The last few weeks have not been kind to Obama, whether it be large things or minor ones:
Obama's bipartisan meeting on tax cuts postponed
That's the meeting with Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, who asked to postpone the meeting with the President of the United States "due to scheduling conflicts in organizing their caucuses". You know, the one they followed up on by saying that the president's meeting wasn't going to be about the thing the president wanted it to be about, tax cuts, but about "reducing spending, growing jobs through increased trade and increasing domestic energy".
It may be a petty, minor thing, but this is getting to the point where Obama is looking weak in many, many separate situations, and it's becoming a car wreck for the White House. Having him doing public post-election soul searching; having him give repeated noises in the press about preemptively caving on whatever it is the GOP might be asking for: it's a messaging/political disaster. He took a stout midterm loss and turned it into his own midterm disaster.
At some point someone in this White House has to start figuring out that, screw actual policy, they're getting their asses kicked purely on the PR front, and Obama's not going to get reelected if he looks like a quivering pushover. We know from the healthcare fiasco that there's a bunch of folks in this White House who care more about protecting Obama's image than actually getting useful stuff done: well, image-hoarders, now might be the perfect time to pay attention to what the nice news channels are telling you.
Instead, this is rapidly becoming another perfect example of being so miserly with your "limited" political capital that you end up losing all of it. Obama is keeping his powder so dry that he's losing battles without firing a shot.
Long story short, if McConnell or Boehner can't find time to meet at the president's convenience, Obama should just call off the meeting and be done with it. When you're President of the United States you shouldn't be losing pissant little power plays .
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