Andrew Sullivan: How Obama's Long Game Will Outsmart His Critics

[joshcryer]

66. And how did they "successfully fake being defenders of Medicare"?

Oh, right, the Democrats "failed at messaging."

How about, yaknow, the progressives who allowed the "Catfood Commission (to) cut into (their) GOTV activities a lot"? The completely false, completely fake, completely made up "Catfood Commission" which was composed of basically idiots who weren't expected to get anything serious done. All the Democratic party heads rejected it, and basically laughed it off. Even if it somehow got through committee, it would've never been taken seriously by the House, and it never in a million years would've been able to pass Presidential Veto.

Obama campaigned as a post-partisan, that's what you get when you elect a post-partisan. If he doesn't change his rhetoric the same shit will happen again, he will "reach across the isle" and "get ideas from the other side" and you'll wind up with asinine proposals that must be rejected.

Again, their goal is to oust Obama. They wanted him to sign off on the "catfood commission" so they can say in their political ads "Obama approved a commission to cut Social Security and Medicare."

Yeah, uh, commissions do that shit, but that's not the same as saying "Obama approved cutting Social Security and Medicare" which is precisely what the "progressives" intended to express. Meanwhile Obama will, to the independents, center right people, say "I am strong on deficit spending that I even put things I wouldn't normally put on the table, up there. And the Republicans said that they'd gut everything. Fun times."

He'll get reelected fairly easily. What's important is getting back the Congress and electing progressive candidates, and especially, getting out the vote. GOTV is particularly important because the poor, downtrodden, minorities historically don't vote as much as white, privileged people, so it requires a strong push to get them to go vote. Without any of this petulant "the Democrats are not different from Republicans" garbage, which is precisely the meme that Republicans pushed in 2010 which resulting in their getting out 9% more votes than we did because we sat home or got distracted over poor understanding of political gamemanship.