hearings and lawsuits have already begun.
If this wasn’t angering enough, President Obama announced a replacement for Attorney General Eric Holder, whose race has been a constant source of consternation for the very kinds of people who disproportionately turned out and determined the outcome of the midterms. But these folks got no relief because Obama’s nominee is not only black, but she’s a woman. It did not go over well.
If racial fury was the most salient message sent by the midterm electorate, the second clearest message was that do-gooder liberals shouldn’t stand in the way of raw corporate power. The coal industry routed their opponents nearly across the board, and the consensus seemed to be that the electorate had just demanded that the Keystone XL be built, starting today. The president has threatened to veto that effort and instead announced an understanding with China in which neither coal nor tar sands have much logical future.
In another move, the president came out strongly in favor of Net Neutrality in a way designed to pressure his own administration not to buckle to the big media providers.
You can call these decisions what you want, but they are being received as a giant thumb in the eye. The Republicans are talking like the president is standing in the Capitol Building with a can of gasoline and a pack of matches.
Even Harry Reid is panicking.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Thursday that he has urged President Barack Obama not to take any executive action on immigration until December, amid threats from Republicans that such a move could derail funding for the government.
“The president has said he’s going to do the executive action — the question is when he can do it. It’s up to him,” Reid told reporters on Capitol Hill. “I’d like to get the finances of this country out of the way before he does it.”
Reid added that he has expressed his view to Obama, but ultimately “it’s up to him.”
For the segment of the population that actually bothered to vote on November 4th, the feeling of impotent rage is so intense that comparing them to a bull and the president to a toreador doesn’t even begin to describe it.
Folks, our country is largely in the hands of incredibly enraged and aggrieved people. This is what happens when decent people stay home on Election Day.
Luckily, that didn’t happen in 2012.
