Sometimes I wonder if the dwindling band of Obama's remaining supporters ever find it difficult to reconcile their image of him as a brilliant, Harvard-educated professor with his dumber-than-a-box-of-Palins negotiating strategies - i.e. "You want $30 billion in cuts? Here's $40 billion."
But as Glennzilla demonstrates at length, and with merciless clarity, no reconciliation is necessary once you accept the obvious truth that the President's negotiating aims are not the same as ours.
Conventional D.C. wisdom -- that which Obama vowed to subvert but has done as much as any President to bolster -- has held for decades that Democratic Presidents succeed politically by being as "centrist" or even as conservative as possible. That attracts independents, diffuses GOP enthusiasm, casts the President as a triangulating conciliator, and generates raves from the DC press corps -- all while keeping more than enough Democrats and progressives in line through a combination of anti-GOP fear-mongering and partisan loyalty.
http://www.salon.com/...
[Emphasis added. Note how many valid criticisms of the administration will be met with nothing more substantial than "Enjoy President Trump/Palin/Bachmann!".]
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