[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]
Relative to Obama’s “pragmatism”: I truly don’t think he’s being pragmatic, I think he’s genuinely trying to make everyone happy and has completely underestimated the hard ideological line that the GOP would take and HOLD. The GOP has NOT budged and this is where Obama’s inexperience has wrong-footed him, again and again, and where an experienced street fighter like Hillary would (probably) have done a better job.
[/quote]
We’re seeing the same thing, just maybe saying it differently. Truthfully, I don’t know where his ideals lay. He’s no left winger. Never has been. Centrist, Corportatist Democrat is more likely, but I fear we will never know. The deal is more important to him than the outcome, whether it furthers his ideals or not. (ACA, the disasterous tax deal he made the end of last year, this year’s debt limit deal, I could go on.) He routinely bends over to real politic, rather than staking a claim and letting real politic act. He starts where he should end, and ends up somewhere neither he, nor any of his supporters want him. (quite a bit of speculation there. At this point, I have no clue where he wants to end up. He always seems so happy with the deals he’s made. Maybe it IS where he wanted to end up.) He’s the mediator in chief. You think maybe Hillary would have done a better job? I can’t disagree. But maybe the biggest problem that I have with Obama is that I think he thinks he’s done what he set out to do. Make compromises. How charming. (there, i said it 6 different ways.)
