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http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/behind-the-curtain-obama-boxed-in-90312.html?hp=t1
Obama, regardless of the personality and political approach he displays on any given day, keeps running into the same wall of insurmountable opposition. The cold, hard reality is that the president is trapped in a very frustrating box: He realizes that the vast majority of Congress is as impervious to his pressure as it is his charm. He is damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t — and he knows it, several of his friends tell us.
He will most likely get nothing on guns despite his vow after Wednesday’s Senate defeat that “this effort is not over.” He will most likely get nothing more on a grand bargain to lift the economy. He stands a decent chance of getting an immigration deal. But as one influential Democratic adviser told us, that’s only because the president has largely stayed on the sidelines. “POTUS really doesn’t have any sway with red-state Dems,” said a top Democratic official close to the White House. Democratic senators, the official added, “won in states that POTUS lost — some by huge margins. Also, even in blue states, many Democrats ran ahead of POTUS.”
(Also on POLITICO: Obama's mission: Reassure, rally)
Obama has privately resigned himself to this bleak reality — in fact, he anticipated it more than a year ago. In private conversations during the campaign, Obama made plain that the job of being president was a drag under divided government — and that he had deep reservations about grinding out another two or four years of minimal progress through a gridlocked Congress. Now, the combination of Republican resistance and the high number of Senate Democrats running in red states in 2014 virtually assures little change for at least 18 months.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/behind-the-curtain-obama-boxed-in-90312.html#ixzz2Qt6XEP7F
Obama, regardless of the personality and political approach he displays on any given day, keeps running into the same wall of insurmountable opposition. The cold, hard reality is that the president is trapped in a very frustrating box: He realizes that the vast majority of Congress is as impervious to his pressure as it is his charm. He is damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t — and he knows it, several of his friends tell us.
He will most likely get nothing on guns despite his vow after Wednesday’s Senate defeat that “this effort is not over.” He will most likely get nothing more on a grand bargain to lift the economy. He stands a decent chance of getting an immigration deal. But as one influential Democratic adviser told us, that’s only because the president has largely stayed on the sidelines. “POTUS really doesn’t have any sway with red-state Dems,” said a top Democratic official close to the White House. Democratic senators, the official added, “won in states that POTUS lost — some by huge margins. Also, even in blue states, many Democrats ran ahead of POTUS.”
(Also on POLITICO: Obama's mission: Reassure, rally)
Obama has privately resigned himself to this bleak reality — in fact, he anticipated it more than a year ago. In private conversations during the campaign, Obama made plain that the job of being president was a drag under divided government — and that he had deep reservations about grinding out another two or four years of minimal progress through a gridlocked Congress. Now, the combination of Republican resistance and the high number of Senate Democrats running in red states in 2014 virtually assures little change for at least 18 months.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/behind-the-curtain-obama-boxed-in-90312.html#ixzz2Qt6XEP7F
