What if Obama didn't try to get any GOP votes on bills in his first term?

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Apparently during the negotiations to pass the ACA in the senate the Democrats spent months trying to get 1 GOP senator to sign on to the bill to have bi-partisan support and made heaps of concessions, only to fail in the end...but then they didn't take back any of the concessions made to the GOP in negotiations. What if the Obama administration and Harry Reid recognized that the GOP would not have any defecting Senators and purposely rammed the bill through based on a pure party line? Beyond that even things like the Stimulus package made a bunch of concessions to the GOP and got no votes, but then didn't remove any concessions. What if Obama upon McConnel's speech about making Obama a one term president and his intention to stop his agenda just opted to negotiate within the party and the one defecting senator to make things happen?
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/the-real-story-of-obamacares-birth/397742/
We know that congressional Republicans pursued a conscious strategy not to cooperate with Democrats on the stimulus, voting in unison in the House against it. Very early on, Dave Obey, then chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, asked his counterpart on the committee, Republican Jerry Lewis, to get his leaders and rank-and-file to provide Republican ideas to include, and non-starters to exclude, in a stimulus plan and was told that there were orders from “on high” not to cooperate. But despite that, the stimulus package was adopted over a Senate GOP filibuster before a healthcare reform effort moved into full bloom. Could the stimulus have done more to create jobs in the short term? Certainly—but in part to accommodate Senate Republicans like Charles Grassley, who nonetheless ended up voting against the bill, 40 percent of the stimulus package was tax cuts that mostly did little either to add jobs or stimulate the economy.

....

But with Obama’s blessing, the Senate, through its Finance Committee, took a different tack, and became the fulcrum for a potential grand bargain on health reform. Chairman Max Baucus, in the spring of 2009, signaled his desire to find a bipartisan compromise, working especially closely with Grassley, his dear friend and Republican counterpart, who had been deeply involved in crafting the Republican alternative to Clintoncare. Baucus and Grassley convened an informal group of three Democrats and three Republicans on the committee, which became known as the “Gang of Six.” They covered the parties’ ideological bases; the other GOPers were conservative Mike Enzi of Wyoming and moderate Olympia Snowe of Maine, and the Democrats were liberal Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and moderate Kent Conrad of North Dakota.

Baucus very deliberately started the talks with a template that was the core of the 1993-4 Republican plan, built around an individual mandate and exchanges with private insurers—much to the chagrin of many Democrats and liberals who wanted, if not a single-payer system, at least one with a public insurance option. Through the summer, the Gang of Six engaged in detailed discussions and negotiations to turn a template into a plan. But as the summer wore along, it became clear that something had changed; both Grassley and Enzi began to signal that participation in the talks—and their demands for changes in the evolving plan—would not translate into a bipartisan agreement.

What became clear before September, when the talks fell apart, is that Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell had warned both Grassley and Enzi that their futures in the Senate would be much dimmer if they moved toward a deal with the Democrats that would produce legislation to be signed by Barack Obama. They both listened to their leader. An early embrace by both of the framework turned to shrill anti-reform rhetoric by Grassley—talking, for example, about death panels that would kill grandma—and statements by Enzi that he was not going to sign on to a deal. The talks, nonetheless, continued into September, and the emerging plan was at least accepted in its first major test by the third Republican Gang member, Olympia Snowe (even if she later joined every one of her colleagues to vote against the plan on the floor of the Senate.)

Obama could have moved earlier to blow the whistle on the faux negotiations; he did not, as he held out hope that a plan that was fundamentally built on Republican ideas would still, in the end, garner at least some Republican support. He and Senate Democratic leaders held their fire even as Grassley and Enzi, in the negotiations, fought for some serious changes in a plan that neither would ever consider supporting in the end. If Obama had, as conventional wisdom holds, jammed health reform through at the earliest opportunity, there would have been votes in the Senate Finance Committee in June or July of 2009, as there were in the House. Instead, the votes came significantly later.

