Obama's Next Two Years
By Daniel
Greenfield
SultanKnish.Blogspot.com
The midterm elections are coming
up, and they spell defeat for the Democrats. All that's left to be decided is
just how bad that defeat will be. Poll after poll shows an American public that
stolidly rejects their agenda and no matter how many stories the media churns
out about Republican extremism, they view Obama and his agenda as radical and
extreme. Obama's magic is gone and the axis of change has turned away from the
Democrats. Meanwhile an insurgent Republican wave is sweeping across Capitol
Hill. But what does all that means for Obama's next two years?
Obama and his backers counted on having a decisive majority on their side in
order to ram through their agenda. Now they will have to rely on bipartisanship,
on building coalitions with Republicans to get the legislation he wants through.
And while the Republican party lacks a Newt Gingrich to negotiate terms as it
did in 1994, it does have the Tea Party movement looking over the shoulders of
Republican representatives and senators who might be tempted to jump on the
bandwagon. When the Dems can't even get a Maine Republican Senator to help them
with repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell, even the most optimistic of them has to
get a sinking feeling about what the next two years are going to be like.
The national mood in general, combined with insurgent populism has rattled
politicians on both sides of the aisle. Republicans are afraid, but so are many
Democrats who have to run in actual elections, rather than farcical
gerrymandered districts where elections are decided by community leaders,
democratic clubs or union bosses. So while Charlie Rangel isn't going anywhere
no matter what he does or who runs against him, parts of the West and Midwest,
areas that helped give the Democrats control of congress have turned into
hostile territory.
After making a last stand on ObamaCare, a defiant
middle finger to Middle America, their courage has failed because it is clear to
them that trying to fight this, the way the Japanese fought WW2 will just end in
disaster. The DREAM Act and Don't Ask, Don't Tell show how the same politicians
who had been determined to ram through ObamaCare at any cost, don't have the
stomach for it anymore. Instead they threw them up as political gestures to
elements of their base, before running for cover. And no one is fooled by it at
all. But once the lame duck sessions are gone, it will be time to talk turkey.
The Democrats faced this same dilemma in 1994. And the show remains the
same. So do the talking points. Declaring the recession over, over and over
again. Blaming the Republicans for legislative gridlock. Calling the voters
spoiled children. We're seeing it all come back again. But this time it's a
slipperier problem. Because the most recognizable Republican in the opposition
is Sarah Palin, who doesn't hold any elected office. Clinton was able to
successfully turn Gingrich into the face of Republican stonewalling. But it's
hard to assign blame to Palin for anything that happens in congress. And trying
to turn John Boehner into the next Gingrich is a losing proposition. Palin has
become associated with the insurgent populism of the Tea Party, and while she
may well have plans to run for President, that just gives her a lock on the
"Change" brand, without any of the responsibility.
Obama's people know
that without an actual economic recovery that they can experience as fact,
rather than take on faith, he is almost certainly doomed. And his own
visibility, combined with the viability of a populist opposition, will make it
hard to shift the blame. Democrats are still stuck on labeling their opponents
as extremists, but that's just another way of giving up the "Change" brand. The
new Democratic slogan, "The Change that Matters" tries to fix their brand as
that of moderate and reasonable change. Which is exactly the wrong slogan when
the public is angry and frustrated with the arrogance blowing out of Capitol
Hill.
Soros and his ilk could buy Obama the election, but all the liberal
billionaires in the world can't buy him every election. Just like we couldn't
refight WW2 every decade. Especially when Obama and his supermajority didn't
have much to show for it. That means Obama has to switch gears or resign himself
to one long vacation while he prepares for 2012. The latter is not an
impossibility. Obama's egoism and childishness are difficult to underestimate.
He has very little patience for people who don't agree with him. And unlike LBJ
or Clinton, he lacks the wheeling and dealing skills of a good horse trader.
With Reid out, and Pelosi cracking up, and no one all that eager to take their
place as the public face of failure, it's possible that we will have real
gridlock.
On the other hand if Obama does listen to his advisers, what we
may have is Faust and the Devil instead, with Republicans auditioning for the
Faust spot. For all that the Tea Party may be a power, once congressional
Republicans have a sense of power again, all bets are off. It was easy enough to
be the Party of No, back when they were out of power. But it's much harder to be
the Party of No, when getting power means having to say, Yes. The Tea Party may
have terrorized some liberal Republicans, it may have even lost some seats, but
the gain is preventing another bipartisan sellout, which without a Contract with
America and firm positions by a committed Republican leadership would be almost
a certainty.
In the next session there will be Republicans in the Senate and the House of
Representatives of a type that the Democrats never seriously thought they would
have to deal with, whose positions predate Bush and Reagan, and go back all the
way to Goldwater. It's a brand of politics that hasn't been seen in D.C. much,
because it's hostile to D.C. and what it stands for. And their presence alone
will shift the balance of the Republican party, making former conservatives seem
positively liberal by comparison. And this time the definition of the center
will change in a new direction, sliding right for the first time since the early
days of the Bush Administration.
