Good news from NYT: Rogue executive feeling "liberated" by gigantic midterm landslide

It’s been, what, 10 days since the GOP wave? We’re already overdue for an “Obama comeback” media narrative.

For a guy who’s semi-retired, he sure does seem excited about his work lately.

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President Obama emerged from last week’s midterm election rejected by voters, hobbled politically and doomed to a final two years in office suffering from early lame-duck syndrome. That, at least, was the consensus in both parties. No one seems to have told Mr. Obama…

While losing Congress was a grievous blow that will further challenge his capacity to govern, advisers said that he feels liberated. He can now pursue his long-term agenda, they said, without being tethered to the short-term electoral concerns of his party’s leadership in Congress

Still, aides said Mr. Obama seems energized by the postelection actions. As early as the day after the voting, senior officials described him as impatient to reclaim the presidential megaphone and argue for policy initiatives after a year of hanging back in deference to Democratic operatives worried about the backlash for vulnerable candidates…

Mr. Obama’s videotaped call for a free and open Internet “completely upended the debate, and it was the kind of clear, bold statement we had been waiting for, reconnecting to that language you heard in 2008, where he came out in very stark terms in a pro-public interest way,” said Craig Aaron, the president of Free Press, an advocacy group.

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Only this guy would interpret a second ferocious midterm beating at the hands of an otherwise unpopular party as some kind of green light for him to finally chase his policy dreams. But it makes sense given the perverse trend in his presidency. He’s spent six years arguing that Republicans are mindless obstructionists, and because they’re mindless obstructionists, that means he enjoys extra power as president to trump their obstructionism. It’s right there in Article II’s Follow Your Bliss Bro Clause. Now that Republicans have completed their takeover of Congress, it stands to reason that his anti-obstructionist executive authority must be even greater. No wonder he feels liberated. Nothing makes an authoritarian happier than a new threat he can exploit to grab more power.

Has anyone let Hillary know, incidentally, that Obama thinks he no longer needs to worry about short-term electoral concerns? Not that executive amnesty is going to hurt her much in 2016 — my strong suspicion is that it’ll help, if only in how it confounds GOP candidates — but his track record on improving other Democrats’ electoral chances is … not good. You would think party bigwigs might prefer less of a loose-cannon Obama at this point, if only for her sake, than having him spinning like Julie Andrews on the hilltop, flinging work permits at every illegal who strays by.

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Now, a serious question for those of you given to watching TV news: Are any big media outlets covering the looming amnesty with an emphasis on the serious separation of powers issue it raises? Fox mentions it, of course. Anyone else? As I said yesterday, you would think there’d be some alarm about this even among liberal hacks if only because of how it might come back to haunt them when a president who opposes their agenda is wielding Obama’s precedent. Is anyone out there doing that or is the coverage along more traditionally moronic “Democrats say hooray while Republicans say boo” lines?

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David Strom 3:20 PM | November 15, 2024
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David Strom 12:40 PM | November 15, 2024
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