Obama is "betting the ranch."

 

President Obama is betting that he can "have it all."  He has chosen to press hard on issues in which it is likely that he will lose badly and become a lame duck long before this usually occurs in 2nd presidential terms:

- Guns.  It is transparently obvious that the president as the head anti-gun person wants severe restrictions on gun ownership in the United States.  His allies in this matter frequently slip in public speech and mention that what they want now is just a first step.  The widespread deception involved in the propaganda against gun ownership involves the mis-stated results of polling.  Examples:  The supposed 90% of Americans who want more inclusive sales background checks - Yes, they want that but what kind of background checks? The supposed 40% of gun sales that are unchecked, yes, but what sort of sales are those?  The implication in the propaganda is that these are sales conducted by unlicensed commercial sellers operating on the fringes of gun shows.   This is untrue.  Such chicanery has confirmed  gun owner belief that whatever legislation is passed this year, it must be held to rigid minimums.  This view will prevail and Obama will be forced to accept that.  That will weaken him.

- Immigration.  A compromise is possible, but any provision in the bill that creates a veiled amnesty will cause it to fail in the House.  The notion that a mere statement on the part of the DHS that they have a comprehensive plan for border control should serve as a trigger for a quick beginning of "the path to citizenship" will cause the bill to fail.  That would weaken Obama.

- Foreign Policy.  We have the spectacle of John Kerry traveling the world attempting to dictate behavior to one and all.  Israel, Turkey, Palestine, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, NE Asia, Egypt.  How absurd!  How mistaken this is as to the true nature of international politics.  This process is bound to fail and the failure will weaken Obama.

- Obama's Budget.  Chained CPI is the least of the issues that Obama's base has with this document.  BHO has revealed himself as someone who is quite willing to abandon the ideals of the Democratic Party.  This will weaken him.

"I am the president, clothed in immense power!"  "The fate of mankind rests in our hands!"

Obama's problem is that he lacks Lincoln's power, a power fortuitously given by civil war to "the great emancipator."

No, he is much more like Grant in his second term.  pl

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/with-domestic-legacy-in-lawmakers-hands-obama-considers-his-options/2013/04/13/9067a1e4-a38b-11e2-9c03-6952ff305f35_story.html

Comments

[DH]

This will enable Hilldog to run as the anti-Obama who will clean up the mess.

[r whitman]

There is a cultural shift happening in the USA on guns, gays, immigration and marijuana. The tradional country club and business Republicans are deathly afraid of landing on the wrong side of these issues. Obama will probably get some sort of bill on guns and immigration, enough to call it a victory.

Foreign policy is a wash out. We have lost our "street cred" with the retreats from Iraq and Afganistan.

Who knows what will happen on the marijuana thing but it is getting some state political play.

[William R. Cumming]

Obama is trying to raise the undoubted low ranking among former Presidents. Perhaps the real question is how he is perceived among voters and whether a 100% black man or woman [Is there such a thing in America?] becomes President in the next 100 years!

I would suggest he should not rely on his drone wars as enhancing his legacy!

Like Clinton, George W.Bush and many others he was totally unprepared for the job IMO! Disclosure: Voted for him twice. My votes often not for a candidate but against another but bottom line is can they govern no matter how limited their skills and competence!

[Will Reks]

I don't think Obama will get anything near what he wants but he'll take what he can muscle past Congress and pretend its a huge victory.

This guy is primarily concerned with his legacy in terms of what Wash Post and NYT columnists have to say about it.

[505thPIR]

The United States may be "ungovernable" in any cohesive way.This could be a long-term state of being. Perhaps it was always meant to be in some fashion? The population, demographics, communications technologies,economics, factionalism and other entropic forces have truly reached a tipping point??

[jerseycityjoan]

About guns and immigration --

It occurred to me recently how odd it is that with all our guns, we were, in effect, successfully invaded by millions of foreigners over the past 40 years.

Think about how helpless we weren't and how helpless we acted.

I am not saying, of course, that we should have shot and killed people.

But how did we allow a "free for all" to occur? -- one that has transformed this country's demographic makeup and will require almost all of us in the future to accept a smaller slice of the American pie than we'd otherwise have had?

