I remember events with Clinton in the Lewinsky scandal this way. Clinton delivered a nasty speech against Ken Starr which was very poorly received even by the liberal press. He then flew back to his vaca on Martha’s Vineyard and within hours reemerged to announce he fired cruise missiles (into Libya? Yemen?) against Al Queda camps. This tactic completely worked (not that the cruise missiles worked).
Do I have that about right?
With Obama my first guess is he is ruthless and will do it. Second guess is he knows his base won’t like an attack, knows it’s too late and will be seen as political, maybe even knows he is losing and doesn’t want to go out that way.
I think Obama believes he is going to lose.
Obama’s base has no problems with attacks as long as they are missiles or drones.... in fact these people love drones. As long as there are no “boots on the ground” the libs can be quite hawkish.