Obama's
old economic advisers are being thrown out, as everyone predicted. This may mean
a ramping up of the anti-corporate rhetoric that is the closes the Dems can come
to populism. But corporations are already tried of being Obama's fire hydrant,
and he needs their money for 2012. Or it may mean an attempt to actually pull
back, akin to Lenin's "two steps forward, one step back", and go business
friendly. Pushing domestic protectionism, taking on NAFTA and cutting some of
the crap out of ObamaCare that they put in there, could win Obama and the
Democrats some points in the swing states. But that would require junking carbon
emissions regulation, and pull back on the coal bashing, and a lot of their
legislative agenda.
With few good choices, Obama may just decide to stay
out of it. His ability to craft legislation is non-existent, he's a bad diplomat
and gets frustrated easily. And when it's on the outs with the public, the White
House usually turns to foreign policy to shore up its occupant's credentials.
But Obama doesn't have much of a menu when it comes to foreign policy
either. The public has already seen him do a world tour, what more is there to
offer. He could try tackling one of the world's crisis regions, but that would
just make him look like one of the ex's, Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton, who have
tried to stay relevant with conferences and charity work, in the hopes that
people will forget their actual terms in office. Bush already did Africa, but
Obama's brand was supposed to be the Muslim world. With just one problem. The
Muslim world doesn't much care about Obama.
Obama's weakness means that
his only leverage is over American allies. Which is why countries like Israel,
Columbia or the UK are afraid of Obama-- while America's enemies laugh in his
face. Something Russia has been done openly of late. That means aside from photo
ops, all Obama can do is badger and weaken our allies. But to what end?
Obama can pick another economic fight with the UK, over tariffs or oil spills,
but it's the international equivalent of a cafeteria food fight. A tariffs fight
might play okay in the rust belt, but it's not going to be much of a home run.
Obama has been aggressively pushing Turkey's entry into the EU, but that only
sets European teeth on edge. When Obama and Cameron champion Turkey's entry into
the EU, France and Germany stiffen up. And whatever does happen there, the odds
of Obama being able to take the credit are negligible. And even if he did get to
pose as the man who got Turkey into the EU, this wouldn't exactly score points
with many Americans.
There is the War on Terror, but that's not something
Obama wants to be too associated with. It's something he tolerates, because he
doesn't want to face the political consequences of shutting it down completely.
So he lets the former Clinton people play out the old "Smart War" game, using
drone attacks and intel, while letting the Afghan war run down, because it was
Biden's idea for winning points on national security, by focusing on the key war
in Afghanistan, rather than Iraq. And beyond his own insecurity with the
military, Obama believes that appearing to be the man behind the war machine,
would trash his appeal for the Muslim world.
That doesn't leave much,
except the old standby, Israel. That country has been the longtime whipping boy
of leaders who want to look like Gandhi, while looting like Attila. Pressuring
Israel into appeasing terrorists is supposed to score valuable points with the
Muslim world, and peace conferences make for good photo ops. A White House
occupant is less likely to get called out for a peace with conference with a few
rounds of golf thrown in, than for just the golf alone. Of course when the
economy is bad, tinkering with another peace agreement won't win much applause,
but it will keep Obama above the fray and looking like an international leader,
instead of a lazy lame duck.
Even many liberal Jews got their backs up over Obama's unprovoked assault on
Israel earlier this year, but even conservative Jews have generally been
conditioned to accept some amount of pressure in the context of a peace
agreement. Which means that what earned Obama a backlash when done outside the
context of negotiations, when it just looked like bullying, will instead be made
to look like statesmanship now.
But even there Obama is letting his
chips ride, letting Hillary Clinton have her moment in the middle eastern sun,
but always ready to snatch the credit from her, if there is any to be had. The
Peace Process is a longer shot than ever, because despite having the most
Anti-Israel Administration in the White House, since Sadat was organizing
Egyptian Muslims to pray for Jimmy Carter's hemorrhoids after Camp David, there
isn't a whole lot to work with here. No one is under the illusion that Abbas can
offer a final status agreement that means anything, which means the negotiations
become just another chance to bully Israel, with no serious hope of gain. The
PLO state that Clinton backed no longer exists, in its place is Hamas run Gaza,
and rabbit run militias in Ramallah. Israel can be forced to cede more
territory, even parts of Jerusalem, but it can't cede governance, where there
isn't any.
So what's left for Obama, but more of the same. More speeches,
golfing, vacations, globe-trotting tours, pressure on Israel, blame the
Republicans, rinse and repeat all over again. Yet despite the rumors, Obama
isn't prepared to walk out in 2012. There's too much at stake for the left, and
for himself personally. Charity work and penning your memoirs is fine for Carter
and Clinton, but Obama is too detached for the former, and he's already written
more memoirs than most rock stars. His next two years will be a compromise
between fighting for popularity and fighting for his radical agenda. Which way
the compromise will swing, will help determine if Obama gets shown the door in
2012 or not.
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