BloggeRhythms

There's a suspicion among many, that POTUS’ strategy for political survival quite often employs Saul Alinsky’s 12 Rules for Radicals which provided lessons to future community organizers. 

 

Mr. Alinsky’s "Rule #8" states: “Keep the pressure on. Never let up.” Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new."

 

Evidence of keeping enemy’s confused, as well as significant numbers of his ordinarily strongest supporters, seems quite evident in the president’s push for his current trade agenda. The measure has now gained Senate approval of fast-track legislation that could make it easier for him to complete a wide-ranging trade deal that would include 11 Pacific Rim nations. It took a coalition of 48 Senate Republicans and 14 Democrats for passage.

 

Paul Kane washingtonpost.com, addressed the president's abandonment of former supporters, writing, “Obama’s aggressive push for the trade agenda has upended his relationship with his long-standing allies in the labor movement, as well as anti-corporate liberal activists who strongly supported his 2008 and 2012 elections. It sparked sharp exchanges, played out in the national media, with a liberal icon, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), leading to one of Obama’s normally closest allies, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), to question whether he was being sexist for singling her out for criticism."

 

Further evidence of party affiliation taking a back seat to practical problems within their states was seen when, “On Friday, union leaders narrowly lost their bid for passage of an amendment designed to create strict regulation of global currency markets, offered by Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), whose states have been ravaged by losses of manufacturing jobs to foreign competition.”

 

Thus, while the ramifications of the legislation won’t be known for quite sometime to come, it’s a very safe bet that Saul Alinsky’s grinning widely under his tombstone today in Chicago.

 

On another matter bringing the POTUS and Republicans closer together, an article on FoxNews.com states that, “President Barack Obama has signed legislation that gives Congress the power to review and potentially reject a nuclear deal with Iran. 

 

“It's a central element of Obama's foreign policy. He signed the measure without ceremony Friday at the White House.”

 

While done quietly on a Friday afternoon, right before a major holiday, the president’s action suggests that he he’s become quite wary that the Iranian deal is far riskier than earlier imagined. Which means he apparently now wants Republicans to share the blame if the negotiations come to naught. 

 

The next item concerns another issue where the POTUS took on an idea dreamt up for ideological purposes, but made no sense as a practical application at the time it was attempted because technology was nowhere near where it had to be to succeed.  

 

According to Michael Bastasch in dailycaller.com, “President Obama’s promise to have 1 million electric or hybrid cars on the road by 2015 has been an abysmal failure, according to documents obtained by Bloomberg, as private and government purchases of such vehicles have only reached 31 percent of the president’s original goal.

 

“The U.S. bought about 24,816 electric and hybrid vehicles during Obama’s presidency, or about 7 percent of government purchases in that time,” according to government data obtained by Bloomberg. 

 

However, and far worse, “U.S. consumers bought about 286,814 of those models from 2009 to 2014, or 3 percent of overall sales.”

 

For those actually using the vehicles, “Edmunds.com reports that only 45 percent of this year’s hybrid and EV trade-ins have gone toward the purchase of another alternative fuel vehicle, down from just over 60 percent in 2012.” And, the auto-research group, Edmunds.com, also found that “22 percent of people who have traded in their hybrids and [electric vehicles] in 2015 bought a new SUV.”

 

Thus, it appears that a pesky problem the POTUS has had from the start was that whether the subject was domestic or foreign policy, so many things that looked great on paper, or sounded perfect in speeches, just don’t seem to work in the real world. That's been proven over and over again, with the passage of time now that the administration's been in power for over six years and continually forced to face the dismal results.

 

Which brings us to today’s update on Bill Clinton’s wife.

 

According to bloomberg.com, “After months of review, the administration published messages Clinton exchanged about the deadly attacks in Benghazi, Libya, with her colleagues and friends while she was secretary of state. Those memos contained none of the evidence to bolster critics who say she withheld security for the U.S. outpost there or deliberately misled the public about the ties between the attackers and al-Qaeda terrorists.”

 

Yet, after stating the preceding information, absolving Bill’s wife of fault, the article continues, “Still, on the day of its scheduled release, the State Department, at the request of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, labeled a part of a November 2012 e-mail to her about arrests in the Benghazi killings as classified, and kept it secret. That’s a problem for Clinton because she said the private e-mail address she chose to use while secretary was never the vehicle for classified information.”

 

Furthermore, “The 296 e-mails posted on a department website are a fraction of more than 30,000 work-related messages Clinton turned over from her private e-mail server.” Which means that there are still a significant number of messages to be studied before any real conclusions about Bill’s wife’s action’s following the Benghazi raid can be determined completely.

 

Nonetheless, her presidential aspirations continue, leading Jeremy W. Peters to write in nytimes.com that, “Democrats express concerns not only about whether Mr. Rubio, 43, a son of Cuban immigrants, will win over Hispanic voters, a growing and increasingly important slice of the electorate. They also worry that he would offer a sharp generational contrast to Mrs. Clinton, a fixture in American politics for nearly a quarter-century who will turn 69 before the election.”

 

Mr. Peters then points out that, “As her supporters recall, Barack Obama beat Mrs. Clinton for the nomination in the 2008 elections after drawing similar contrasts himself.”

 

As a result, “Democrats will try to use Mr. Rubio’s youth and four-year career in national politics against him, depicting him as green or naïve — a liability at a time when unrest abroad is a top concern.” 

 

That approach not only makes sense for Democrats, but is of extreme importance to the entire nation itself. Because, if nothing else, the last six years has proven that the presidency isn’t the place for an untried, inexperienced, one-term politician to learn how to preside over the world’s most successful nation. And to bring the country back to its former position, significant leadership skills gained in a similar position are needed now more than ever. 

 

Reader, Chico, from California, put it this way regarding Mr. Rubio: “So we've descended so far into the abyss of personality politics that we're supposed to vote for a green, callow poster child of a Republican because his parents worked hard in adverse circumstances so he could succeed?

 

“Why don't we just vote for his parents?

 

“We have become a politically pathetic nation of distracted know-nothings if such considerations trump real policy positions in the real world.”

 

And that hits the nail on the head.

 

That’s it for today folks.

 

Adios