Posted on 11/17/2014 6:17:05 AM PST by Kaslin
In boxing parlance to "take a dive" is to throw a fight by pretending to have been knocked out thus letting the other guy win.
Even before I read this Lede by Maggie Haberman over the weekend on Politico.com:
"Former President Bill Clinton said he was surprised by the Democrats' lopsided losses in Senate races in this year's midterm elections,"
I had thought something was amiss with the election results.
You know the mantra I have been repeating: "When you're on the wrong side of that kind of wave you know you will lose almost all the close ones, and you will probably lose a couple that were never even on your radar."
About the only close election Democrats won was the Senate race in New Hampshire. The two surprises were the Governors races in Maryland and Illinois. I wasn't that precise in the run-up to the election, but I could feel the disturbance in the Force.
When then-President Clinton and then-Speaker Newt Gingrich were locked in the shut-down battles of 1995-1996 (after the GOP had taken control of both the House and the Senate) Clinton had two advantages:
First, he is probably the best combination Politician/Policy Wonk we've had in the White House in our lifetime.
Second, his opponent was Newt Gingrich.
Back in those days few Americans had no opinion about Newt. Most didn't like him, but his supporters were passionate. All his opponents had to say was "Newt is in favor of this" and fifty-something percent of Americans were against "this" no matter what "this" was.
In the end the White House won the shut down fights by narrowing its message to four words: Medicare, Medicaid, Education and Environment. No matter what we said, no matter what argument we made, they responded with Medicare, Medicaid, Education and Environment.
The Obama team has probably studied that period and has decided to employ the same strategy. The difficulties President Obama is facing are: He's not a politically wily as Clinton and he's not pushing back against someone named Newt. He's pushing against someone named Boehner and another guy named McConnell.
I'm pretty certain that if you put the names John Boehner and Mitch McConnell on a piece of paper and asked people walking into a grocery store just about anywhere outside the Washington, DC metro area, a pitiful few could identify both.
If the Democrats kept control of the Senate the message would continue to be muddled with the GOP running the House.
But, the Obamas have won two national elections, so they understand that. The solution? Find a way to push back against The Republican Congress.
It is much cleaner to have Republicans in charge of both chambers so the White House message team can simply point up Pennsylvania Avenue and blame "The Congress" for whatever ills need Presidential medicine.
Why else would Obama say, as the Washington Post reported, "I am not on the ballot this fall. But make no mistake: these policies are on the ballot. Every single one of them."
Or, why as reported by The Hill newspaper, would he have said the "lawmakers avoiding him on the campaign trail were 'strong allies and supporters' who have 'supported my agenda in Congress'"?
Both of those statements cause wails of political pain among Democratic candidates from Florida to Alaska.
The Washington Post also learned, following a post-election session with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's chief of staff that Obama had refused a direct request from Reid as early as last March "to transfer millions in party funds and to also help raise money for an outside group."
"We were beating our heads against the wall," the staffer said.
Over the next few weeks we may see President Obama not just draw a line in the sand, but raise the Constitutional equivalent of the Berlin Wall between the Congress and the Executive if he (a) signs an executive order to make sweeping changes in U.S. immigration policy and (b) vetoes the Keystone XL Pipeline bill if it gets to his desk.
Neither the fact that that the Senate is still under the control of Harry Reid nor the Keystone Pipeline bill is being pushed by Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu will make a difference to the White House. They will spend the next two years - starting right now - running against The Congress.
The only way Obama could be sure to have a clear running lane for the next to years was to have that Congress under the control of Republicans.
To make sure of that, Obama had to take a dive.
It doesn't matter how inept the national leadership is in the party. Politicians on the state and local level will be re-elected if voters are satisfied with their performance.
Nonsense, indeed. The only way for this political calculus, as Galen describes, to work would be for the Clinton/media machine to have Obama’s back in the next two years. I don’t think that’s going to happen.
I predict things are going to get pretty nasty as the long knives come out, with the media starting to attack Obama to bolster Hillary’s chances, and for Hillary to run against Obama. Her only hope is to run on an “I’m not Obama” platform, with the media’s help.
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3227833/posts
Personally I think instead of worrying who the next Republican nominee for president will be, I think we should concentrate on how to increase our majority in the House and the Senate in 2016. You can count on that the rats will try to get both houses back again in 2016 and we must not let that happen
27 posted on 11/17/2014, 8:25:22 AM by Kaslin (He needed the ignorant to reelect him, and he got them. Now we all have to pay the consequenses)
“It is much cleaner to have Republicans in charge of both chambers so the White House message team can simply point up Pennsylvania Avenue and blame “The Congress” for whatever ills need Presidential medicine.”
Easiest way to solve this is take every bill that died on Harry Reid’s desk, break each bill down to 1-2 pages tops, and send one bill a day to Obama.
Simplify it for the American people, because we are idiots and don’t understand. And say that openly. Get the bill on Obamas desk and let him veto it.
Bill number 1. The seal the border bill. 1 page. This bill is the premise of all immigration reform. Until it is signed into law and executed, there will not be a Bill number 2. For republicans, this is it. Big announcement. Take out ad space, commercial time everything. All the fanfare and pomp of, “we have a workable immigration reform bill that has everything in it from the gang of 14’s bill.”
Now give it to Obama, one piece at a time, in a logical sequence, al, the while saying that the bill has been simplified so the stupid Americans can understand it.
Obama is a psychopath who doesn’t care about anything except Obama so don’t believe this theory really holds water.
“I meant to do that” bump
“Did Obama Take a Dive?”
‘Many times’ - Reggie Love
GOP policy/strategy guy.
I think he has over extended...
In cases like this apply Occam's Razor
The simplest solution is correct
Obama sucks.
And this is basically the republican party in action. I believe it is not that they are stupid, but that they are willfully participating with the democrats and have been doing so a LONG time.
As we all know, paragraphs are your friend.
Some writers have lots of friends.
He’s not crazy like a fox.
But, like Nero, he is in his own little reality bubble of plastic-wrapped isolation.
And, by the way, he’s been running against Congress for 6 years. Even when it was run BY DEMOCRATS, he was running against Congress because he did not lead nor direct them. See the book Leading From Behind. He was pushed BY CONGRESS (Pelsi, Reid) into the Obamacare compromises he could not decide between, for example.
Obama tanked the dems but not for the reason the author states. Obama has such an outsized ego that he was angry at the dems for publicly running from him. So, in his petulance, he tied the dems to his legacy nice and tight and made sure they would pay the price for crossing his ego.
“His insurance, Biden, can be removed for medical reasons.”
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Reasonable people decided long ago that Biden would be no worse than Obama and quite possibly not as bad in some ways, as for his intellect he is addled by alcohol but probably still would score higher on an IQ test than Obama, he is just not as instinctively deceitful as Obama.
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