Obama Tries to be Populist, Steals Republican Messages, Provides Cover to Self

So, there are a few things going on that show the Democratic reaction to the Massachusetts Miracle.  I think they warrant a review prior to the State of the Union Address tomorrow evening.

My operational model for looking at the Obama administration has been to refer to the Clinton administration.  From this, we can note the similarities between the two, and what the Obama team, consisting of several former Clinton staffers, has learned from the Clinton years.  So, this is my current thinking.

While the Democrats and the left are trying hard to spin it, they know they are in trouble in November.  They can say, “We weren’t being progressive enough.”  But everyone can read the plummeting poll numbers of both Obama and the Health Care plan.  The wreckage lies in a field of broken promises, back-room bribes, and locked doors.  The Democrats have expended all of their political capital in trying to ram this though, and Obama will now try to appear to move to the center.

Clinton did not see that he was going to lose the Congress in 1994.  He was surprised.  Obama will not make the same mistake, or at least he thinks.  Clinton moved to the center after the congressional losses.  Obama will try before hand.   He will speak some of the Republican’s language; spending cuts, jobs, and the like.  This will be a smoke screen.  His political philosophy and plans are intact.  He’s concerned with survival right now.

So, Obama has proposed a spending freeze.  The left is hating it, the right is laughing about it, and the moderates are being well, moderate. Why say it?  It gives Obama some cover.  It steals some of the Tea Party rhetoric; it tries to cover up the fact that he’s ignored issues important to the people for a full year, and it tried to recapture the massive initiative loss that he suffered when Scott Brown won. He will fail on all marks.  He will alienate his own base.  After a year of Porkulus, Cap and Trade, and Health Care reform, he’s already alienated the Independents, and some verbal trickery won’t change that.  The Republicans and the Tea Party folks already distrust him, and nothing will change that.

To foreword this plan, he has asked the Congress to form a bi-partisan Deficit Reduction Task Force.  The Senate, predictably, has declined the offer.  So, Obama has his rhetorical change, and since he probably knew that it was going to be shot down, the reality of it will never happen.  The Obama team probably sees this as a win, because they can do the talk, without ever having to do the walk.  Then, he can say that he tried, but the Senate and the Republicans stopped him.  This is a joke.  Obama is from the power politics of Chicago.  He’s a natural born arm twister and manipulator.  He has been giving instructions all year.  I doubt that very much has happened without his direction or approval.

So, he stated an idea without any intention of following through on it.

I think an interesting side effect of this might be that Obama is throwing the Congress under the bus.  He’s alienating the liberal base with these new ideas.  The Congress is already under fire from the hard left  for not passing Cap and Trade and ObamaCare.  Obama failed at Copenhagen.  Card Check never got off the ground.  Just imagine yourself as a Democratic Representative or Senator.  Everything you tried, other than the Porkulus, has failed, and the base is angry.  The Tea Party folks showed up at your town hall meetings.  There were stunning losses in New Jersey, Virginia, and Massachusetts.  And now, the POTUS is proposing things that you can’t support, or you lose what little support you might have left with the base.  They are literally caught in between a rock and a hard place.

And Obama?  He’s trying to save his own skin.  Screw everyone else.