Why Experts Say Obama’s In For A Rough Four Years — Even If He Wins Big
If President Obama wins reelection in November, it will be on a platform that promises higher taxes on top earners, tax reform built on top of a significantly higher revenue base and full implementation of his health care and financial reform laws. But if he makes good on any or all of them, it won’t be because Republicans bend to the will of voters and accept his victory as a mandate to govern.
Despite the clear differences between the candidates, Republicans are telegraphing their intent to continue their fight against Obama’s agenda into his second term. Some have brazenly used their own intransigence as an argument for a Mitt Romney presidency: Elect the Republican, or we’ll keep the country ungovernable.
This cuts against a basic to-the-victor-go-the-spoils understanding of democracy. But in a presidential system it’s nothing new and isn’t even all that rare. Politicians and pundits speak and write of electoral mandates as if presidents, like prime ministers of parliaments, were masters of their own policy destinies. But in the U.S. governing mandates are almost always illusory, which means even popular presidents, elected by wide margins, still have to fight like hell to deliver their agendas. And, troublingly, history shows the losers suffer few consequences for subverting voter will.
“Usually talk of mandates is just empty words and false claims,” says James Stimson, a political science professor at University of North Carolina.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/09/obama-romney-political-mandate.php
President Obama will basically be a lame duck with a Veto for four years, unless lazy Obama voters vote Democratic downticket.
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I still don't understand why the DNC, if not the Democratic SuperPac's have not invested in a "This, since Day-One, is what the gop has done for the past 3 1/2 years and voting Democratic top to bottom can stop it" campaign!