[John]

Didn’t we lose our “street cred” during and especially after Vietnam? Or was it our supporting the Mujahedeen against the Soviets, then leaving and letting them morph into the Taliban and Al Qaida? Or supporting Saddam Hussein against Iran, then reversing against him? Was our pullout from Iraq any worse than our invasion?

Obama’s foreign policy may be mostly impotent. But let us hope he does no harm, like has been done before him.

[Tyler]

"wrong side of the issue"

Yeah, cause I'm sure stirring up flyover country by flooding them with foreigners and trying to seize their guns is going to end real well. Basically cowards being cowards to continue their idle hedonism in the service of Mammom.

As far as your cultural shift, I'd say that its happening but not in the fantasy islander make believe style you seem to have convinced yourself of. The attempt to dissolute the ties to country by the Left in the form of ethnic greivance policies and flooding the nation with foreigners has wrecked the idea of a greater America and caused those to withdraw into their smaller communities.

We are more 'insular' and less trusting of outsiders and the idea that we owe loyalty to the Imperial Capital from District 12 because someone says so. The cultural shift you speak of is people feeling more attachment to their communities than our current mandarin class who swoops in from afar and attempts to tell you how to live.

[Tyler]

More cowards forthcoming who will hollow out the country. Did anyone see Fort Sumter as the powder keg of the Civil War? Will this presidency be seen as the definitive 'beginning of the end'?

[turcopolier]

JCJ

"Think about how helpless we weren't and how helpless we acted. I am not saying, of course, that we should have shot and killed people" meaningless, we could have killed them all at the border or shortly thereafter. we chose not and her we are... pl

[William R. Cumming]

Jerseycityjoan! We are willing to drown Haitians but not Cubans.

[jerseycityjoan]

But killing people was never an option, nor should it have been.

We have many other options, didn't use them and most people didn't complain.

One of the big obvious (but mostly unasked) questions about recent American history has to be why did we put up with so much that we didn't have to?

[Jose]

No, he is much more like Grant in his second term. pl

IMHO. this is all a gamble for the House in the next election cycle. There is no ideology to BSHO, just hubris about accomplishments and goals.

[Edward Amame]

I wanted HRC in 08, but am not sure she could have fared any better.

[C L]

BHO strategy is simple & taken directly from the republican outrage machine.
If he can raise enough 'outrage' against republican opposition to minimal gun control, immigration, environment, judges, marriage equality, women's rights, infrastructure, etc... he will be able to get a larger voter turnout for the midterm election on issues, as opposed to the usual low 'party line voters' turnout. This is a menu of issues for dems/independents to deploy against the right, to goad on the outrage machine which has destroyed the republican brand & party, by turning off their moderate supporters. He doesn't need their votes - just that they don't vote. In a way it is vote suppression by means of persuading republican moderates not to support their out of touch candidates.
He's not looking for their votes - just that they sit this election out.
As to Lame Duck, he has been one for the last two years and will continue unless the house majority changes.
The senate is set up for rule changes if Dems keep it after the midterm. The filibuster rules will be strongly amended since Republicans reneged on their promise of toning down use of filibusters in exchange for enactments of cosmetic changes to filibuster rules by majority dems at the beginning of the session. Fool me once...
As to Kerry, he is doing the introductionary rounds any Sec of State does but with a bored press corps who will look to pounce on any hint or comment. He is perfect for winding down military intervention, a fascinating lightning rod for right wing foreign policy angst, this is the man who the rest of the world see as standing up to the military/industry complex over Vietnam.

In short - the bet is: Can republicans lose the house

[different clue]

What does Obama want? I believe he wants to be the "grand Historic Democratic President" who weakens and degrades Social Security and Medicare. And in his budget he officially said he wants to sell the TVA to private buyers/investors. http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2013/apr/10/obama-administration-plans-strategic-review-of/?partner=yahoo_feeds
Why does he want to do this? The prospect of millions of private payoff dollars after leaving office? A hatred for the New Deal and a desire to be the President who finally destroyed its last remaining achievements? I am not sure. But I think this is what he wants more than anything. He has tried over and over to set the stage for cutting Social Security in order to set it up for eventual destruction. Perhaps he wants to destroy the Democratic Party itself from "within and above".

