ReaganAnd30YearsOfWrong
Obama and the Democrats have pretty much written their obituary for 2016. Remaining mum, they've allowed McConnell's obstruction to succeed in stupendous fashion without making the GOP pay any political price. Obama buckled and gave Republicans the sequester during the debt ceiling escapade; they failed to exact a political price for that; nobody remembers it. They failed to make the case for public/government involvement during a massive demand slump instead cowing to fear-mongering about deficits and debt. They failed to take credit for falling deficits even as they cowed to fear-mongering over it. They ran from Obama's single accomplishment , the ACA, which is probably going to be gutted despite all the chin-stroking pundits from a year ago. Obama failed to change, or attempt to change, the public conversation on global warming preferring to hide behind executive action which the GOP can endlessly blast as anti-democratic. Etc..

"What should Obama have done that he actually could have done in the face of scorched-earth Republican opposition?"

He should have changed the conversation. He should have made reversing the rightward lurch the country had been in since at least 1980 the prime objective. He didn't do it because he doesn't disagree with it. That's what an DLC-lead emasculated Democratic party has brought us.

You can just see the Orwellian orgy of themes the GOP is going to run on in 2016. And it's going to work because they have no competent opposition.