"Mr. President: Welcome Their Hatred"

Marc Asch:

It is great to be reasonable, it is great to be willing to engage in dialog those with whom you disagree when ideology is at issue. But "government by organized money" has no patience with reasonable dialog.

House Minority Leader John Boehner is not going to work with you, he's not going to reach out across the aisle in a spirit of bipartisanship. Boehner is going to do what his benefactors expect of him: push through an agenda favorable to their interests. Boehner is a lobbyist with a knack for winning elections. It's not that he or his fellow congressional Republicans are inherently bad, it's that their power is rooted in private corporations, and that is who they answer to.

Your record for achievement in the White House is, frankly, not bad; in fact better by far than you are given credit for. Healthcare reform alone, however modest, was an historic accomplishment, you have won a Nobel Peace Prize, engineered the badly needed stimulus package, and quite a bit more. You have been productive.

The problem is that you are a baseless President. You have no base, no group that feels they can count on you, and on which you can rely. You have admirers, and those that respect you, many of each. But that is not the same as a base. What you had during the 2008 Presidential campaign was a base. A mass movement that fought for you and gave you a mandate.
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