General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: President Obama can easily satisfy and silence liberal critics [View all]patrice
(47,992 posts)Last edited Mon Dec 31, 2012, 02:48 AM - Edit history (1)
If you do, then, by all means, go ahead and act as though you are the ONLY player at the table and demand the cards you want from the dealer, for however much you are willing to put into the pot.
If you don't have the numbers, right! now!, you have to play the political numbers game and understand the roles that others play in that process.
That means that you cannot expect, especially this early, and with a lame-duck Congress, for PO to get those numbers for you, because anything he does telegraphs to your opposition what they need to do or not do to defeat you. Later in the process, after you have triangulated your own position more or less successfully, he could act kind of like a bank for you, if all that has preceded that point supports the possibility that you can deliver the numbers and are a good bet to back against other players, but if he does that too early, before your position has been built with and/or against other players, you can be screwed.
PO's job is to manage the pot/numbers-of-persons ponied up and to deal the cards. Our job is to decide what our priorities are, how to use the cards (our own AND those of others), and how we are going to play this game to get the numbers/votes we need to force Congress to do what WE want them to do.
Congress is our REAL problem, because as corrupt as they are, they represent bodies who vote for or against OUR policies and with the wrong kind of pressure AT THE WRONG TIME they can aggrandize ($$$$$) their positions against ours. From this perspective, it's actually a good thing that PO lead with CPI, it's an issue that speaks to the Republicans' 47%, so he lead with something that produced numbers that they couldn't stand against and he, thus, showed the power of the Social Security & Medicare position. That's a good thing.
And, though I said earlier that I wish all of it were easier, I must say that I actually do agree with the principle at work around a centrist administration: the PEOPLE must go to the PEOPLE to make it work, cut out the middle-wo/men as much as possible. Decide our own positions and then "take it to them".