I am thrilled with Obama, precisely because I view the 2016 Senate elections as a glass half full.
There are a remarkable number of competitive elections involving Republican incumbents. Truly remarkable. The party is at considerable risk of losing the 4-5 seats that would give control back to the Democrats.
But here is the flip side ... What if the Democrats do not gain much ground in the Senate? The way I figure things, which is to say amateurishly I suppose, these two-year cohorts are so lopsided in partisan ways that this is the Democrats’ one chance. If they do not retake the Senate in 2016, then their chances of being the majority party there essentially evaporate until 2022. The Republicans have an iron grip on the House, so the Dems must go all in for 2016.
The bottom line is that Obama is going to play smash mouth politics at every turn. And Mitch McConnell is going to make every Democratic Senator miserable as a result. I know that he and Boehner are exceedingly unpopular on this forum, but McConnell is among the best parliamentarians of the past century. He is going to run rings around Obama and the Dems.
I don’t imagine that much will get done over the next two years, and that will make folks on this forum ever unhappier and more cynical. But as I believe that only bad things lie ahead as long as we have the president we do, I am at least hoping that this is all a set up to a semi-permanent legislative majority and a conservative Republican President in 2016.