Chuck Todd on Meet The Press offers a reason for Chained CPI in budget proposal

[jazzimov]

80. The bully pulpit has proven useless,

although he has taken his speeches directly to the American public in many cases, which indicates that he's taking the position of "vote the bums out!"

But I'll try to explain this move - I hate to use another "game" metaphor, when the other side views the whole thing as a game and you can't make any progress unless you either win them over or persuade others to "vote the bums out" you more or less have to "play the game". Unfortunate when you're talking about people's livelihoods, but in some cases you have no choice.

This time, imagine a card game of Rummy. It's your turn to discard. You look at your hand, and you don't want to give up any of your cards, but you must. You do have one card that the opposition has "Claimed" that they want, but you know it's a bluff. so, you play the card knowing that you can pick it back up later, and call their bluff.

Or, if you are playing one of the many card games involving a partner, if it's your turn to discard and you have a card you want to win, play it so that your Partner can trump and save the card.

So, Obama played the CCPI card, knowing that the Republicans wouldn't want it and also knowing that other Dems would save it.

Because there is no Presidential election for him to win. But, there is the 2014 election and Dems need to GOTV to win back the House, and maybe gain a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. If that is accomplished, then we can push through a true Progressive agenda and the only people we have to worry about are ConservaDems.

Again, Obama may have played the CCPI card, but he never had to worry about Republicons accepting it. Again, I regret that they are "playing games" with people's lives - but they are, we have to accept the reality or be doomed by it.