Why Obama is Kicking Ass

[SoDesuKa]

Obama is kicking ass because the Democratic Party simply has a better handle on political reality these days. Democratic ideas are actually vetted; they aren't simply kicked from think tanks to legislators the way Republican ideas are. Obama plays what he calls the long game which is to say he sees opportunities before they reach popular consciousness. That's why some pundits are accusing Obama of ensnaring the Republicans in the Ryan budget trap.

Here's the argument:

Did Obama sucker punch the GOP? By letting the Republicans go first, led recklessly into the breach by Paul Ryan, an Ayn Rand fan who could be counted on to go much further in abandoning the social welfare safety net than most Americans are willing to contemplate, Obama made room for the Democrats to launch a vicious counter-attack: Republicans want to cut taxes for the wealthy while reducing healthcare coverage for seniors. It's nasty and partisan, sure, but it also happens to be true. The battle lines for the 2012 election instantly snapped into place, and Republicans are suddenly fighting from a surprisingly weak position. If that was the plan all along, then maybe this Obama "long game" talk has some meat to it.

http://www.salon.com/news/budget_showdown/index.html?story=/tech/htww/2011/05/23/obama_medicare_suckerpunch

Democrats are winning the current political chess games because their thinking is several moves ahead. Republicans are lazily awaiting the return of some Ronald Reagan figure, and they don't know what they're going to do if one doesn't appear. Did Obama lay a trap for them? No he didn't. If the Republicans hadn't run off all their intellectuals, they might have seen the Ryan budget disaster coming. Now they are stuck with a cast of characters that simply isn't up to speed. It serves them right.

[LoZoccolo]

1. Obama is a strategic genius. K&R. n/t

[RKP5637]

5. I think he is too! I know sometimes I get frustrated, but Obama is

a strategist and angles his next play. He's very very clever IMO!
K&R!!!

[Tarheel_Dem]

2. K&R (nt)

[dionysus]

26. cornel west says...

THEM'S FIGHTIN' WOIDS!1!!

[Tarheel_Dem]

28. Aw Jeez, dion, how 'bout some warning next time?

:scared:

[SDuderstadt]

29. dionysus! You madcap!

Where you going with that Afro?

[juajen]

3. He's also a very good speaker, had loads of charisma and a

killer smile, not to mention his stunning wife and beautiful children. He's almost perfect. God, but I hate the almost.

[Uben]

4. But you have to admit Obama has had help.......

......Gingrich, Palin, Bush, Cheney, Limbaugh, Beck, McCain, Coulter, Cheney......with a cast of idiots like that, how could he not prevail?

[RKP5637]

6. That's some lineup isn't it. A few of them you could take, but this

is like Whack-A-Mole with this republican lineup. One jumps up after another.

[Tx4obama]

8. And Bachmann and Brewer and Walker, etc. n/t

[Old and In the Way]

15. Seriously, though....what kind of person would champion Republican politics?

criminals, grifters, and idiots. I really have a hard time seeing anyone with a serious desire for public service running as a Republican.

[SoDesuKa]

19. Being Elected to Congress is a Big Career Boost

Even if you only win once, having held one of 532 Congressional seats looks very good on your resume. In fact, even getting the nomination opens up a lot of doors.

I knew a guy in college who later got the Republican nomination for Congress even though he had no chance of winning. But he made all his campaign appearances, was subsequently defeated, and went home. He also pocketed $65,000 in campaign donations. I don't know if that's still possible.

He got all kinds of career visibility from running for Congress. And needless to say, he played it up big on his resume.

[MadHound]

7. Democrats may very well be "winning the current political chess games",

But they, along with the 'Pugs, are losing badly when it comes to helping the people in this nation, in the world, and governing according to the wishes of the people.

It isn't a game out here in reality where tens of millions of people are unemployed, where the middle class is eroding every single day, where we are involved in three illegal, immoral wars, with more waiting in the wings.

This isn't a game, and the Dems had better damn well start acting like it isn't.

