Like I said in the first post in this series, Obama didn’t waste time talking to Republicans in his inaugural address because he didn’t need to talk to them. President Obama’s biggest accomplishments in his first term happened without their support and despite their opposition. And even though Republicans did everything within their power “make [...]

Dr. Seuss a Socialist? Author Peter Dreier, addressing a packed auditorium midday on February 1 inside the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, asked, “Who here knew that by reading Dr. Seuss to your children you were spreading socialist propaganda?” One woman in the audience proudly answered back, “That’s the only reason I read it to them!” [...]

Josh Holland has a nice succinct rundown on the possible roadblocks to the immigration reform effort. It’s a little bit more complicated than it seems at first. It’s hard to know where this is going to go. The President seems to be doing the usual thing of starting out on the center right before negotiations begin, but maybe it will work out this time. Rubio has adopted the Democratic attitude that the Republicans will get big points for making the attempt and the nation — specifically Latinos, I’d imagine — will blame the other side for the failure. I think maybe Marco’s confused. It’s either going to be the Republicans walking away from a deal because it doesn’t offer up enough punitive measures, “enforcement”, “border security” and offers a much too easy path to citizenship or Democrats walking away because it’s too punitive and makes a path to citizenship too difficult.

In Part 1 of this series, I wrote that Republicans who were incensed that President Obama had nothing to say to them in his inaugural address should be far more worried the possibility that the president realizes he doesn’t need to spend time and energy reaching out to Republicans. After all,  not only was Obama [...]

It was, of course, to be expected that Republicans would not like President Obama’s inaugural address no matter what said. In fact, it’s safe to say that the only speech Republicans would have been happy to hear from President Obama is one that began with “I here by resign…”; thereby handing the GOP a big win on the “top priority” they set for themselves on the day of his first inauguration.

Boiled down to gravy, all the conservative complaints about Obama’s inaugural address can be boiled down to this: He didn’t talk to them. As usual, Republicans are missing a bigger, more important reality: Obama didn’t spend much time talking to or reaching out to Republicans, because he may not need to anymore. This three part series examines the possibility that Obama doesn’t even need to pretend to reach out to Republicans anymore, what that means for the GOP, and the country.

Four years ago, my husband and I opted to watch Barack Obama’s inauguration from home. The very likely reality of spending most of the day outdoors, standing in the cold, with two very cold and very bored children, waiting for hours to end up not seeing very much outweighed any desire to witness history in [...]

Before the election reporters and pundits were saying that not so many people would turn out this time, that it would be close at best. But on election day it turned out that it wasn’t even close. The people did turn out, some waiting in lines four, five, six hours to vote, many using provisional [...]

California’s deficits are gone, and Republicans are furious. The national deficit problem is largely solved, too, and Republicans just don’t know what to do! Of course what we need to do is invest in modernizinge our infrastructure, which will put people back to work and we will end up with a … wait for it … modernized, energy-efficient infrastructure that will drive our economy into the 21st century.

Glenn Thrush has an interesting analysis of President Obama’s strategy on gun control and it’s one with which I agree. This truly does seem to be a different approach than anything we saw from him in the first term:

As our nation promotes representative democracy around the world, it is time to finally bring it to those who don’t have it here in the United States — the citizens of Washington, D.C.