After today's events, I think I finally understand what Obama is trying to do.
I'm not sure I agree with it, but I think I understand it.
He's willing to sacrifice the present in order to win the future. He's willing to cave and utterly piss us off on the deficit in order to finish off the Republicans for 2012.
The comments Obama made at his press conference this afternoon were pretty clear. A lot of the electorate is awake now since the deals took aim at SS and Medicare, and Obama was talking directly to them. According to the polls, the Republicans are taking the flak for this disaster, and Obama laid today's events right on them. I think it may stick. I think that no matter what happens, Obama may be cementing a Democratic win in 2012 by caving in 2011.
The question for us, I guess, is whether we can stomach this, these tactics, in the short term, if it directed at giving us a Democratic president AND Congress in 2012. It's a high-risk big bet, but he seems to be a guy who wants big, doesn't he?
I've been one of those who truly had given up on him. I saw him as a sell-out and a fraud. I saw something today that made me rethink. I may well be a lot quieter on DK while I fully process this internally.
I'm not sure I believe in 35-dimensional chess games. However, this really now seems to me, in a way I never quite fully apprehended before, to be a long-term electoral game, in which almost any and all interim actions are directed toward a longer-term goal. In other words, to President Barack Obama: There are no battles, there is only the war.
My innards may not survive this, but I wish him (and us) good luck.