Obama: Doing the right thing the wrong way

I know I'm not around WF much these days, but I thought I'd stop by to say what I think of Obama's immigration policy as announced last night.

First of all, as it is well-known that I am a dirty, bleeding-heart liberal where immigration is concerned, I want to say right up front that there is nothing he proposes that is not a good thing. The only complaints I have about the content of what he announces is that it doesn't go nearly far enough (but he made that clear himself, so I'm sure he won't mind me saying it).

But I think the way of doing it is disastrously wrong, for several reasons:

1) He's making it into a big partisan thing: "We Democrats want immigration reform and the mean Republicans won't let us do it." Well, much as I despise the Republicans (especially on this issue), all I can say is this: If the Democrats really are for immigration reform, why didn't they do anything about it when they had such massive control of Congress? They sound like the Republicans whining about Obamacare after totally failing, themselves, to come up with anything useful when they had the chance.

2) He is sending a wrong and dangerous message to the American people: "I don't care what party you chose, by a very solid majority, to make the laws that govern the country. I disagree with them, so I will do things my way instead of letting Congress do its job (and perhaps pushing them to do it)." He has made it very clear that he has no intention of working with a Republican Congress. From a president who is for now the prime representative of a party that continually whines about the other party obstructing them and refusing to work together, that is about the very worst way of getting anything done.

3) Last but by no means least: He is setting a huge trap for a huge number of people who are in the country without papers. For right now, they are keeping as low a profile as they can, for obvious reasons. But he is putting in place, without any laws passed to make it even semi-permanent, a system that encourages them to come out in the open, say who they are and where they live, and make it extremely easy for the government to boot them out if the next president, two years from now, doesn't like the system Obama unilaterally put in place by simple presidential decree (and which can thus be changed just as easily, without Congress having to lift a finger).

I support Obama's stance on immigration very strongly. But he is showing his usual incompetence in how to do things. After six years in office, he still doesn't have a very good idea of how things work in Washington.

And now the Obamatons can come into the thread with the catch-all justifcation: "But the Republicans do it, too!" (As if the Republicans were some kind of reference where honest and efficient government is concerned...)

As someone who has known a liberal, I sympathize with you. You're pretty much in the same position neocons would be if George W Bush was caught fucking a goat in a closet while wearing a lampshade and declaring himself king of the world. We'd send in the medical teams, give him a PET scan, pray with Laura for his eventual recovery, and salute Dick Cheney, our new President.

Even Senate Democrats say that Obama has dangerously isolated himself in a bubble of rabid acolytes, and doing that fucks with your head, my head, or anyone's head. Prior to the last midterm, he's only met with Mitch McConnell twice in six years. He limits himself to meeting Congressional Democrats, and only a few of those in a controlled setting. It may not be just his poll numbers that had them desperate to keep out of their states prior to the midterms, it may be that both they and his handlers agree that he's going off the deep end, eaten up by the crazy. Little else explains why he would act in such wild contradiction to everything he's been saying for the last six years. It's like he wants to destroy the Democrat party and its ideals by leaving the electorate with a big taste of maniacal crazy dick or something.

I agree that in an ideal world, he'd work with Republicans. But in the real world, Republicans are a party of wreckers. It's futile.

What is the difference between a libertarian and a republican? The Republican names his gun, the libertarian fucks it.

Amazing, @Asyncritus' views are precisely what I thought when I heard all of that. Surely, this is a trap? But I am not an illegal immigrant about to come clean. So what could the trap be? Really, you should tell people what the trap is before you trap them. It is only fair.

You are right, and you are just as fucked as the republican supporters. The only reason dems get elected today is that they just have to look better than the retard the republicans run. There is a good reality that Obama would not have been elected had McCain not handicapped himself. They are not going to throw them out because they make money off of them. Why do you think they are fighting like this?

Damn you're good at this.

I would assume it means illegal immigrants "come out of the shadows" to take advantage of the new Obama policies and given they can then be identified the next president deports them when he/she takes office

Welcome back, Asnyc!

