Underestimate Obama At Your Own Peril!

One of my heroes, The Rude Pundit, has an excellent post up about President Obama’s prowess when it comes to campaigning. I’ve felt all along that the Obama Administration is playing the Republicans like a cheap violin, not responding to the many moronic issues they and the media keep trumping up. It’s kind of funny how the media manufactures an outrage, often sourced from the right, and then they scream because the White House doesn’t play their game. The story then becomes about how the White House isn’t responding to “so many questions” about….fill in the blank. I equate it to getting down in the mud with them. Obama did it masterfully in the primaries and the general election and he is doing it masterfully as president. Anyone who underestimates Obama and David Plouffe’s savvy when it comes to getting elected is a damn fool. From the Rude Pundit…(I always love Lee’s titles)

Is President Obama Ready to Make Republicans Shit Blood Again?:

But there’s one significant measure that the Rude Pundit has decided to await: how much is Obama willing to fight to keep the Congress at least nominally Democratic?

If yesterday is any indication, the answer is: “Oh, fuck, it’s on.”…

First he put out the evidence and explained what they were doing that was so assholish: “Now, you’d think this would be pretty straightforward stuff, but I’ve got to say that lately we’ve been having to wrangle around what used to be pretty noncontroversial things — providing loans for small businesses, extending unemployment insurance when 8 million people lost their jobs during the recession. But lately, there’s a minority of senators from the other party who’ve had a different idea. As we speak, they are using their power to stop this relief from going to the American people. And they won’t even let these measures come up for a vote. They block it through all kinds of procedural maneuvering in the Senate.”

Then he gave it some context for how we got here: “Now, some of this is just politics. That’s the nature of Washington. Before I was even inaugurated, there were leaders on the other side of the aisle who got together and they made the calculation that if Obama fails, then we win. Right — that was the basic theory. They figured if we just keep on saying no to everything and nothing gets done, then somehow people will forget who got us into this mess in the first place and we’ll get more votes in November. And, you know, that will make people pretty cynical about politics.”

Which led to: “Now, let’s be fair though. The other party’s opposition is also rooted in some sincere beliefs about how they think the economy works. They think that our economy will do better if we just let the banks or the oil companies or the insurance industry make their own rules. They still believe that, even after the Wall Street crash, even after the BP oil well blew, that we should just keep a hands-off attitude. They think we should keep doing what we did for most of the last decade leading up to the recession.” That line, “let’s be fair, though,” is just fucking awesome. Calling Republicans “sincere” in their ideology means that, no matter what they say, at the end of the day, there are beliefs that aren’t gonna change.

Then the knife twist: “So their prescription for every challenge is pretty much the same — and I don’t think I’m exaggerating here — basically cut taxes for the wealthy, cut rules for corporations, and cut working folks loose to fend for themselves. Basically their attitude is, you’re on your own.”

Every misstep that the Republitards make is being filed away for later use in the midterms and 2012 elections. For some reason, the Republitards have very short term memories and forget that we have these things called the “internets” and “youtubes” that make pulling up their lies so much easier. It makes producing web ads so freakin easy. There is no shortage of stupid shit coming out of the right wing’s assholes that it’s going to be like shooting ducks in a pond. The Rude One brings it home with this…

The Rude Pundit’s said it before and he’ll keep saying it: Obama plays rope-a-dope with his opponents. He did it with Hillary. He did it with McCain. He wants to see what your best swing looks like before he unleashes. For all his faults, and there are many, the man knows how to make Republicans shit blood at the thought of going up against him. They have to know it’s coming. They just don’t know when. The question, of course, is if it’s too late in the match.

If there was a takeaway from the speech, a talking point for other candidates to use, it was this: “So I want everybody to understand, this debate that we’re having in Washington is not about big government or small government. It’s about responsible government. It’s about accountable government. It’s about whose side government is on. It should be on the side of the American people.”

It’s always nice to see someone rip the corpse of Ronald Reagan out of the earth and smack it around in front of an audience.