Barack Obama

DonViejo

(60,536 posts) Wed Feb 12, 2014, 11:29 AM Feb 2014

No, Barack Obama Isn't a Lame Duck (Yet)

Last edited Wed Feb 12, 2014, 12:22 PM - Edit history (1)

This OP is posted in the Barack Obama Group

PHILIP BUMP

Wall Street Journal columnist Neil King ponders a question that seems to have begun on or around January 21, 2013: Is President Obama a lame duck? The answer, as with all questions involving gauzy terms, is: depends on what you consider a lame duck.

King doesn't really offer an answer to the question he poses, calling the current situation in D.C. "lame duckish." "An eerie calm has fallen over the nation’s capital," he writes, "and it feels like a premature case of the lame duck." In part, he suggests, it's because no one expects anything to get done, and even Obama's insistence that he'll act unilaterally seems like so much wing-flapping.

It seems more than a little premature to declare Obama a lame duck. It seems that way, anyway.

Prior to the 20th Amendment, ratified in 1933, lame duck sessions were inevitable and lengthy. Congresses generally didn't convene until the December a year after their election, and the old Congress — including people who'd already lost their elections — would serve in the interim. As University of Notre Dame professor John Copeland Nagle explained to NPR in 2010, those lame duck politicians would pass legislation without having to worry about the consequences.

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http://www.thewire.com/politics/2014/02/no-barack-obama-isnt-lame-duck-yet/357993/

5 replies

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Highlight:

No, Barack Obama Isn't a Lame Duck (Yet) (Original Post) DonViejo Feb 2014 OP

Far from it DonViejo! I'd say more like a Cha Feb 2014 #1

Thanks DV. sheshe2 Feb 2014 #2

Nope, he's not, Jamaal510 Feb 2014 #3

Well said. IrishAyes Feb 2014 #4

Lame ducks in the modern sense of the word - essentially helpless - IrishAyes Feb 2014 #5

Cha

(305,406 posts)

1. Far from it DonViejo! I'd say more like a

Reply to DonViejo (Original post)

Wed Feb 12, 2014, 05:05 PM

Feb 2014

Soaring Eagle in spite of the teabaggers sandbagging progress. That's just how he is.

Obama signs order to raise minimum wage for federal contractors

snip//

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama signed an executive order on Wednesday to raise the minimum wage for federal contract workers to $10.10 an hour starting next year and encouraged employers nationwide to increase wages for their workers.

Obama announced during his State of the Union address last month that he intended to take executive action to raise wages for federal contract workers.

The order will affect workers starting on January 1, 2015, and applies to new contracts and replacements for expiring contracts."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/sns-rt-us-usa-obama-wages-20140212,0,4795690.story

President Obama is no "bystander". He's got two years and he intends to use them to the fullest!

Mahalo Don~

sheshe2

(87,490 posts)

2. Thanks DV.

Reply to DonViejo (Original post)

Wed Feb 12, 2014, 08:16 PM

Feb 2014

Nope, no lame duck. He is going to push as much (as his powers will allow him) of his agenda through. With or without Congress. Oh please let's take the House in 2014!

Jamaal510

(10,893 posts)

3. Nope, he's not,

Reply to DonViejo (Original post)

Wed Feb 12, 2014, 09:21 PM

Feb 2014

and because of that, Rush and the like have been ramping up their Nazi analogies. Drudge or one of those other weird sites even had a photoshopped pic of O in a Nazi uniform.
Joe Madison said it best earlier on PoliticsNation: those comparisons are nothing but an insult to those who survived the Holocaust. And might I just add that it is also an insult to the intelligence of every American to compare something like pushing for a livable wage and better health care to a genocide on countless people.

IrishAyes

(6,151 posts)

4. Well said.

Reply to Jamaal510 (Reply #3)

Thu Feb 13, 2014, 07:12 PM

Feb 2014

The president who's been vilified the worst in history is still marching forward into the gale, doing his best to help save the country, wanting the true benefits of justice even for those who've forsaken every decent instinct they might once have possessed. That's what makes him great, though. Maybe someday a few of his enemies will realize how wrong they've been, even if they lack the integrity to admit it.

IrishAyes

(6,151 posts)

5. Lame ducks in the modern sense of the word - essentially helpless -

Reply to DonViejo (Original post)

Thu Feb 13, 2014, 07:16 PM

Feb 2014

don't jump the shark like PRESIDENT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA does. And it may be that he's only just begun.

Thanks for a great OP.

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