To be sure, the extended negotiations via the Gang of Six made a big difference in the ultimate success of the reform, but for other reasons. When Republicans like Hatch and Grassley began to write op-eds and trash the individual mandate, which they had earlier championed, as unconstitutional and abominable, it convinced conservative Democrats in the Senate that every honest effort to engage Republicans in the reform effort had been tried and cynically rebuffed. So when the crucial votes came in the Senate, in late December 2009, Harry Reid succeeded in the near-impossible feat of getting all 60 Democrats, from Socialist Bernie Sanders and liberal Barbara Boxer to conservatives Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, Mark Pryor, and Blanche Lincoln, to vote for cloture, to end the Republican filibuster, and to pass their version of the bill. All sixty were needed because every single Republican in the Senate voted against cloture and against the bill. Was this simply a matter of principle? The answer to that question was provided at a later point by Mitch McConnell, who made clear that the unified opposition was a ruthlessly pragmatic political tactic. He said, “It was absolutely critical that everybody be together because if the proponents of the bill were able to say it was bipartisan, it tended to convey to the public that this is O.K., they must have figured it out.”

The delays engendered in large part by the extended negotiations with Republicans in the Gang of Six, meant in the end that the normal legislative process—in which separate bills passed by House and Senate would be reconciled in a conference committee—was not going to work in this case. When the vacancy caused by the death of Senator Edward M. Kennedy was filled via a January 2010 special election by Republican Scott Brown, Democrats lost their 60th vote—and the McConnell strategy meant that there was no way, no matter what changes Democrats were willing to make in the final package, that there would be a single Republican vote to get them past the filibuster hurdle. Hence, the fallback to using reconciliation to bypass the filibuster in the Senate, and the inability to smooth out the rough edges and awkward language in the final bill that was enacted.
 
He had to have GOP votes on the Stimulus-the Supermajority didn't yet exist at that point. A few Republican Senators did vote for the bill-and shaped the final form. At the time of the Recovery Arlen Spector was still a Republican.

Without altering some other elections you can't pass the Recovery act without Spector, Snowe and Collins. The margins were not there.

Baucus courted Baucus despite the administration's skepticism. Obama wanted to focus the effort on winning over a Republican Senator on Snowe.

Even if Obama decided that once Franken was sworn in and and all effort to win over what Republican Senators could vote for the bill-that basically means abandoning the effort to persuade Snowe earlier.

Baucus' actions gives the impression that he would have focused on Grassley regardless.

It's hard to imagine that the Senate could have passed a Healthcare bill before the House. Even under the best of circumstances passing the ACA by the January deadline is hard. Before the loss of the Massachusetts Senate seat made reconciliation impossible discussions between the House and Senate were tense. The House as a whole had two problems:

The Conservative Democrats wanted clearer language prohibiting the use of ACA funds to support abortion.


The rest of the Democrats in the House were wanted to maintain the public option that was present in the House Bill.

If there were no filbuster that wouldn't be a problem. Apparrently Reid had 58 votes in favor of that policy. But 58 isn't 60.

You can't pass The Public Option through the Senate as it was in 2009. The House believed that agreeing to the Senate's public optionless bill would be too much of a concession.


So the question is whether the two sides can reach a settlement by the time of the Massachusetts election. I'm not sure. That could take months and at most were looking at discussions that begin in early December in my view.
 

EMTSATX

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I thought Olympia Snowed was open to being a co-sponser with Obama saying "they can an call it Snowed are if she will sign on."
 
Snowe was at least publicly open to supporting the bill until the last minute. She voted for the bill in Committee and then rejected the same piece of legislation when the full Senate voted.

She voted against the bill largely because Senator Reid wasn't temperamentally suited to win her over. There was a personality conflict involved that transcended policy details.

Of course Snowe's Hamlet like attitude towards the bill meant that her support couldn't be relied upon-which created an opportunity cost to any effort to bring her onboard.

But if any Republican was going to vote for the ACA Snowe is that Senator.
 
They had a Congressional supermajority didn't they? "Why do we need them" was the general attitude before the GOP took the house in 2010.

Also, Harry Reid running the senate was a mistake, that abrasive ass.
 
In my opinion, even if they'd never attempted to make a deal in the House the balance of power would still belong to the Blue Dogs and you'd get the same ACA. The caucus was clearly terrified of losing their seats (with good reason, it turned out), and not attempting bipartisanship would only have made them more nervous, if anything. I guess the big quest for compromise that failed was the DREAM Act, but again it was the senate rather than the house that really derailed that.
 

Deleted member 1487

They had a Congressional supermajority didn't they? "Why do we need them" was the general attitude before the GOP took the house in 2010.

Also, Harry Reid running the senate was a mistake, that abrasive ass.
Only for 9 months until Kennedy died. Franken wasn't seated for over a year. During the 9 month period of Supermajority Baucus would not give up on courting Chuck Grassley, which as the article I quoted in the OP says pretty much ensured the Dems got played hard by McConnel.
 
