It is true that the Republicans in Congress responded to Obama's every proposal with as much obstruction as they could muster. It was a deliberate political strategy that proved to be very clever, for it enabled them to win control of the House a couple of years later.
I have to tell you that my single biggest disappointment re: Barack Obama is that once he got to the White House, he essentially stopped campaigning and focused on being the President in Washington D.C. and on trying to work with the Republicans (and Conservative Dems) to get compromise legislation passed. They, of course, continued on with the character assassination and resolute obstructionism.
My enthusiasm for B.O.'s candidacy early on was based on my recognition that he had exceptional communication skills that would be extremely useful in educating the populace re: the Democratic Party's agenda. I imagined him continuing in campaign mode, taking it to the American people, exposing the Republicans for their foolishness and their disingenuous manner, but it never happened. He had the bully pulpit and didn't use it to good [political] effect.
One thing Bernie Sanders understands quite clearly is that, as President, he will be in a unique position to educate the American people re: the desirability of his economic agenda. Everything I have seen thus far re: his political instincts suggests that he might even try an 'Occupy Capitol Hill' action where millions of Americans are called to wait outside the Halls of Congress (so to speak) for them to pass Bernie's agenda.
If the Republicans in Congress continues to be obdurate in spite of such pressure, it will become clear that his primary focus must be to get people elected to Congress in 2018 who will pass his agenda. And so he would understand that he must continue with what he is doing right now: exposing the Republicans and the Wall Street Democrats who are opposing his agenda and calling on the American people to give him a Congress he can work with to get things accomplished.
This is what really frustrated me about Barack. The Republican Party had failed in spectacular fashion with their own economic agenda and should have been crucified politically by any Democrat who had been elected into office, but Barack wanted to pursue his own vision, which was to 'bring people together', only to discover that the people he was reaching out to had no intention of cooperating whatsoever because they knew that if they did, they would lose politically.
The fact that Barack lost the House of Representatives in 2010 was the direct result of B.O. failing to exploit, politically, the capital he had won in 2008. There was really no excuse for the Democrats losing the House so soon after the Republicans had destroyed the economy in historic fashion, and Barack deserves most of the blame. It didn't help that the economic fix he embraced was designed by Republicans in the service of Goldman Sachs.
If government spending on infrastructure and human capital had been increased by $2 trillion in 2009, it would have produced a very strong economic recovery in a very short period of time and the Dems would have received all of the credit. Instead, Barack surrounded himself with economic advisers who embrace Republican economic thinking (e.g., his Treasury Sec'y) and so he accepted the utterly flawed notion that a tax cut provides just as much stimulus to an economy as an increase in government spending.
The result: a painfully slow recovery that made the Democratic Party vulnerable a mere two years after Obama took office in a resounding renunciation of Republican economic policies. Simply ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy would have put many billions of dollars into the economy (if they had been put into infrastructure projects) but Barack compromised that away.
I think Barack Obama is a good man who has done many good things that deserve praise, but his understanding of (1) political realities and (2) economic possibilities has been very poor, and it has cost the Democratic Party dearly (in terms of lost opportunities).
Bernie Sanders understands clearly what it is going to take to prevail over the opposition of the Wall Street Oligarchy and the obstructionism and character assassination of the Republicans. He fully intends to continue to go after them and to build the kind of political structure that is necessary to defeat them in the next election cycle. That is when we will get the legislation that will transform our economy in a big and supremely beneficial way.
I don't know if this is precisely how Bernie sees things, but I do think it would be the best way for him to take on the Oligarchy, for without People Power and a lot of Drama, it ain't gonna be possible to take them on, and that is what he is telling us repeatedly.
Republican Economic Policies: Now Proven To Be An Utter Failure
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