Reply #95: Not so much.

[jeff47]

"Your BASE sticks with you"

No, you're confusing "your base" with "your sycophants".

Your base is allied with you, in that you share mutual goals. However, if you don't feed your base, it withered away. And since each base voter is worth about 2-3 'independent' voters, (due to their donations, volunteering and GOTV efforts) a withered base is a very bad thing.

Why do you think R's are always catering to their base despite the unpopularity of their base's positions? They're feeding the base.

"As he fights the GOP taking 2 steps forward and one step back, all they seem to want to discuss is the one step back."

Because that's not how he's moving. He takes 2 steps back, and then shuffles forward slightly.

Obama has pre-compromised on every significant issue, resulting in a much weaker result than was necessary. In addition, this weakness ties his hands later on. For example, if he had asked for the proper amount of stimulus funds, it would be easy to blame the current economic state on the Republicans for cutting it down to $700B. Since he only asked for $700B to start with, he's taking the blame for the 'failure' of his stimulus bill.