Obama's terrorism speech: seeing what you want to see

[Poll_Blind]

42. The problem with the President's hollow rhetoric is each time he backtracks, he...

...puzzles many, irritates some, and entirely alienates a few of his base.

Not an atypical political maneuver. This is politics. You play that card when you have to because it's most definitely not a "Get Out of Jail FREE" card. It has consequences on the base although, from my example, it usually isn't the end of the world. However, the frequency with which the President plays this card lessens his credibility and the credibility of the Democratic party, overall.

With 2014 coming up I have yet to see a Democratic politician who is still openly embracing the actual policies of the President and some commentary that Democratic House members are going to have to distance themselves from the President's policies in order to get the best turnout.

So I just think, not only is the President not frequently moving a left-wing agenda forward, he's not helping get those votes out for (especially) Democratic House reps, where we need that control the most.

His "Give the cold shoulder to Democrats while courting Republicans in hopes of winning them over" maneuver has failed, failed, failed. The man is locked in an untenable position, trying the same losing ideas over and over and fucking over again. The Barack Obama of 2008 before the election had vision. And during the campaign in 2012, for instance, on Afghanistan, the President has a similar "resurgance" of vision.

He led himself into lame-duck-hood since about 2010 and somehow just decided that he was going to keep doing the same things which weren't working and expecting a different result. His most ardent supporters are frequently reduced to simply trying to pass off the office of the President as being essentially helpless, a daisy head of good intentions blown to the wind. Which, I suppose, would have been convincing had America not suffered through the effective (for the Republicans) Bush years and how high that effectiveness was, even with Democrats controlling both the House and the Senate.

Again, the need to downplay the importance of the Presidency is the single biggest indicator that the President, although genuinely beset by an awful legislative impedance by Republicans (and even sometimes Democrats), has also failed on a deeper level.

PB