Not dumb enough to do it in such a way that the Democrats take back Congress in 2018.
Plus it’s a mystery to me what Republicans would consider important legislative priorities. It tends to be fairly predictable when Republicans are in opposition to a Democratic President, but gets murky when they can actually pass what they want. Under Bush, he just told them what he wanted and he usually got it. I’m not sure Rubio is going to have his shit together enough on Day 1 to do that. Which might be for the better, actually. A steady, no drama administration with no great accomplishments but no great screwups is what this country needs most right now.
OF course, I think Kasich is better for that role than Rubio.
Correction: Presidents look a lot smarter when they don’t blow control of Congress in only two years. And it’s not like they can’t recover from that. Clinton thrived with an opposition Congress. Obama, not so much.
Actually, if you look back at our most loved Presidents: Clinton, Reagan, JFK, Eisenhower, FDR, three of those five had opposition Congresses for most of their Presidencies, and FDR lacked a working Congressional majority after he lost the court fight. Republicans made big gains in the 1938 midterms and southern Democrats stopped cooperating, giving conservatives a working majority.
So a President cannot use his lack of majorities in Congress as an excuse. Unless he and his fans see the be-all and end-all of his Presidency as getting legislation passed.
Clinton’s Republicans were not Obama’s Republicans, as you’ve been told many times. The most conservative Republican in Clinton’s Congress would be the most liberal in Obama’s, so let’s stop pretending that it’s all Obama’s fault that he couldn’t persuade a bunch of irrational reactionaries who declared their opposition to every action of his on Day 1 of his first Congress to work with him constructively. Previous Congresses have squabbled but wouldn’t have shut down the country if they didn’t get their way 100%; Obama’s Congress did. Obama started out offering them concession after concession and they still stonewalled him. Even basic appointments were held up far longer than historically.
You say it’s Obama’s fault Congress wouldn’t work with him. The actual evidence suggests that they were never going to work with him no matter what.
And even if they won’t work with you, you have an entire executive branch to manage. There are 240 years of laws for the President to implement. He doesn’t actually need more laws to be successful.
It’s not reasonable to blame that on Obama. I see no reason to believe that the Tea Party and right-wing hatred of Obama would have been significantly different had health care come about differently. In any case, it was worth it, assuming it doesn’t get repealed (which will be based on the next election).
The folks you describe seem to be highly likely to get us into another dumb war that would amount to a “great screwup”.
If all it takes is hatred from your opponents to lose a midterm… Oh, why am I bothering? Are you saying the right wing has a majority and only needs to be mad enough to bring it to bear, thus making all Democratic governance hopeless for more than two years?
And I’d note that Clinton only took one shellacking and considered it a learning experience. Obama took one, shrugged, “Shit happens”, and then took another four years later and basically shrugged again. Not his fault, it’s a Democratic midterm problem. Sure, one that only showed up during his term.
If Rubio wins, 2018 will probably see some Republican House losses, but they will be at no risk of losing the House. Rubio isn’t going to be going in with this idea that he’s got a short window and that he’s got to make changes while he can. No Republican will be going in with that attitude. Democrats lose because they think they will lose, so they rush to do things, which is what actually causes the losses.
For the purposes of midterms, it’s probably close, at least with politics at present – the Democrats haven’t yet figured out how to motivate their voters to come out for midterms. But the special kind of hatred that Obama faced was particularly powerful, and motivated a lot of people to vote Republican in '10 (and to a lesser degree '14).
Things have changed a lot since the 90s, not that Obama handled things perfectly. But, overall, he’s been an incredible boon to the Democratic party (and the country, in my opinion) – big legislative accomplishments; big foreign policy accomplishments; no stupid wars that kill scores of Americans.
The Democratic party would be far, far weaker today had Obama lost in '08 or '12.
They “rush” to do things to help the country, which might hurt them politically in the short term. But if the ACA sticks around and continues to succeed, then in the long term it will inevitably be a massive political victory, and will give political benefit to the Democrats for a generation or more.
Even if the Iran deal and the ACA give short term harm, politically, in the long term (if they stick around and succeed) they will be huge political victories. In 10 years, if the ACA (or a modified version) is succeeding, that will be one of the biggest domestic policy accomplishments in 50 years. In 10 years, if the Iran deal is still working (e.g. Iran has no nukes and no weapons program), it will be one of the biggest foreign policy accomplishments in 50 years or more. Success isn’t guaranteed for either one, but any short term political damage is worth this incredible upside potential. Doing big things that help the country can be incredibly helpful for the political party, and that’s why, even just in terms of politics, Obama was right to go for this stuff.
If that’s how you feel, it’s hard to understand why you’d support any of the Republicans.
Even if you dislike ACA, repealing it now would be extremely disruptive. I.e., a screwup.
Do you consider Snyder’s treatment of Flint a screwup? A Republican President would cheerfully do to entire blue states what Snyder is happy to do to black cities. Even Christie, the only moderate GOP candidate, was happy to screwup deliberately.
The conditions that led to the 2008 credit crisis have not been mitigated. Would you consider a repetition of that a “screwup”? Which party do you think is more likely to avert such?
That’s only if they can pull it off. They would need a replacement to actually be able to pass it. They’ll still need Democratic votes, and the only way to get a few in the Senate is to have a plan, and sell that plan so that red state Democrats feel under pressure to support it.
That’s certainly a screwup, and you know that mismanagement is one of my pet peeves. Which is the biggest risk with Rubio. We need someone who understands the bureaucracy and how cockups happen.
There are plenty of us rational thinkers who agree that Democratic policies are not progressive or intelligent enough. We just prefer moderate right-wing over batshit-insane.
True, and that is a Clinton strongpoint, at least it was with Bill. It’s also true of Kasich, who ran a state government and provided oversight over the federal government.
Since Congress flipped to Republican control, Obama’s success has entirely been from leveraging existing laws. Of course, then you (yes, you personally) just whine that he’s overstepping his authority, but I think everyone realizes by now that your dislike of Obama is visceral, and everything you’re saying on this board is just a rationalization of that.
Leveraging? You mean changing by executive order. Meanwhile, the VA got neglected, and he didn’t reform the government’s IT processes before giving it a task it wasn’t ready for(and then failing to follow up to see that the task was on schedule).
You’d think that someone having difficulty implementing current policy wouldn’t think that going to Congress to get MORE work to do was so essential. What’s the answer to failed bureaucracies? More bureaucracies!
Anyway, keeping this thread about Rubio, the point is that Rubio won’t make the same mistakes despite his inexperience. Rubio’s first year will primarily involve “don’t do stupid shit”, Obama’s foreign policy applied to domestic policy. If the Republican Congress wants to send him bills, and he likes them, I’m sure he’ll sign them. If the Democrats control the Senate and that doesn’t happen, I doubt Rubio will wasted time sulking. It’s not as if there isn’t a lot to fix. The VA is still in major need of Presidential attention, and it wouldn’t hurt to get the partisans out of the federal bureaucracy. They were tolerated during the Reagan-Bush-Bush II years, but they went too far under Obama and it’s time to crack down.
