Where Obama Went Wrong

[pbrower2a]

More likely than not, after Tuesday night, the Republicans will take the Senate. They also will control the House, most Governorships, most state houses, and SCOTUS. The Democrats will still have the White House and the Federal Reserve (thanks to Obama). Still, with most Democrats still hesitant to attach themselves to him, Obama will be pretty lonely with his 41% approval rating. So where did he go wrong?

First of all, I feel that he failed by not trying hard enough to reach out to the GOP and achieve bipartisan compromises, such as a "grand bargain" on deficit reduction; failing to approve the Keystone pipeline, and threatening to take unilateral action on immigration. Whether the Republicans would ever have agreed to work with him is not the point; the main thing is that he should have looked willing to work with them, rather than as a man who has given up on Washington.

There was never going to be a grand bargain. The best that President Obama could do was to make offers to a phantom GOP, moderates who no longer exist.  When he had majorities in both Houses of Congress (but for only two years) he could govern much like FDR, his model for dealing with an economic catastrophe.

What the Republicans wanted was someone to accede to rescuing Big Business from its own foibles quickly -- only to turn on him at the first opportunity because they would have the resources for buying the political process.    

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The Republicans will, in their audacity (which may succeed or fail) bring it back. They will support the most repressive regulation of sexuality outside of the Islamic world, perhaps even going so far as to attempt to ban contraception. After all, the only possible growth in a stagnant economy is from population growth that forces more real estate construction, highway building, energy consumption, and urban sprawl -- not to mention higher prices and lower wages.

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The Republicans will surely tie any military activity to shifting taxes from the rich to the non-rich, eviscerating unions, degrading the environment, outlawing abortion and same-sex marriage, and who knows what.  

We are in for the worst two years of American politics since 1859 and 1860.

[pbrower2a]

Obama makes the same mistake all liberal Democrats make. He doesn't care what his policies actually do to people. Instead, Democratic policy exists solely to buy elections. When it backfires, they dig-in their donkey hooves, and they refuse to fix what they've done. To make matters even more absurd, they insist that letting the Americans keep their money is the genesis of all of our problems, not terrible government spending programs. Strange because people keep less of their money each year, and terrible government spending spreads like malignant cancer.

Buying elections? What about the Koch syndicate and (as of 2015) dynasty in all but name.
Operating behind the scenes by buying TV time to flood with Orwellian propaganda may not be how the Romanov family did things, but the Koch family has learned that being as visible as the Romanov family is ultimately suicidal. 

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As meaningless as the Republicans adopting as their logo an animal that equals Man in intelligence while using the most anti-intellectual rhetoric possible to appeal to the least-learned voters. So much for symbolism. (What I say about elephants is true; elephants even have the same lifespan as humans, respect for the elderly, and a family structure much like ours!)

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The only way that the Republicans were going to solve the issues of employment were quick-buck rip-offs and cutting wages to levels near starvation. No thanks!

Unemployment is now below what it was at the peak of the Dubya-era boom in real estate and lending fraud.

[pbrower2a]

To make things simple I will put the falsehoods in red.

You just got to love the revisionism in this thread.

So let me get this straight:

A President who has:

1. Repeatedly lied to the American people.
2. Repeatedly kowtowed to radical Islam to the point that genocide is the natural order of things.
3. Has continually surrendered our place in the world in the name of "peace" and made us the laughingstock of the free world.
4. Is buddy buddies with Vladimir Putin.
5. Uses the IRS to attack organizations that he disagrees with.
6. Solution to the border is to throw open the gates and call anybody who thinks we should have a little security a "racist".
7. Tried to make the 2012 election all about gay marriage.
8. Made unending venomous attacks on his opponent in that election that are not fit to be heard in a billiard hall much less a presidential election contest.
9. Uses taxpayer money to fly his airplane to Ireland for a golfing tour while drinking his Guinness while Joplin, Missouri was reduced to rubble from a tornado.
10. "Solution" to the Ebola epidemic is to appoint a political strategist with no medical experience to head the "Ebola Task Force",

has just made a few "little mistakes"?

Yeah. . . right!

Wasn't that easy?

[pbrower2a]

What hurt Obama in the long run was the Democrats performance in 2010.

He expected the best from people that he had no cause to trust.

See also Benes in Czechoslovakia in 1948.

[pbrower2a]

The American electorate had its role.