President Obama is No Dummy

Just what is President Obama up to? Regardless of what else some one might say about this man, the President is no dummy when it comes to politics. You do not rise from near obscurity to the White House in two shorts years unless you have a remarkable political savvy. He knows his policies are often very unpopular, he reads the polls. He knows that pushing his agenda is also pushing his party out of power and will undoubtedly lead to a substantial rebuke in the next election. So, why then does he not move more to the center, as so many have predicted? Why does he continue to promote more taxes, more spending, more government controls and more intrusion into our lives? Is it some sort of morbid political death wish?

No, nothing of the sort. The President is actually playing it very smart. He sees that the leadership of the Democrat Party has used up its political capital and therefore its political usefulness. It is time to clean house and let the voters remove the dead weight. It is time for the Reid-Pelosi influence to move quietly into history. The easiest way to do that is not through confrontation, it is by just letting the voters do it for him. He does not have to rewrite the Democrat agenda nor convenience the leadership of a new set of priorities. All he has to do is survive the mid-term election without compromising his values. We, voters, then put him in a perfect position for a come back.

In the coming mid-term election the likely result will be that the Democrats will lose their majority position in both the Senate and the Congress. Unfortunately that does not mean the Republicans will suddenly be in power. The more likely result will be a power split with neither side having a substantial majority. Normally, that would be a good thing. It is the way it should be because it makes the two sides work together to get things done, a system that brings moderation to the table and helps keep any one side from “going extreme”. It may not work out that nicely in the two years before the nest regular election. What we will probably see is attempts by the Republicans to undo many of the policies, regulations, taxes and spending programs put in place since Obama got into office. Without a substantial majority, they will be unlikely to have a great deal of success. The more likely result will be more deadlocks.

More deadlocks in Washington will infuriate the public even more, but it will give President Obama good political position to point at the Republicans as ineffective. It will give he Democrats time to reorganize and find replacements for people like Franks, Dodd, Pelosi and Reid. Time to find new Democrats and a new message of “hope and change”, something we will still be wanting two years from now.

No, President Obama is no dummy. He is not ignoring the polls. He is paying very close attention to them. He is not committing political suicide, he is setting up his party for a good old-fashioned house cleaning and he is going to let us do it for him. Then he will make another run as the “Hope and Change” candidate again in 2012.