General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The filbuster sell-out kind of explains Obama's "surprisingly liberal" inauguration speech. [View all]onenote
(42,700 posts)The assumption seems to be that Obama knew that the filibuster rules weren't going to be changed so he went out and made a more aggressively liberal speech since he didn't have to worry about having to follow through.
Why, exactly would Obama do that? He's not running for anything ever again so he doesn't need to make bold liberal pronouncements as a means of drumming up support for his own electoral prospects. Moreover, it does nothing for his legacy to make a bunch of bold pronouncements and achieve none of them. It only makes his presidency look weak and unsuccessful.
The only remotely possible scenario in which the OP's theory makes any sense is that the President and Reid conspired to have the President set an ambitious agenda and Reid to allow the repubs to use the filibuster to frustrate it in order to build a stronger case in 2014 for electing Democrats to the Senate, with the hope of eventually recapturing the House (a tall order for 2014 given gerrymandering). That's a pretty attenuated bit of gameplaying.
Anyway, maybe there is another explanation and if so, I'd be happy to consider it.