Only for 9 months until Kennedy died. Franken wasn't seated for over a year. During the 9 month period of Supermajority Baucus would not give up on courting Chuck Grassley, which as the article I quoted in the OP says pretty much ensured the Dems got played hard by McConnel.

That's still 9 months of a supermajority that they pretty much wasted.

And in spite of claims of reaching across the asiles, the still had most votes go down party lines. So they could pass whatever they wanted.
 

Deleted member 1487

That's still 9 months of a supermajority that they pretty much wasted.

And in spite of claims of reaching across the asiles, the still had most votes go down party lines. So they could pass whatever they wanted.
Oh agreed. They should have done a lot more, which is part of what this thread is about, though it should be realized that the Senate Dems were such a broad political spectrum that they were limited in what they could do by what the most conservative Democrat was willing to agree to, which effectively was Lieberman and the ex-GOP senator that defected.

The reach across the aisle thing was attempted by the Dems, it was McConnel behind the scenes telling any Republican that worked with the Dems they'd be primaried if they deviated from the party line that killed any bi-partisanship. So the GOP is entirely to blame for the lack of bi-partisanship, but hey they really didn't pay a political price for it, other than empowering the crazies, but that was more the failure of the Bush administration and the embrace of the TEA party to avoid electoral death than Senate tactics that did that.
 
They had a Congressional supermajority didn't they? "Why do we need them" was the general attitude before the GOP took the house in 2010.

Also, Harry Reid running the senate was a mistake, that abrasive ass.

The Obama administration did reach out to the moderates in the Republican Party in 2009. But those Senators were generally in the leftmost fringe of the Republican Party. One had to leave the party as a consequence. The Recovery Act wouldn't have passed without their votes.

At most you could accuse the administration of encouraging solid Republican opposition by walking back an earlier compromise of CHIP expansion. But I'm not sure if that was an Obama or a Reid decision.

Reid's abrasiveness might be the key reason why Snowe voted against ACA. Another more diplomatic Majority Leader might well have persuaded her. But then another Majority Leader might not have been as able to convince other Democratic Senators to vote for the bill.

Even with a Supermajority the administration couldn't get whatever they might have wanted. For example, being extremely generous, there were at most 58 votes for the Public Option within the Democratic Caucus. Once the 60 vote threshold is established-that policy can't pass the Senate.

As I said earlier-even if the administration concluded that it had the votes as soon as Franken was sworn in and Spector changed parties-Baucus might still not give up on his effort to persuade Grassley.

At most an earlier decision to abandon Snowe and Grassley would mean that there would be an additional month of deliberation in Reconciliation-and I am far from sure that would have been enough to deal with the abortion and public option impasse with the House.

Supposedly they were close to some sort of deal by the time of the Massachusetts election. But I can't be sure of that.
 
Apparently during the negotiations to pass the ACA in the senate the Democrats spent months trying to get 1 GOP senator to sign on to the bill to have bi-partisan support and made heaps of concessions, only to fail in the end...but then they didn't take back any of the concessions made to the GOP in negotiations. What if the Obama administration and Harry Reid recognized that the GOP would not have any defecting Senators and purposely rammed the bill through based on a pure party line? Beyond that even things like the Stimulus package made a bunch of concessions to the GOP and got no votes, but then didn't remove any concessions. What if Obama upon McConnel's speech about making Obama a one term president and his intention to stop his agenda just opted to negotiate within the party and the one defecting senator to make things happen?
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/the-real-story-of-obamacares-birth/397742/

I actually think it puts him in a much stronger position. I think the constant overtures to compromise make Obama look like a guy that's been dumped and can't get it through his head. Lloyd Dobler, except the ATL Lloyd Dobler that never gets the girl. I think it created a perception of weakness that cost him in subsequent negotiations with the GOP and that cost him dearly in the 2010 midterms, when he appeared very feckless.

I honestly think that about 20%-30% of the electorate doesn't understand or care enough about policy to be influenced by it much one way or the other. I think that segment of the electorate votes based on perceptions of personal strength. And with his "here, take my wallet. And my wife!" style of compromise, he was a hopeless negotiator those first couple years. I honestly think it was because he was just that damned optimistic, but it was very counterproductive in terms of his effectiveness.

I think Obama gives fewer fcks now than ever before. The guy is shooting from the hip, and his approval ratings are at one of the high points of his presidency. If he had just been a wee-bit more Luther the anger translator and a little less Professor O, I don't think there's any debate that we're talking about one of the three most consequential Presidents of the last 100 years.
 
