Operation Revenge

[applegrove]

Operation Revenge

By GLENN THRUSH at Politico

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/12/obama-midterms-political-enemies-113704.html#.VJW1ssAq8

SNIP......................



“He needs to run, to compete – or more to the point, he needs someone to run against,” a former top Obama adviser told me.

He’s got that now, in a Republican-controlled Capitol Hill. Obama, a political counterpuncher who often needs a slap in the face to wake up, got a gut-shot in November. The Democrats’ staggering loss in the midterms – like his disastrous performance in the first presidential debate against Mitt Romney in 2012 – seems to have jolted him to the realization that he’ll have to act boldly to preserve what he’d assumed was a settled legacy. (The Supreme Court’s decision to scrutinize the funding mechanism of the Affordable Care Act, in particular, has sent a shudder through the West Wing and provided an unexpected challenge from another hostile branch of government.)

While it might seem crazy to compare a wiser and wizened president entering his seventh year in office to the callow, Next Big Thing of his U.S. Senate days, Obama is now inhabiting the psychological head-space of his early career on the national political scene. Now as then, he can legitimately describe himself as an underdog. He feels at liberty to address any topic he chooses on his own terms — race, for instance — and, most importantly, he’s increasingly untethered from what he views as a petty, geriatric Democratic establishment he originally crusaded against as a presidential candidate in 2007.

Obama is sure to strike the usual let’s-work-together tone at Friday’s press conference, but it’s clear to anyone who follows him closely that the president is trying to escape from the Washington sausage works and define his own agenda.


.......................SNIP

[wildbilln864]

1. well we'll see. n/t

[Wellstone ruled]

2. After listening to his bud Al From,

and getting the real slap in the face,one would hope there is some different direction. Our Nation is just chopping for a more progressive direction and kickass leadership. One can only hope.

[7wo7rees]

3. a new level of chess, maybe??

I hope so.

[Volaris]

4. yeah. The kind where you win by attrition because you said "fuck it" and decided to just take everyt