Also, all of that. Obama's priorities in office has been to clean up our own house first (IE, ACA ) but it's just the wrong-headed way he goes about it. I seem to remember Dubya granted amnesty to illegals too, or at least there was strong talk of it, but that all went through with Congress. It wasn't just a middle finger to the American public and bam, Bob's your uncle amnesty.

I agree with #3. The rest of it, meh. The Republicans aren't exactly honest brokers for bipartisanship - and don't give me the "Oh, I told you they'd say the GOP does it to" crap. Try being bipartisan on the topic of religion with Diacanu. How's that working out for you? The GOP have raised obstruction to an artform, and poisoning the well by stating 'we won't work with you on any topic if you do this' despite it being well within the powers of the Presidency and set by several examples of precedent is the very definition of obstinancy.

As far as the 'wrong and dangerous' message, he can read the turnout numbers as well as anyone else. The recent 'tidal wave' had the least voter turnout since 1942, at the height of WWII. The American people did not raise up in unison and say 'Democrats are wrong' - mostly they said 'this shit isn't worth our time anymore'. He would have rallied his base more if he did do this ahead of time - indeed, latino political leaders specifically said he needed to do so if he was going to get out their vote.

I'd imagine large numbers of illegals won't come forward because there's no binding law on this, just a promise not to enforce deportation for a moderate sized subset. That's a very dangerous position for them to put themselves in with a new presidential election coming in 2 years.

But overall any expectation of the GOP and Dems working and playing well together are naive, and while I'm against a general amnesty I certainly have sympathy for the individuals who are trying to do the right thing by their familes here. I think it was a good action based on appealing to our better natures, and while that is naive as well I also find it necessary to remind the country we have higher ideals at times.

I'm also concerned about point number three. As for the rest, I'm pretty convinced that the Republican party has become so anti-government that they will refuse to work with anybody or do anything aside from pandering to the most base fears of the electorate. So Obama gave them a big issue to run with, but it's either that, or throw his hands up and join them in doing nothing about a huge problem.

"I don't care what party you chose, by a very solid majority, to make the laws that govern the country. I disagree with them, so I will do things my way instead of letting Congress do its job (and perhaps pushing them to do it)."

This is not true. Turnout was abysmal (worst in 70 years).

Keep in mind that in 2012 even though more people voted for Democratic Representative Candidates due to rediculus gerrymandering, Republicans still had a strong majority in the House.

By Cook’s calculations, House Democrats out-earned their Republican counterparts by 1.17 million votes. Read another way, Democrats won 50.59 percent of the two-party vote. Still, they won just 46.21 percent of seats, leaving the Republicans with 234 seats and Democrats with 201.

It was the second time in 70 years that a party won the majority of the vote but didn’t win a majority of the House seats, according to the analysis.

The National Republican Congressional Committee did not dispute these findings. NRCC spokesman Dan Scarpinato pointed out that Republicans enjoy a comfy majority, their second largest since World War II (234 seats in 2012, 242 seats in 2010).

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...hoyer-house-democrats-won-majority-2012-popu/

When people's votes don't matter you can't be shocked when they don't vote. Nor does it say anything about the people's preference.

House Republicans used this ill gotten majority to be the most obstructionist Congress in American history. A congress that in pretty much every way possible FAILED to do it's job:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/03/u...n-no-hurry-to-produce.html?ref=politics&_r=1&

But that is the plan. For years the Republican plan has been to defund, defang, delegitimize the government. Make it as ineffectual and inefficient as possible and then turn around and say 'SEE! Look, it doesn't work!' So doing absolutely nothing IS good policy for them.

As this last election showed.

First, how can you say what the people who DIDN'T vote want since they didn't express an opinion? Second, why should the opinion of those who didn't vote override that of those who DID?

Even if you accept that Obama can ignore the results of an election because of slightly smaller turnout, where is the evidence that there is a massive groundswell of support for HIS policies? All of the polling I've seen shows very weak support for Obama on this issue.

