I studied Judo for four years with a South Korean Grandmaster who among his credentials holds the silver medal in Judo from the 1984 Olympics.
Observing the President over the last 3 years, both during his campaign and as President, I have repeatedly been struck with the impression that what he's doing is a classic Judo technique. He knows his strategy often months before it becomes apparent to us or anyone else. And how he achieves his goals is so familiar to me as a student (and sometime instructor): wear your opponent out, and then turn his own weight and momentum against him, and get out of the way.
Your opponent then handily defeats himself. Over the fold for today's lesson.
Republicans' Strength
The political strength of today's GOP comes (or used to come) from their goose-stepping uniformity on key issues. Once they had perfected their party unity techniques (either egged on or assisted by outside groups like Grover Norquist's anti-tax movement), they then managed to get their agenda through no matter what the public opinion polls read by simply refusing to negotiate. This has been their pattern for approximately five years now, ever since they were handed their asses in 2006.
How It Weakens Them
A party that never negotiates eventually gives up the bipartisanship pony. A party that never backs down no matter how unreasonable their proposals are goes on record, eventually, for being people who cannot be reasoned with. In addition, the Republican Party, being one of the world's most well-funded groups of bullies, were formerly able to use a classic bully technique of attacking viciously and then claiming that any reprisal, no matter how purely symbolic, was an unjustified attack on them. They played the victim card. They played it constantly. And of course using Rovian techniques honed over the 8 years of Bush, they constantly attacked the strengths of their opponents and turned them into weaknesses. That, by the way, is NOT how Judo is done. I will make it clear by the end of this article why what the Dems and Obama are doing is different.
I think that the Democratic Party has been quietly, slowly, cautiously, helping the GOP wind their own noose ever since the end of 2010. Allowing the GOP to win negotiations on this and that and the other issue. I was at first outraged when they caved on the Bush tax cuts, but then the political logic of doing so was perfectly within keeping with Democratic principles -- and by the way an excellent long-term strategy setup for what just happened today. Caving on the Bush tax cuts showed that the Democrats would compromise. Keeping unemployment checks rolling showed that the Democrats would compromise in order to protect regular Americans. Nobody was hurt or disenfranchised or thrown out of a job by letting the GOP have their way, and again, I repeat, it showed that the Democrats could compromise.
The GOP were then let loose to enact their hideous, anti-worker agenda. Or at least try. Almost immediately they revealed their hand by voting into law the excreable Ryan plan, which would have left $9 trillion in deficits as far as they eye could see. Reid forced a vote on the plan in the Senate, and the GOP, absolutely blind to the dynamic that put them in power in 2010, now had a record of voting in near-lockstep across both chambers of Congress to end Medicare.
The Democrats mentioned this and didn't back down from it, but it takes time for things to penetrate to the greater electorate. Months. And months have gone by and the Ryan plan is as unpopular as it ever was. Republicans, whining like bullies do, have complained that it is unfair to even talk about the Ryan plan. And I think they thought they'd gotten past that issue because Obama was, characteristically, holding his cards and holding his tongue.
In a Judo match, the only goal is to either force your opponent into a hold from which he cannot escape, or flip him onto his back, which ends the round immediately. I think in some interpretations there is a half-flipped-onto-your-back definition which is half a point, but regardless either the match is over right away, or it drags out while one of the Judoka tries to wear the other out. Since Judoka wear a gi with a thick collar and sleeves, many of the moves involve grabbing those parts of the opponents' clothing and using them to gain leverage.
Beginners see how the game is played, and almost uniformly I found as I was teaching folks how to get started, that they would grab hold of the collar of my uniform and tug me back and forth, trying to knock me over. Once you've done Judo for several months you get a sense of how to keep your balance and see where the momentum in a match is going. So I would let these beginners, many of them teenaged boys, shake me like an abused baby. Because the other thing you gain only after months of study in Judo is stamina.
After I'd let the kids wear themselves down, I would then engage my one or two move strategy, and I would win very quickly. I would then explain to the poor kid what I had just done, and how he could improve his technique by saving his strength.
