Obama needs to chunk bipartisanship and steamroll the Repubs...(just like Bush did)

[Blackhatjack]

Bush Repubs threatened Dems to cooperate or they would use the nuclear option in the Senate.

Dems need to dust off those threats, reverse the names of the parties, and get on with it.

Imagine how much Obama could accomplish if he followed through and majority votes in the Senate were required.

[AnArmyVeteran]

1. He should have done that from the start. That's what LEADERS do!

[pa28]

9. +1

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. Absolutely.

[eleny]

3. And if they lose the majority come January he could dust off the veto pen

It certainly would be a wild ride with vetoes and subpoenas flying around left and right. "Dawn Patrol!"

I wouldn't be surprised if some Congress Critters would be removed on stretchers from their respective Floors before the end of that session.

Your scenario sure would separate the curd from the whey.

[Wolf Frankula]

4. No! No! No!

"The Japanese have attacked our Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, in the Hawaiian Islands. The duty before us is plain. We need to forge a bipartisan consensus with the Japanese."

I have been against this bipartisanshit for 10 years. Bipartisanshit is surrender. I want naked unashamed Democratic partisanship. I want us to ram our program down the rethugs throats. Use the power of incumbency. Use the goddam majority. End the procedural filibuster. Make the bastards stand up and talk until they drop over dead.

Wolf

[flyarm]

5. He has no intention of doing that...eom

[Bluebear]

6. Not fair.

He may chunk bipartisanship, saying that the Democratic part is just not pragmatic enough to be considered.

:hide:

[TheWraith]

7. Please for the love of fuck tell me you're being sarcastic.

It takes a special kind of cognitive dissonance to literally identify it as EXACTLY WHAT BUSH DID and then endorse it as a strategy.

[Davis_X_Machina]

8. The problem is the Senate, and only the Senate....

Then, as now, there are at least three parties in the Senate, from which a governing coalition from time to time is cobbled together.

There are:

1. the Democratic senators who are Democrats,
2. the Democratic senators who are Republicans
3. the Republican senators who are Republicans.

(There used to be Republican Senators who are Democrats—Javits, Brooke, Hatfield, Chaffee, Stafford; Snowe and Collins five years ago—but they’re extinct.)

Bush could count on 2 and 3. Obama’s got 1, mostly, most days.

Senators are independent barons who don't need the White House to fund-raise. They don't need the White House to get face time. They don't need to pass legislation. What can Obama do for them?

Only a little more than one-third of the Senate actually improves its political prospects by standing with the president. The Republicans-who-are-Republicans certainly don’t. The Democratic senators who are Republicans don't. Two or three Democrats-who-are-Democrats (Russ Feingold, e.g.) on any given day can decide that they don’t, either.

What’s left isn’t enough left to defeat a filibuster. There are barely enough Senators left to pass a bill.

So steamroller me no steamrollers.

(Frists's threatened nuclear option under Bush was, incidentally, limited to eliminating the filibuster of judicial nominees....)