As expected, yesterday President Obama announced that he would be taking executive action to address the immigration problem. A lot of attention, of course, has been on the Republican response, especially in light of how hypocritical their response is when comparing Obama's action on immigration to one Ronald Reagan's. Regardless, by taking this action, Obama is doing something extremely meaningful and significant for millions of Americans and their families.
However for me, what makes this action truly significant, is how much it highlighted how far Congressional Democrats have fallen, in losing touch with base Democrats, and the rest of the American people.
Let us not forget that the announcement that Obama made yesterday, is probably not all that different in substance or policy than any announcement on immigration that he could have made months ago. In fact, he was set to do just that.
But he delayed this announcement, at the request of certain Congressional Democrats in certain contested elections.
And look how much good that did them.
Not only did it not save them from electoral defeat, but it likely turned off many stalwart Democrat voters for their fear-driven betrayal.
Let this be icing on the cake for those Democrats, who chose to run away from Obama, who begged him away from campaigning for them, to hold off on important work such as these executive actions, to campaign as Republican-lites.
And let this be a wakeup call for those Democrats who still continue to vote more in line with Republicans than with true Democrats.
Some of them will be up for re-election in 2 years, or 4; for those who want to emulate the tactics of people like Mary Landrieu, I hope they take the immigration debacle as a lesson. You're not supposed to stab your supporters in the back.
People may want to fault Obama for acquiescing to Congressional Democrat demands to delay this announcement. But perhaps he knew this would happen. Perhaps this is Obama's way of saying, if you really think you know what is better for your electability than me, then put your money where your mouth is. Since when do you run away from a sitting President, no matter how unpopular? How did politicians this ever get so far? Perhaps this is another one of those debatable moments of Obama once again playing some 13th dimension chess.
I would even go further, to say that he did us a favor.
Because a) we have a better idea of who in Congress continues to deserve our support as Liberals. And b) there are now fewer Republicans-in-Dem-clothing who can feed the both-sides-do-it bullcrap machine, by voicing support for Democratic policies in public, but then voting against it when the spotlight's off. And c) by giving Republicans full control of Congress, they now also hold full responsibility for all the shit they are going to do in these next two years. They have now fully inherited the unpopularity of Congress, and that will like persist until 2016.
Yes, these next couple of years are going to be rough. With control of both chambers in Congress, we will see Republicans do some really horrendous things.
But if anyone deserves the blame for losing the Senate, it is not Obama, who did everything a sitting President could do to support his party allies in Congress.