As long as President Obama doesn’t sell arms to Iran or inopportunely soil a frock, he can turn lame duck to flame duck by broiling the GOP over their partisanship obstructionism. The POTUS can shift the debate enough to build momentum for the 2016 races.
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There should also be pushback against the meme of “Obama’s failed policies.”
What policies of Obama’s were allowed to be put in place from 2011 on?
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It’s too bad we don’t get to elect or choose our media/reporters as they are as guilty as anyone for our party’s loss. There is no way (other than the obvious gerrymandering of the house seats) that we should have lost the senate
Notice you hear nothing about ISIS or Ebola now that the election is over. I hate the press. They are worthless.
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It’s not naiveté he displays. He is far too brilliant not to know this but what choice does he have but to keep trying to work with them. There is no other choice and as President he has to keep trying no matter what and no matter how frustrating it is to him and us
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Such a ridiculous comment!!!
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There was a Democratic victory in Michigan which no one is mentioning, but it’s a ray of hope on this bleak landscape. Gary Peters, Democrat, won the Senate seat against a female candidate named Land. The president appeared with Peters in Michigan, so a presidential appearance worked the way it was supposed to.
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Amen and thank you. One thing this President did not and does not have is the luxury of giving the repubs a finger. He is demonized for being a decent man, can you imagine what the media would do to him if he did that? The american public (unlike us junkies) don’t pay attention on a daily basis so they are easily manipulated by sound bites dominated by right wing media
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A Democrat in Michigan embraced the president and he won his Senate seat.
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The ONLY cooperation the GOPigs give a rat’s azz’ about;
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“…As long as I get the policy right, then that’s what should matter…”
It should.
Unfortunately, Republicans only give lip service to meritocracy. They really believe policy should help the advantaged keep their advantage.
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“President Obama said he needs to improve his ability to work with congressional leaders to pass legislation.”
WRONG! Failure to pass legislation is the fault of CONGRESS. All Obama can do is suggest what should be done or send them a bill but CONGRESS does the legislation and the republicans have not been in any kind of mood to do any of that for 6 years. As evidence of this thinking I submit this from Rush Limbaugh whom a lot of the right wing politicians listen to:
“It is to stop Barack Obama. It is to stop the Democrats,” Limbaugh said on his show Wednesday about Republicans’ agenda. "There is no other reason why Republicans were elected yesterday. Republicans were not elected to govern."
“How can you govern with a president that is demonstrably lawless when he thinks he has to be?” Limbaugh continued. “The Republican Party was not elected to fix a broken system or to make it work. The Republican Party was not elected to compromise. The Republican Party was not elected to sit down and work together with the Democrats.”
(bold is my addition for emphasis)
Limbaugh is repeating what republicans are thinking. So it is waaaaaaay past time for Obama to recognize this.
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Crafty, mea culpa on display, inviting the GOP to consider his ideas as he has for the last 6 years and now, as the least productive congress and senate in history takes the mantel, only to continue the same James Madison (federalist) tactic of usurping majority rule by any means.
His best hope is the bully pulpit and, outside of the 24% who hate the negr_, that will be counterpoint to the money machine of Fred C. Koch’s twin lads and the elderly power junkies soon to be running committees.
Hammer home infrastructure, hit both GOP leaders over the head with it while still being a nice guy. No one does it better.
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Then you’re as deluded as Obama has been. The GOP made it perfectly clear even before his inauguration in 2009 that it was going to engage in historically unprecedented levels of obstruction from the first seconds of his Presidency, yet he spent almost his entire first term fruitlessly trying to engage them in real bipartisanship while they were sticking their knives in his back the entire time.
And even yet he’s still saying he needs to improve his ability to work with Congress, which is now in the hands of ignorant, racist sociopaths. If he thinks that he can actually get any legislation passed through this Congress, he’s still not in touch with reality because the GOP is going to go all-out on impeaching him.
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The racial component to how the president governs and addresses the opposition is important. There’s someone with a mic in front of him just waiting to call him out for being an angry black man. It could be Fatbo, Beck, Orally, you name it, but he cannot and will not have intemperate outbursts because the RWNS are waiting for it.
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Quinn was not a stellar candidate, but I don’t agree that Rauner presented himself as a decent, competent guy. He has no political experience at all and did not present any kind of platform or policies. We have no idea what he will do in Illinois - except that his past statements have said he doesn’t believe in any minimum wage and is in favor of using public education funds to support charter schools.
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It is a little late in the game by now. Besides, if anybody but the President had written exactly the same sentences, the Obama-can-do-no-wrong crowd here would have severely attacked that writer.
Great with the politics part of their job were Presidents like Johnson, Reagan, Clinton, Bush 43 for a while, and possibly Ford, since there was a lot of post-Watergate good will toward him. Also, he was a long term House member. Mostly failures were Kennedy and Carter. Somewhere in between: the rest of the postwar Presidents. I’m afraid that Obama will be rated a failure (mind you, I’m only talking about politics here).
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I’m glad to hear the President accept responsibility but he still doesn’t get it! When he says “…he needs to improve his ability to work with congressional leaders to pass legislation” you have to wonder what strange, little bubble the President continues to live in. I swear, he has to be the most naive President I have ever seen. He has spent 90% of his Presidency wondering just how to get those who hate him and vowed from day one to do everything they could do to destroy him to work with him. It has been a foolish, costly and embarrasing strategy. I hate to say this but our eloquent, charismatic Democratic President (who I voted for) is a real Loser in the leadership department…
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Yet again the Discussion-Facilitator-in-Chief adverts to the process of his lack of effectiveness. George W. Bush never did this, and neither should he.
Angry black man, or elitist pantywaist who cowers and leads from behind?
It doesn’t matter what he does or what he even is, he will get fucked by “Fatbo, Beck, Orally, you name it,” as long as he gives a shit what any of them think.
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Presidents rarely “sell” their policies. They do make it much more pleasant for their members of Congress to support those policies vs. backing off from them. For example, a state may get lucrative government contracts if their members of Congress are supportive. And, members of Congress can be placed in position to “have the ear of the president”. Or, members of Congress can be consulted with on issues. Etc. That is how politics works. Obama spent 6 years trying to be friends with Republicans, but little, if any time trying to get Democratic members to be his friends.
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