[mucifer]

9. Yes!

[SoDesuKa]

18. Chess Game

Zugswang refers to a situation in chess in which there are no good moves, that is, every possible move leads to catastrophe. Obama has maneuvered the Republicans into Zugswang. He's solicited their input on every important political development, and they've responded by refusing to cooperate. Even Mitch McConnell, a political veteran who should know better, says the Republican goal is to defeat Obama.

This leaves them wide open to the accusation that they're not responding to the needs of the nation as a whole. They've gambled that they have the press on their side, but Obama is patiently running out the string. Eventually the Republicans will be forced to show nobler intentions than the ones they've shown.

Republicans also have to avoid mistakes of their own. However, the Ryan budget shows that they can make unforced errors, and that one is a beaut! The Democrats are going to kill them for threatening to take away Medicare. The Republicans are truly in Zugswang. They can't back up and they can't go forward. Best of all, they can't stay put either. Anything they do will get them clobbered.

It didn't happen by accident. Obama simply out-maneuvered them.

[MadHound]

20. Again, this is fine and dandy when you are playing a game, chess or political,

But in real life, it is having real consequences, killing and impoverishing real people.

It is time for politicians to stop playing political games and instead start looking out for the welfare of real people.

[PatSeg]

27. Republicans had too much power for too long

They got arrogant and careless, believing no Democrat could possibly be a threat to them. Oh well, nothing lasts forever!

[Solomon]

24. Annnnnd Here Comes The Rain!!!

I was wondering when somebody was gonna rain on the parade. Thread lasted longer than I thought before the rainmakers checked in. LOL

[MadHound]

32. What you call rain, I call reality

This isn't a political game we're playing, but real life. That you think it is somehow a game, with winners and losers tells more about your outlook, and none of it is good.

[Angry Dragon]

10. It is not a fucking game

there are lives on the line and our politicians are only concerned about how it looks on paper, don't care how many lives are lost because of their lack of concern. The democrats are not kicking any ass, if they were then all you would hear is a whole lot of yelling from the other side.

The People are losing ground in most states and the democrats for the most part say very little about it. If the democrats were really fighting you would not be able to listen to any news without hearing about the destruction of the regressive party.

It is not a game

[WillyT]

11. Check Out Post #66 In This Thread:

Tells you everything you need to know....

Link: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1160831

:banghead:

:wtf:

:beer:

:smoke:

[Angry Dragon]

12. I went there

I must be missing something in the translation

[WillyT]

13. Well... Let's Just Say I Thought One Had To Be At Least 18 To Vote...

:shrug:

:hi:

[SoDesuKa]

16. Games Are Not Trivial

I used the word "game" as von Neumann and Morgenstern used it in their pioneering book The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. That's the original source for such terms as "zero sum" and "games of perfect information."

A game is any contest in which the outcomes are determined by strategy choices. This certainly includes political situations in which one side has the upper hand over the other. Obama is making better choices than the opposition, and he also considers the impact of present decisions on future choices.

Did Obama trap House Republicans into voting unanimously for the Ryan budget? He deserves a lot of credit if he did indeed do that. I suspect, however, that his skill in picking off stray Republicans is the reason they all voted as one. It appears that there was plenty of internal dissent among Republicans before the vote on the Ryan budget. Why didn't it surface?

[MadMaddie]

31. They are losing ground in those states because of Republicans

not because of Democratic leadership. They have been losing because voting districts have been gerrymandered.....


You are right this is not a game, it is the Democratic party and it's leaders finally understanding that the more they let the Repugs look like they have control the more the Repugs back themselves in a corner. Now they are in that corner they are screaming like the bitches they are that the Dems are mean and sneaky.

The Democratic party has a lot to fix within itself but this is all on the Repugs...

[Shagbark Hickory]

33. You took the words out of my mouth.

Consider it a petty larceny.

[jaysunb]

14. I disagree.

Did Obama lay a trap for them? No he didn't.

The trap was set in 09 when Obama rolled out HCR. Each step since has been carefully thought out and by August 2012, the Republicans will be totally branded by their own behavior.