There is a blog called Naked Capitalism which analyses financial and economic affairs in the same detail that this blog analyses military and diplomatic affairs. That blog has long tracked Obama's multiple efforts to shield financial sector people and institutions from any meaningful investigation and regulation, to try engineering the cutting of Social Security over and over, to make the Bush Tax Cuts as permanent as possible under cover of seeking certain token tax increases on "the very richest", etc.
The tragedy is in how many Democratic officeholders now support Obama's anti-New Deal agenda because he is their "Party Leader". I wonder how many of them share his desire to repeal what is left of the New Deal? I know Senator Durbin supports cutting Social Security right along with Obama. I offer the term "Catfood Democrats" for anti-New Deal Democrats who share Obama's agenda. Wouldn't it be richly ironic if the Republican Party becomes the successful defender of Social Security under pressure from its older constituents and from its desire to deny Obama a victory even if they would have sought that very same victory under a Republican President?

[mbrenner]

Permit me to take the liberty of using this thread to call your attention to the story in the NYT Sunday Magazine today by Mark Mazzetti that purports to detail the Raymond Davis affair and its aftermath. I suggest to the Colonel that he open a thread on this not because there are dramatic revelations, but its graphic description/ reminder of the utter stupidity and incompetence of the US government (especially, in this case, the CIA) in its (mis)conduct of the GWOT and related matters is mind boggling. Clearly, the sources of it are not being addressed; we are and will continue to suffer mightily from leaving the nation's well being in the hands of these types of people - bozos at every level.

[fred]

I think you attended too many political science classes. I'm a lifelong Democrat who is fed up with the BHO machinations. Why exactly is he cutting Social Security? That's just one of may principles abandoned in the name of executive power and the ever so important legacy. I'm not the only dem turned off either and if it keeps up I will vote and work for Republicans next time out

[fred]

You mean we weren't helpless as in we could vote out the congressmen who allowed increasing imigration without restraint or boycott illegal employers? Certainly you don't mean we should just kill people out of hand because we own firearms (some of us anyway)?

[Eliot]

I can't say I'm unhappy, really. Obama failure means inaction, and I think that's a win in the greater scheme of things. I've seen too many well intentioned reforms make things worse, or simply fail.

I think Obama's ambition speaks to his cultural insularity. He doesn't understand the other half nearly as well as he thinks. Speeches, ad campaigns, extended trips across the country - they won't make a difference if the idea is a nonstarter.

[Bill H]

This is the guy who got the "health care reform" bill to be known as the greatest legislation since FDR freed the slaves, or something like that. He is the guy who "ended the wat in Iraq," notwithstanding some trivial agreement between Bush and Maliki which actually ended our troop presence there.

He will get some relatively toothless background check legislation and will become the "greatest gun reformer" of all time. He will get a legislated version of his "dream act" executive order and become history's greatest immigration reformer. He will "end the war in Afghanistan" and become a great peacemaker, and remember that he already has a Nobel Peace Prize.

But on the budget I think even his spin, and that of his Obamabots, cannot save him. I think he is screwed.

[William R. Cumming]

There is no way the Republicans can lose a Gerrymandered House in 2014!

[bth]

Meaningful reform of filibuster rules was blocked by Carl Levin, not by the Republicans.

[harry]

No such thing as a 100% black person in America.

I hope Obama has demonstrated to Americans that you cant tell a man's "politics" from his color. I think the thing I dislike Obama most for is riding the black vote so heavily and then betraying it so comprehensively. But I guess ultimately its up to the voters what kind of suckers they want to be. The first election I can understand but not the second.

[harry]

He is cutting social security cos he is a neocon first. He has never been a Dem. People just projected that onto him. He is pro-Obama, and that means its about what these policies mean to his power. prestige and money. Nothing else matters. The other problem is that he is a second rate mind. He cannot see the strategy for the tactics. Everything is weak analysis and short term thinking. Its whatever is fashionable among the "think tanks", provided the policy will attract cash sponsorship from some rent seeking contributor.

Ultimately its all about corruption. A type of corruption that is become endemic throughout the US. The identification of self-interest as equivalent to legitimate national interest.