They said “No”.

It’s a now-common refrain of President Obama’s stump speeches, including his speech on Wednesday in Kansas City – even as the House passed a bill to sue him over his executive actions to extend some of the deadlines under the Affordable Care Act.

They have not been as constructive as I would had hoped.

The most original thing about Wednesday’s speech was the idea – presented as the suggestion of a young letter-writer to the White House – that women should appear on US currency. Obama called it “a good idea” – and it’s one that he could make happen by executive order. It would be a great war-on-women gimmick. (And if he really wanted to troll Republicans, he could put Harriet Tubman on a trillion-dollar bill.)



Introducing a bill with a woman on it – rather than passing one – epitomizes both the current limits on the president’s powers and the way he’s using the powers he has: to please liberals with surface changes that infuriate conservatives.

We hold the best cards. Things are getting better.

That strategy – part defiance, part condescension – has been disappointing if you assume that the ultimate goal of his second term is to make broad, lasting policy changes. The executive actions Obama has taken are certainly meaningful, and have concrete impact on people’s lives, like the “closing of the gap” on same-sex couples’ rights or almost anything he’s done on immigration.

But all of them can be reversed the instant a new executive takes office in 2017.

Imagine how much further along we’d be – how much stronger our economy would be – if Congress was doing its job, too.

So why not keep mocking John Boehner and the Republican efforts to sue or impeach the president? Democrats are certainly reaping the benefits: fundraising groups have sent at least – at least! – 21 fundraising emails on the subject since July 23, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee raised $2.1m last weekend by referencing the GOP’s legal efforts (the best four-day haul of this election cycle). It won’t change any Republican minds, but it’s not intended to – the derision is just fun for the whole progressive family.

Still, Democrats should beware: Obama’s executive orders – and the way they play into conservative efforts to portray him as angry, sarcastic and arrogant – are more useful getting Republicans elected than Democrats, according to a recent Pew poll. The poll also shows that 45% of those planning on voting Republican report being “more enthusiastic about voting this year than in prior elections”, while just 37% of Democrats say the same thing. Republicans also seem to respond more passionately to Obama criticism than Democrats rally to support him: half of Republicans say that they will consider their vote in the midterms as one “against” Obama, according to Pew. Meanwhile, only 36% of Democrats say they see their midterm vote as one “for” Obama – down from 44% in 2010.

Money can be helpful to candidates, but at some point, the message matters.

You don’t have time to be cynical. Hope is a better choice.

Obama’s rhetoric has the most success in simply validating the general consensus that Congress is terrible. Its latest approval rating is 28%, and a record 55% say the current Congress has “accomplished less than usual”. More of the people who say that Congress has accomplished less than usual blame Republican leaders rather than Democratic leaders – 44% to 28% – but that might just be the result of logical voters rather than Democratic rhetoric.

Getting voters to hate Congress is, at best, a Pyrrhic victory for Democrats. Even if they get more of their base to the polls, the GOP will get yet more of its supporters to turn out – and those that aren’t aligned will just throw up their hands and stay home.

Stop being mad all the time. Stop just hating all the time. Let’s get some work done together.

But I don’t buy into the Wise Men of Washington argument that the solution is bipartisan legislation for the sake of bipartisan legislation.



Rather, perhaps Democrats and Obama could put their own principles into action. Stop bashing Republicans and make cogent arguments for sane – and progressive – legislation. (Some of which Republicans might even pass. Even blind squirrels find nuts sometimes.)



The truth is that far-reaching legislation (and political action in general) often comes in response to specific crises rather than some happy congruence of ideals and people to vote for them: thus the relatively speedy Veterans Affairs bill, and the stutter-step attempts to reign in the NSA. (Of course, crises also produce really bad legislation – the Patriot Act, the Iraq Invasion – so, you know, be careful what you wish for.)



But for the biding-our-time gambit to work, we progressives have to not screw anything up too badly ourselves and wait for the GOP to implode rather than imploring them ad nauseum to do so. Missouri’s last senate race – Claire McCaskill v Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin – provides a case study of how well that can work.

I know that’s not a real plan: it’s a combination of faith in post-old-white-men demographics and conservative hubris. Then again, considering the rate at which conservative hubris is backfiring and their overreach is falling short … maybe it’s not such a bad plan after all.