Longball, gives change a realistic chance.

k&r

[SoDesuKa]

17. Message Control

Republicans have used message control as a force multiplier. They all get the word, and they reinforce each other's statements. It's clean, but it has a downside, namely, that it depends on the quality of the message. If it's a bad message, they all go down as one.

The Ryan budget is a colossal mistake. Scholars will puzzle over that one for the next twenty years. How did such an unpopular proposal get out of committee? And why were the Republicans foolish enough to vote for it unanimously?

They are now in disarray, as the Democrats use the Ryan budget vote against Republicans in vulnerable districts. If they break ranks now, it's every man for himself. In other words, a rout. The Republicans need a new infrastructure. Karl Rove was over-rated, and now they're finding it out. It's fun to watch.

[Fumesucker]

21. They started believing their own lies..

That's for some of them, for those who still know better they have an irrational and extremist base who will primary their ass in a New York Nanosecond if they don't vote for every crazy wingnut idea.

I think for a lot of people the wingnut agenda sounds great, until they realize that it's not a cannon pointed at other people but a grenade that's going to hurt _them_.

[SoDesuKa]

22. Message Control Fails in the Wake of the Ryan Vote

Republicans have stuck together for fear of being primaried but in view of the Ryan budget they realize they'll have to do something. Sticking with Ryan is a sure loser, but defecting from the party line offers at least some hope.

Yes, Ryan is that big a catastrophe. It's the end of the Republican party as we know it. If Republicans all hang together as they've traditionally done, the Dems will emerge from the 2012 election with a huge majority. Books will be written about Ryan - investigating how a group of shrewd political professionals let it all get away from them.

The pressures to defect will be enormous. Republicans in contested districts will bolt; they'll have to.

[TheKentuckian]

23. I don't get how the opposition doing what they have wanted for decades is a sign of strategic genius

The TeaPubliKlans willingly did it to themselves (if anything of weight is "done to them) and it wasn't Obama but their own ideology that did it.

Unfortunately, it is We The People who are losing the long game. Our civil liberties are being destroyed and redefined as best case scenario suggestions, our infrastructure heads toward collapse, our piece of the pie shrinks, our safety net becomes more frayed, our wages our being fucking destroyed, our wealth funneled to a few, we have generational debt that is being transferred to the working class and poor, our environment continues to be ravaged, we are planting the seeds of radicalism in the middle east, we are continuing to destroy our own industrial base, and the multi-nationals hand is being strengthened.

It isn't helpful to long game to have ceded so much ground to to the right wing's ideology. I see no useful function for the TeaPubliKlans, they could undergo total existence failure today and the spectrum has moved so far right that it doesn't substantively matter. Kent Conrad, Max Bucus, and the like are already as conservative as about any past mainstream Republicans and are just as much pawns of corporate power.

We are winning in a similar way to a kid that sells 10k worth of candy bars for a school fund raiser wins a $2 yo-yo.

Over what time frame are we foretelling victory and what will it look like for the people and our habitat? Does it involve taking cre of our infrastructure deficit before all hell breaks loose? Does it mean broad prosperity and social mobility? Does it include our human rights being reasserted? Does it mean a real public education for every child? Does it mean affordable, high quality health care for all? Does it mean folks move from tent cities and cars into homes? Does it mean peace?

Does victory include accessible potable water and fair air to breath? Does it mean that instead of a very short term set back like the maximum result of the right wing's crimes over recent decades, where they come back crazier and deeper into their failed ideology they actually will be sent into the wilderness for however many decades it takes them to at least to pretend to be reformed?

[RandomThoughts]

25. And I am due beer and travel money, and many experiences

What else did you expect would happen.

[ljm2002]

30. "vicious counter-attack" ... "nasty and partisan"... ?!?!?

From the article: "Obama made room for the Democrats to launch a vicious counter-attack: Republicans want to cut taxes for the wealthy while reducing healthcare coverage for seniors. It's nasty and partisan, sure, but it also happens to be true."

What I don't get is how the Democrats' response is considered vicious or nasty? Excuse me? When they are pointing out what is undeniably true. Republicans DO want to cut taxes for the wealthy, and the DO want to reduce healthcare coverage for seniors.

Geez.