The political gods have been good to Democrats lately.
Republicans nominated several absolute loons to run for Congress; they painted themselves as protectors and apologists of BP; and in the course of punishing the unemployed, they seriously upset both doctors and governors.
These are weapons that liberal lions like LBJ would have swung to great advantage. LBJ knew how to get Republican votes, but he was unencumbered by any urge to validate Republican talking points.
Now, not so much. Nobody could imagine President Obama pushing around a senator the way LBJ bullied Sen. Theodore F. Green in a famous series of photographs, or backhanding Republicans like FDR did in 1936, when he said, "They are unanimous in their hate for me--and I welcome their hatred."
Truth be told, many Americans are in the mood for a speech like that. They'd welcome a declaration of war against a Republican Party that resorts to twisted half-facts and outright lies; half-facts and lies they've grown so fond of that they actually believe that...what's the word...Garbage.
To be fair to the President, he was born in 1961, came of age during the Reagan Administration, and, while he's an intelligent, educated, and well-read man, probably takes for granted an organized, well-financed right wing that needs to be accommodated.
He's just too young to remember when both parties lived on the same planet, were friends after business hours, and were even -- when the stars were right -- willing to put country above party.
Thing is, that's what it's going to take to solve the enormous problems that George W. Bush and the Republicans left behind in the Oval office -- a willingness to abandon the rancid partisanship that people the President's age and younger think is business as usual, but that the American people are sick of.
The paradox here is that probably the only way to do that is to utterly defeat the right wing, which, whether they like it or not, has been the source of so much of that angry, bitter rhetoric. Then Democrats can re-claim their rightful, historic place -- the political center.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-reinbach/assisted-suicide-in-novem_b_618971.html