This is what Obama has done. The bully pulpit can be worn out. The public can get tired of a President. And being bold and effective is a matter of choosing the time and place of your battle. The Republicans are being bold, all right, but not effective. They are grabbing Obama by the lapels and shaking him and dragging him all over the mat, heaving this direction and that, and they are wearing their welcome out with the public. We are tired of hearing rude, ignorant, callous, insensitive bastards storm up to the Fox News cameras and shriek their nonstop demagoguery. They say the most unbelievable things about the President -- lies which are rapidly losing traction with the public. Think of how Obama finally destroyed the Birther movement: he let them rant and rave for almost two years solid before finally producing his birth certificate. He may have even strategized to release that certificate only after he caught Osama bin Laden, so that the two events were highlighted together in the public's mind. Yes, the President is an American. And yes, he can fucking well defend us from the threat of terrorism. The complete and utter clowning of Donald Trump was a bonus in that regard . . . something that stuttering buffoon Trump walked right into without realizing how dangerous the territory was.
The point of letting the Birthers rage was to establish their complete and total lack of reasonableness. Any goalpost offered to them as valid proof of Obama's citizenship was dug up and dragged miles out of reach the moment it seemed likely that it would be matched. The one goalpost they thought would never be reached was the actual paper copy of Obama's birth certificate. And I think that holding it back was very, very deliberate.
As was this demand to raise taxes on the rich.
Obama's Statement on Taxes For The Rich IS A BIG FUCKING DEAL
We all know how contentious taxes have been. Going back to Reagan/Norquist, raising taxes has been treated as a political death sentence for anyone who proposed it. Norquist really must have crowed when Clinton defeated Bush the Lesser in 1992 -- he now had a huge, heavy, painful cudgel to wield over his political prostitutes when extorting pledges to never raise taxes out of them: Norquist could claim that he'd unseated a Republican President for going back on his word, his promise to not raise taxes.
Taxation in the US is currently at the lowest levels it's been since the middle of the last century. There is nowhere else to go that does not involve radically restructuring our social compact. Of course, this has been the point of Norquist's asshole game, and hapless Democrats have played along with it for decades. But I really do think that Obama has just outwitted them at their endgame. For months they have paraded their agenda before the public, barely even wincing when it struck a raw negative nerve with the electorate. And for months they have made it clear their goals are increasingly self-oriented: get what they want, when they want, exactly how they want it. Jobs are not their goal. They have made that abundantly clear -- shedding any popular support they might have managed to build up during the 2010 electoral cycle. They have allowed their statehouse operations to run absolutely fucking wild with anti-worker and anti-woman initiatives. Some of their legislation, such as Georgia's anti-immigrant law, is actively hurting the economy.
And Obama waited until NOW because of course NOW we are just over a month out on the debt limit. He waited until NOW because we have 30 days to have this conversation. For months, the GOP has had their say on what the problem is. They've been offered concessions. They've WALKED OUT of negotiations.
Obama has let them wear themselves out. NOW, they've got 30 days to do some fucking fast and furious calculations. They've got the massively unpopular Ryan plan as their point of reference. They've had months to walk it back and they've not even tried. Obama has come in and in one key address, notable for its uniqueness, he has commandingly stated what the problem is. The GOP can beat themselves against the walls until they are bruised and bloody, but they have spent all of this time framing their position up so solidily that it can't be changed. Obama has the initiative now. They have attempted in dozens of different ways to short-circuit his agenda, and to force their own upon us. Now, they are stuck. They can't back out of the insane rhetoric they've been spewing, because it's reached induration. The public knows what the GOP is about. It's NOT jobs, it's NOT fairness, it's NOT the working class.
Obama took a few minutes and re-affirmed that the Democrats ARE about the working class. The debate is over. I think the GOP will cave, and I think they will VASTLY enrage their own intransigent base, and I think they will now be horse-fucked come election day 2012. They have painted themselves such a miniscule corner that there is nowhere to go but down.