Elections only matter when Democrats win, is it?

Elections are only legitimate when Democrats win.

Speaking of the next President, cynical me is picturing Hillary Clinton in nuclear melt down: "You've already ruined the election for me! You haaaaaaaaaaaaaate me! You haaaaaaaaaaaaaate me!"

Because this really is giving the Republicans a huge wedge issue that will be very salient with... everyone?

There's no evidence for anything relating to Obama from this election, because Obama wasn't running for anything. Seriously though, there are more variables than what party your congresscritters belong to, including their individual voting records. Call me a dumb American, but even I didn't dig into voting records, I looked at the candidate websites and went from there.

I wish the executive and legislative branches would take heed of low voter turnouts and try to get people more engaged--but they'd rather play party politics and only get "their" people out to vote. It's stupid.

Are you serious?

Obama is the leader of his party, and his party just took a major shellacking. And this happened DESPITE many of them running as far away from him as they could. OF COURSE this election was a reflection on Obama.

Despite what some here are trying to claim, if you don't register your opinion at the polls, your opinion doesn't count.

Some of the low turnout was due to disappointed Democrats and moderates who were leery of giving Obama more support, given how he's handled the Middle East, Ukraine, the ACA, the NSA, and other issues, while threatening unilateral action on immigration after the election. You could say that Obama 2008 was still in their heads, with denouncements of Obama's 2014 policies ringing in their ears.

You can't have it both ways. Either you interpret the election purely by its political function, in which case the Republicans won a solid majority, and the election was in no way about Obama. Or you use it as a poll, in which case it was also a poll on Obama, and the fact that the turnout was as low as it hasn't been for many decades severely limits the scope of the result. You can even entertain both those interpretations simultaneously, but you can't deny that as a poll on Obama, the scope is weak.

The voters are unhappy with the direction of the country and they shifted the balance of power away from Obama and his party and towards the Republicans. I don't see that as "both ways;" I see that as two sides of the same coin.

Anyone who doesn't show up doesn't by default become an Obama supporter. I can just as easily claim that since a Republican win was in the bag, many people stayed home because they were agreeable with that.

On the contrary, short of throwing him out of office, this is about as strong as a rebuke gets.

Still trying to pretend you don't understand, eh?

Weaseling out of the topic by replacing "the people" with "the voters". Which suffiuces for the election's political function, of course. But again, Obama is still President. Considering the vote purely by its political function, nobody has managed to take away any power from him.

No, but you're claiming that they automatically become an Obama opponent:

For my money, voting for the Republicans would have been a stronger rebuke than staying home.

53% of 36% of the voting age populace agrees with you.

Oh, that would make 19% of the voting age populace voted Republican in this midterm. The vast majority, 64%, didn't vote.

How can you claim to have "the people" on your side if they didn't show up to vote and they don't respond in public opinion polls?

Authority, you mean. He has definitely lost political power.

As they greatly diminished the power of his political party by not showing up, I'd say the case is MUCH stronger that they're opponents than supporters.

Unnecessary if you know they're going to win anyway. And since a Republican big win was predicted prior to the election, clearly all those non-voters by not showing up have assented to the GOP sweep. Right?

If you're going to argue from silence, you must face the fact that the other side can make the same claim even more strongly.

You could just as easily argue that by staying home, they accept the status quo, given that it's harder to get into office than stay in office.

No, at least 56% of the 36% of the voting age population agrees with me.

Now tell me why it's free to assume that everyone who didn't vote is really an Obama supporter. Especially when he's polling in the low 40s.

So? Are we going to forgo elections in the future if the turnout isn't sufficiently high?

You can argue ANYTHING about those who didn't vote.

That's why the interpretation of non-votes is MEANINGLESS.

Oh I understand just fine. Liberals are claiming, on this board and in in other media, that the election wasn't about Obama or his policies and yet I have provided video evidence of Obama saying specifically that the election was about his policies. Seems pretty clear to me what this election was about.

Compulsory voting and a binding "none of the above" option in every contest would fix that.