It bears repeating that few of the Obama administration's priorities failed in the 2009-2010 period. The Recovery Act, ACA, and Dodd-Frank all passed. Don't Pass Don't Tell all passed. New START was ratified. Don't Ask Don't Tell was repealed.

The only prominent failures were the failure to pass through a Cap and Trade policy, to secure passage of the Dream Act, and the failure to phase out the top rate of the Bush tax cuts.

I'm not sure even a Supermajority would have allowed those goals to be accomplished. Much less one that is gone by February.

Even if ACA passes by December 24th 2009 at most that might mean that Dodd-Frank passes a little earlier.

There still won't be the votes to overcome the McCain filibuster-or even enact Cap and Trade. Having the votes to enact the NEW START treaty before December is even more out of the question.

The best case scenario for the Obama administration would involve passing through all of the immediate agenda items by December 2010-such that the table is cleared and the Republicans have nothing to hold hostage.

In that case-and only in that case-the Top level of the Bush tax cuts would have expired.


With foresight the best outcome would be one that set in place the legal infractructure to raise the debt ceiling and to make future increases automatic or otherwise permanently eliminated the possibility of a default.

I don't believe that a Grand Bargain was ever a genuine possibility. Thus the best case scenario for 2011 is one were the issue isn't on the table.

In that case both sides can retreat to their respective corners and do nothing without raising the risk of catastrophe.

But I realize that's an absolute fantasy.

But there's no way that Cap and Trade and Dodd-Frank, Don't Ask Don't Tell Repeal, DREAM can pass by January 2010.

Whatever one thinks of The Recovery Act and ACA from a partisan perspective-there's no question that those were massive pieces of legislation. There's a reason why enacting them took a a year.
 

Deleted member 1487

I actually think it puts him in a much stronger position. I think the constant overtures to compromise make Obama look like a guy that's been dumped and can't get it through his head. Lloyd Dobler, except the ATL Lloyd Dobler that never gets the girl. I think it created a perception of weakness that cost him in subsequent negotiations with the GOP and that cost him dearly in the 2010 midterms, when he appeared very feckless.
Yeah Obama screwed up those first two years extremely badly, which resulted in the 2010 redistricting and major screw up. Whatever Bill Clinton did with failing on healthcare and losing the House in 1994 was nothing in comparison.

I honestly think that about 20%-30% of the electorate doesn't understand or care enough about policy to be influenced by it much one way or the other. I think that segment of the electorate votes based on perceptions of personal strength. And with his "here, take my wallet. And my wife!" style of compromise, he was a hopeless negotiator those first couple years. I honestly think it was because he was just that damned optimistic, but it was very counterproductive in terms of his effectiveness.
Agreed. The GOP certainly smacked him around figuratively and took his lunch money repeatedly. This is one area I think Hillary would have been FAR superior to him, because she had the experience of that already. Obama was too wet behind the ears and took all the wrong lessons from 1993 (courtesy of the Clinton people he brought on) and applied them to a radically different situation; he really did not understand what a declaration of guerrilla warfare the McConnel speech was.

I think Obama gives fewer fcks now than ever before. The guy is shooting from the hip, and his approval ratings are at one of the high points of his presidency. If he had just been a wee-bit more Luther the anger translator and a little less Professor O, I don't think there's any debate that we're talking about one of the three most consequential Presidents of the last 100 years.
Sure, but its too late and the damage was been done with the redistricting. Obama fucked up hard in his first 2 years and we will pay for it long beyond 2020 as I think undoing that Gerrymander will be impossible and in fact I think the cyclical economic downturn by the 2020 election will in fact give the GOP that electoral cycle yet again. Hillary will certainly be pretty unpopular if there is girdlock again and she does any sort of Grand Bargain. The one saving grace is potentially that Donald will give the Dems the House this cycle, though the 2018 midterm will likely wipe that out.
Really Obama had too much ego and thought he was the grand compromiser that would heal the country and political process and just did not understand at all what the situation politically really was. He was blinded by the 2008 election and burned his bridge with the youth as well as gave the GOP the bully pulpit the run the narrative. Again I have come around to the idea that Hillary would have handled that better and fought the necessary ideological war that was needed at that moment. I may well be wrong. Still I think that Obama blundered worse than any president since Hoover.
 
