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

[joshcryer]

68. It was never "on the table." It was never put up to a vote. It never got out of committee.

It was just theater, it was the most unserious, asinine commission to ever be formed. You look at the policy proposals they made and it was just massively unrealistic, massively stupid, massively shit for brains. In the end it would've actually resulted in a higher deficit, that's just how bad it was.

The low key strategy was a long term plan, so that Obama could get reelected in 2012, and it will work. Obama and the Democrats know that the sole goal of the Republicans is to oust the President. They have been successful at stopping that from happening, with very low key, very strategic approaches to everything. Hell, you look at the Super Committee which basically did nothing. DU was all up in arms about how it was destroying everything. Oh, wait, cuts don't happen for years.

I expect Obama to reuse his populist rhetoric in 2012. Note, I say rhetoric, as far as policy is concerned, Obama campaigned solely as a moderate post-partisan, center-right candidate. If his policy proposals move to the left I will be fairly surprised. It looks like there's a chance for that, but I give it a coin flip at this point.

A moderate post-partisan doesn't have room for messaging, they will agree with both sides on everything, and will in the end try to downplay everything. If Obama was a partisan I would expect stronger messaging.

Myself, I'm waiting for Warren. She'll be a hard core partisan, which the Democrats desperately need.