Ok folks, it is time to come back to reality here.
Losing August to the Town-hallers and allowing the Media to to trounce all over HCR WAS NOT part of a plan.
Allowing half of America to believe the lies of the Right Wing on Health Care was not some overarching devious scheme to allow the Repubs to reveal how nasty and recalcitrant they are.
When you make a super secret, devious, hyper-calculated, 11th dimensional plan...it is supposed to HELP you, not hurt you.
And August HURT the Democratic efforts at Health Care Reform.
And there is just NO credible, reality based way to spin that it didn't.
The President himself admits the mistake:
"I, out of an effort to give Congress the ability to do their thing and not step on their toes, probably left too much ambiguity out there, which allowed then opponents of reform to come in and to fill up the airwaves with a lot of nonsense," Obama told ABC's Robin Roberts on "Good Morning America."
EVERY reputable political analyst says it was a mistake, The President says it was a mistake, the fact that half of America believes lies about HCR is ironclad proof that it was a mistake.
And yet some folks here still insist that this was "his plan all along!"
no.
it wasn't.
period.
His plan was trusting Baucus to get the Finance Committee Bill on the floor before August. When Baucus didn't the WH team was caught flat footed and the straight up blew it.
As the "Brain Trust" of the Dems almost always do.
I will let one of the most respected political writers in America embellish that point: James Wolcott:
With all the pollsters and consultants raking in fees in Washington, why are the Democrats always fish-smacked by the scale and fervor of viral attacks such as the one being waged against Obama's school address? Any blogger with a working knowledge of how the rightwing pesticide spray tank (the Drudge-Rush-Michelle Malkin-Fox News-NY Post-etc consortium) functions could have war-gamed exactly how the backlash would work--though I think nobody could have reckoned on the sheer lunacy of a Glenn Beck, a volatile X factor in all of this--and yet it's as if the Democratic establishment has its head up stuck in Diver Dan's helmet, stunned and blinded by the churning froth.
There IS no secret plan, really.
There is no brilliant strategy arc with contingencies for every possible twist and turn in 21st Century American politics residing on a Treasure Map in The Resolute Desk in the Oval Office that Axe, Rahm and Barack huddle over and consult with a flashlight and crack the code to policy victory and then implement with a cunning and brilliance not seen since Holmes fought Moriarty at the falls.
REALLY.
There just isn't.
Obama is a VERY GOOD politician. He is. Axelrod ran a GREAT campaign. Rahm is an....well the less I say about Rahm the better.
But they are just men.
That thing Barrack said about being from Krypton?
It was a JOKE.
Really.
We are allegedly a reality based community, and all of this 11th dimensional chess crap is nothing more than a conspiracy theory with NO extraordinary evidence to back the extraordinary claim that Obama has "GOT THIS."
He doesn't. He is having to struggle and adjust and do things like schedule what amounts to an emergency Hail Mary Pass in front of Congress tonight.
NO, he did not have this speech planned back in July! It is a last minute adjustment that is necessary....after having lost August to the Republican spin.
The only folks who have had an ironclad plan through all of this are the Progressive Caucus, who have become the driving force in the HCR negotiations by standing firm behind the Public Option. And of course the republicans....who not even an 11th dimensional chess player could have rationally predicted would go so far, because what they have done was an unpredictable blitzkrieg of IRrationality. That worked.
And if you can't see this, or can't admit it, then you, my fellow Kossak, are NOT reality based.
Really.
Period.
So can we PLEASE end this ridiculous meme now? It does neither the community or the President any good to overestimate him so ridiculously.
NO ONE could live up to the Myth of Omniscience certain Kossaks have woven around him. And no should have to.
And no one, lol, should have to put up with what amounts to a conspiracy theory of such irrational scope.... in a reality based community.
.
.
Stand by him! But remember....he is just a man.