How would you define a lame duck president?
A leader without power in the Senate? A leader without public support?
Two years and eight (8) months left till November 2016 elections, but the Senate races will be over by this November.
Could President Obama become a lame duck president with still two years left in office?
Well, 538 is giving the GOP 60% odds of taking the Senate, so…60%.
If both houses of Congress go GOP, he’ll spend the last two years in office vetoing the bejeezus out of GOP bills. That’s pretty lame.
In researching the term “lame duck” I did find this on How stuff works:http://people.howstuffworks.com/lame-duck-president.htm
President Obama is a fighter and he will not just sit there taking his last days lightly. Personally I think he has bought us a few years of peace with his shall we say. ‘leanings towards the Muslim countries’.
Lame duck can be defined in a bunch of different ways. Congress probably won’t get any more favorable to him over the next few years and as his time in office gets shorter he has less to offer other politicians, which means it gets even harder to get them to support his agenda.
For fuck’s sake, please tell me this doesn’t mean what I think it means.
The only definition of lame duck I’ve ever heard covers the months in between the election of a new President and the swearing in of that President. By that definition, you have to die or be impeached to avoid it.
I have never heard it used for a President of a party that doesn’t control Congress.
The only definition of lame duck I’ve ever heard is the Wikipedia one:
“A lame duck is an elected official who is approaching the end of his or her tenure, especially one whose successor has already been elected.”
What on earth do you mean by this?
NM
Ditto what the hell does that mean?
That said, I voted ‘highly likely’ because ALL presidents become lame ducks toward the end of their second term. It’s the point when opponents and allies begin looking to how to work with the NEXT guy that it occurs. When that is…is subject to a lot of factors. GHWB sent troops into Somalia right before Clinton was to take office, thereby giving WJC the headache of dealing with it. Even at the end, the president wields a big damn stick.
You mean this?
Means I don’t mind President Obama being black or being pro muslim as long as it brings us peace.
Boston bombings happen everyday in Iraq … nothing wrong with the truth.
You’d mind otherwise? The pro-Muslim part is pretty dicey, by the way…
What evidence is there for him being “pro muslim”, unless you mean it in a sort of kum-ba-ya, “pro everybody” sense?
Maybe he meant “drone Muslim.”
Lame-duck as I’ve seen/heard it used (40+ years in the DC area) means a President who is nearing the end of a second term, and therefore can not run again. There is no personal insult intended, it’s just describes the last year or so of the eight-year stint.
Given the manner in which things are accomplished in DC, a lame-duck has nothing to trade, and can not be depended upon to provide any future benefit. There is also strong pressure from his/her own party to avoid major controversy which might affect their ability to elect a party-member in the next go-round.
It is also true that foreign countries are aware of the short shelf-life of any promises made by a lame-duck and will therefore prefer to wait for the next President before finalizing any major negotiations.
Some Presidents may view this time as one of unprecedented freedom, a time to push through highly controversial projects, and many a pardon is requested during this time period. They are still lame-ducks, regardless of how active they may be during that time.
So, given the definition as I’m accustomed to hear it, anyone who is elected to a second term becomes a lame duck. Your question struck me as the equivalent of a query on the President’s health.
He has not started any new wars with primarily Islamic countries, so maybe that’s what makes him “pro-Muslim”?
To give Mr. Q the benefit of the doubt, imagine a parallel world in which an electoral majority and a subsequent fatalheart condition brought us a Palin presidency in 2009.
Okay, that world is a slag heap of radioactive crud; forget about it.
There is an unfortunately large segment of the population that is actively anti-Muslim, such that they think it’s morally reprehensible to say that the call to prayer is beautiful or that a community center represents a threat to democracy. The nature of the policies ‘they’ would wish upon the world would be decidedly anti-Muslim; any sane policy is, therefore, by default pro-Muslim.
The benefit of the doubt comes in by accepting that it’s possible to be far from holding anti-Muslim views or aligning with to such viewpoints yet still recognize or use the construction.
It’s a little tougher to explain away “I don’t mind him being black,” though.
Heh, that’s actually partly why I thought to give him the benefit of the doubt. Again, I have no idea what his posts are like outside of this thread, but given other context here I took it as facetiousness.
*lame duck
noun [C] /ˈleɪm ˈdʌk/
› a person who still has time to serve in an elected position despite not being elected again in a recent election, with the result that the person has no real power*
So, similar to a lame (but not dead) duck, the politician plods along, not making much progress, but not completely stopped from making some progress. The lame duck President/governor/mayor has little or no leverage to push new legislation into law but must stay and finish the elected term until the term is up.
I guess the question should be - Should Obama already be considered a lame duck as POTUS? The lame duck politician still has the power of their elected office but has lost some/most/all ability to enact legislation. Obama has already been forced to use Executive Order to bypass Congress.
Like others said, the only way he escapes it is by dying or resigning or being impeached before the 2016 election happens.
If you go by the “politician who doesn’t have any real power and is term limited in his last term” then Obama pretty much has matched that since he won in 2012 and the republicans continued to control the house.