Why Obama may lose the shutdown battle

ObamaCare obviously wasn’t popular in 2010 and stories of universities and hospitals as well as retailers and manufacturers cutting hours and laying people off to keep their health care costs from skyrocketing has not made it any more popular today.

Obama can’t hope to duplicate the chessboard as it was in 1995-96. I said after the shutdown in 1996 that a skilled White House, aggressively on message is an unstoppable political force in America.

Obama’s White House is not skilled (as he proved to the world over the past three weeks), and it has no message to stick to at all.

And finally he doesn’t have Newt Gingrich, who was Bill Clinton’s strongest weapon.