Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Interesting Article on the Challenges Facing Obama in a Second Term....


Obama Made the Bed, Now He Must Lay In It


Kevin Danielsen November 7, 2012 9:06 am


And so, Barack Hussein Obama will see another term in the Oval Office. While this campaign season was all that preoccupied the airwaves and media these last couple of months, there was something overshadowing the entire effort (for both candidates, actually).


Whether Romney or Obama, both would have been elected with the far cry from changing the status quo. For one, while the Democrats control the Senate, the Republicans control the House. If Romney had won, he would have been deadlocked by the Senate to repeal Obamacare (which would have been one of his first prerogatives). Now that Obama has won, we will likely have much of the same: a lame-duck Congress with the House that is handily controlled by the Republicans.

This fact is emphasized by the voter turnout from the yesterday’s numbers. Basically, carving up the country under the popular vote numbers, you’ve got just about a 50-50 split with a little variation here and there. NationalJournal.com reports the reason for the apparent lack in forward momentum, and the absence of a mandate:


Barack Obama won a second term but no mandate. Thanks in part to his own small-bore and brutish campaign, victory guarantees the president nothing more than the headache of building consensus in a gridlocked capital on behalf of a polarized public.

If the president begins his second term under any delusion that voters rubber-stamped his agenda on Tuesday night, he is doomed to fail.

Indeed, the US is just about as polarized as it has ever been.

This division is a major problem for the Obama administration, especially considering the economic, financial, and foreign policy problems that are about to befall the public and private sectors. You have a fiscal cliff looming off the distance in January; you have the Benghazi incident and subsequent questions lurking; and last, you have Obamacare, which a large part of the country hasn’t exactly adopted as something that makes them comfortable. Needless to say, you have very big national problems on the horizon, and the Obama administration has very little power to stop them.

He can’t artificially block the leaks with more federal spending, because the House won’t let him. President Obama made his bed in his first term… he must now lay in it for his second. The day of reckoning is at hand.

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