Sure, but its too late and the damage was been done with the redistricting. Obama fucked up hard in his first 2 years and we will pay for it long beyond 2020 as I think undoing that Gerrymander will be impossible and in fact I think the cyclical economic downturn by the 2020 election will in fact give the GOP that electoral cycle yet again. Hillary will certainly be pretty unpopular if there is girdlock again and she does any sort of Grand Bargain. The one saving grace is potentially that Donald will give the Dems the House this cycle, though the 2018 midterm will likely wipe that out.
Really Obama had too much ego and thought he was the grand compromiser that would heal the country and political process and just did not understand at all what the situation politically really was. He was blinded by the 2008 election and burned his bridge with the youth as well as gave the GOP the bully pulpit the run the narrative. Again I have come around to the idea that Hillary would have handled that better and fought the necessary ideological war that was needed at that moment. I may well be wrong. Still I think that Obama blundered worse than any president since Hoover.

You know what I think it was? I'm not sure he expected the Congressional reaction to him, just as a guy doing a job, to be so driven by racism. There are probably at least 100 people in Congress who got their job through dog whistling and nothing else, and these were the guys in safe seats with seniority. I've noticed that a lot of black folks from the West Coast are a little shocked by the attitudes they get when they travel east, and I wonder if it caught him off guard. I would say no, because he lived in Chicago for so long, but he was in academia during that time, so maybe he was a little insulated from it.

He just seemed like he was personally taken off-guard by it. Like he expected McConnell to lightly punch him on the arm one day and be like "I been fcking with you this whole time, Brosef!" before he busted out laughing his goofy little turtle laugh. I'm just glad he's gone all Thelma and Louise on us the past year. It's a riot.
 

Deleted member 1487

You know what I think it was? I'm not sure he expected the Congressional reaction to him, just as a guy doing a job, to be so driven by racism. There are probably at least 100 people in Congress who got their job through dog whistling and nothing else, and these were the guys in safe seats with seniority. I've noticed that a lot of black folks from the West Coast are a little shocked by the attitudes they get when they travel east, and I wonder if it caught him off guard. I would say no, because he lived in Chicago for so long, but he was in academia during that time, so maybe he was a little insulated from it.

He just seemed like he was personally taken off-guard by it. Like he expected McConnell to lightly punch him on the arm one day and be like "I been fcking with you this whole time, Brosef!" before he busted out laughing his goofy little turtle laugh. I'm just glad he's gone all Thelma and Louise on us the past year. It's a riot.
I don't think the Congress people that opposed him did it out of racism. It was entirely politics and they understood the media wouldn't punish them for doing it, so they used that cover to get away with murder. Obama clearly did not understand what McConnell really meant in his speech about making Obama a 1-termer; obviously he thought McConnell was playing to the rabid base in the media, but was a rational actor and could be negotiated with...but really didn't get what McConnell understood about the media and the electorate: he gained more by refusing to compromise and would pay no political price for obstinence, at least less of one than if he compromised. McConnell understood the GOP was about to be exterminated politically if Obama was a success, so he had to do what he did to ensure the base and donors were satisfied and ensure Obama couldn't become the next FDR and put them out in the wilderness for a generation. I think he lucked into realizing that the GOP didn't need to win the presidency to remain politically viable either with donors or the voting base. The problem is that in doing so they were stuck with appealing to the voters than wanted ideological purity...which is what Donald Trump is, pure distilled GOP ideology personified.

In terms of racism Obama was highly insulated from American racism against black people, because he was the son of an African immigrant who he really didn't know that well, raised by a white extended family, grew up mostly in Hawaii or abroad and only really had an urban experience in the continental US for college, which is a socially liberal bastion of privileged people and where he pretty much hung out with foreign students and privileged white guys and got his political start. Michelle has largely been his window in the Black American experience he only had limited personal contact with until he got out of grad school and even then he was hanging out with the Chicago Black elite class and white liberals around the University of Chicago. I'm from Illinois and went to college at UIC right around the time he was a state senator and running for president, so I got to hear a lot about his life and political career, plus I read his books at the time he was running. I guarantee he had no emotional awareness of white lower class racism. The white upper classes, even the conservatives, aren't really racist anymore, at least no where near the way the Trump base of the GOP is, so he really had at most limited experience of it and pretty much viewed it as an outsider.

I think it really took Obama to go through what he has in his first term to start to realize how things really are in this country and will be entertaining as hell when he really speaks his mind once out of office, but I really think he still believes he played all his cards right and nothing could have been done better or differently. He really seemed or seems even to think that his experience of white Republican politicians, which I gather is very good socially, has been very positive since the beginning and that they are rational people, which I guarantee you most of them are privately. The thing was the entire reality of what politics was upended in 2008 and Obama took until the Grand Bargain fiasco to realize what had happened. Even then it really took until the 2014 mid-terms for it to be crystal clear; I really do think he meant the 'I hear you' when he gave his speech after that mid-term turned into a disaster for the Dems and turn out was lower than it had been since any time since 1942. But it was FAR too late and largely I think his presidency has been a failure compared to what it could have been.
 
2010 was inevitably going to be a Republican wave election. There is nothing Obama or the Democrats could have done to avoid that outcome. Obama's problem in the 2010 and 2014 midterms was more politics than policy. The problem wasn't that his policies somehow offended the coalition that had elected him-his problem was that the Democratic coalition largely doesn't vote in off year elections. The electorate in 2010 was therefore older, whiter, and more conservative.

This is one of the two central problems with American politics-the general election electorate is not the same as the midterm electorate.

There is no policy change Obama could have made to alter that-and as such 2010 was destined to be a landslide loss for the Democrats.

Avoiding the extreme version of Gerrymandering that occurred after 2010 might just be possible. As discussed in Ratfked, that plan was formulated by a Republican strategist named Chris Jankowski. Without him realizing how important 2010 was-the 2011 gerrymandering might not have been as skillfill-and at least in theory it would have been more within the realm of the possible for the Democrats to regain a majority at some point. If the REDMAP project never happens-there will be a Republican majority after 2010. But that majority will not be as safe as the one that currently exists.

But again none of that has anything to do with anything Obama did or could have done. Less people vote in midterms-and those that do vote are precisely those voters most predisposed to dislike the policies of any Democratic administration.
 

Deleted member 1487

2010 was inevitably going to be a Republican wave election. There is nothing Obama or the Democrats could have done to avoid that outcome. Obama's problem in the 2010 and 2014 midterms was more politics than policy. The problem wasn't that his policies somehow offended the coalition that had elected him-his problem was that the Democratic coalition largely doesn't vote in off year elections. The electorate in 2010 was therefore older, whiter, and more conservative.

This is one of the two central problems with American politics-the general election electorate is not the same as the midterm electorate.

There is no policy change Obama could have made to alter that-and as such 2010 was destined to be a landslide loss for the Democrats.
We completely disagree about that. Obama did tons to alienate his base, including disbanding the grass roots organizations until he needed them to fight for the ACA, which he gave them no input in, just expected their lockstep buy in, surrounded himself with conservative Dem Clinton people like Rahm Emmanuel who told the 'professional left' to shut the f-up, and tried to compromise hard on all the major policy points like the needless tax cuts for the Stimulus Package and of course killing the public option. Now I know that the public option wasn't politically viable, but that move alienated a ton of his base and left them cold toward the ACA that they didn't want to advocate, stump for, or defend for it's problems. The base felt betrayed and stayed home more than is usual for mid-terms. The 2010 mid terms were going to likely be a rollback of Dem electoral success in 2008, but it was the failure of policy that kept people home and the constant misinformation about the ACA as well as the unnecessary compromise that Obama didn't try and educate his base on that killed the Dems in 2010.

2014 was just a GOP wave cycle due to the map that when coupled with the Gerrymander just meant the Dems were screwed. But Obama's actions in the previous 6 years really demoralized the base. It was really only post-2014 Obama that didn't care and fought back that finally inspired Democratic voters.

Avoiding the extreme version of Gerrymandering that occurred after 2010 might just be possible. As discussed in Ratfked, that plan was formulated by a Republican strategist named Chris Jankowski. Without him realizing how important 2010 was-the 2011 gerrymandering might not have been as skillfill-and at least in theory it would have been more within the realm of the possible for the Democrats to regain a majority at some point. If the REDMAP project never happens-there will be a Republican majority after 2010. But that majority will not be as safe as the one that currently exists.

But again none of that has anything to do with anything Obama did or could have done. Less people vote in midterms-and those that do vote are precisely those voters most predisposed to dislike the policies of any Democratic administration.
2010 was a confluence of factors that Obama's political missteps exacerbated and turned into the disaster it was. It could have been mitigated with better politics on his part, but all the natural GOP advantages dove tailed with everything else going on and screwed the country.
 
I think some GOP outreach may have been, or seemed, necessary given the fractures and lack of discipline within the Democratic caucus itself. I'm baffled to this day that Joe Lieberman didn't kill the ACA at the last minute out of spite.
 
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