I kid, I kid.
But, seriously, there are two groups in America who desperately need a bracing slap to their collective faces so that we can begin the process of real and necessary change. The first, of course, are the Republican members of Congress who appear to think that they can brazen out their recent electoral debacles if they threaten to filibuster virtually everything that the Democrats will attempt and otherwise use parliamentary maneuverings to delay and obstruct Obama's priorities. In the House, where such maneuvers are unavailing, John Boehner seems to have settled on an odd combination of idle threats and whining to stave off his complete irrelevance.
I agree with the tone that Obama has set initially, which is to engage the Republicans up to a point. However, this should largely be used as a tactic to acquire the necessary sixty votes in the Senate where a filibuster is a threat to the President's program. I would rather we pass good legislation with 55 or 60 votes than incoherent and ineffective crap with 80 votes. At some point, Obama and Harry Reid, are going to have to play chicken with the Senate Republicans and make them blink. I am of the view that sooner rather than later is the way to go, especially now when only 12% of Americans disapprove of Obama. (Hell, chocolate ice cream isn't that popular.)
As for the House Republicans, well let me put this succinctly -- fuck 'em. They are crazy and irrelevant. They have no claim on power and certainly no moral high ground on which to stand. They ran roughshod over a far larger Democratic minority for years. Payback is not only in order, I suspect it is good politics. Left to their own devices, Boehner and company will move ever further to the right, in the process making themselves ever more unelectable in large parts of the country. That's not a bad thing.
Where the real re-education is going to have to occur is with the mainstream media. For the last 15 to 20 years, television news, especially of the talking head variety, and large swaths of print journalism, particularly at the Washington Post, have viewed the world through the prism of right wing memes. People who profess to be centrist non-ideological journalists such as Mark Halperin, Politico's John Harris and Jim Vanderhei, and the ever egregious David Broder, have so absorbed right wing conventional wisdom that they seem incapable of even beginning to understand the fallacies and biases that have long characterized their work. Less prestigious journalists in the mainstream media have taken their cues from these clowns, fetishisizing "bipartisanship" so long as what is going on involves Democrats capitulating to Republicans (it simply never works the other way around).
The quintessential illustration of this phenomenon occurred the other day when Chuck Todd vaulted himself toward mainstream moron leadership by asking Robert Gibbs whether Obama would veto a stimulus bill that passed with insufficient numbers of Republican votes! Let that sit on your tongue for a minute -- can you imagine such a question being asked of Bush over the last eight years. It's absolutely inconceivable.
The Harrisses and Todds of the media live in a world where Republicans are winners, Democrats are losers, and liberal Democrats are the biggest losers of them all.. They seem to be having a hard time adjusting to new realities.
So what is Obama to do with the media? Some have suggested that he cultivate friendly journalists and outlets to both assure that his message gets out and to subtly punish the trivia artists. I think this is not a bad approach in part. But I suspect the only thing that will really change the tone is for Obama to win in Congress, remain popular with the American people, and make clear that a new day has dawned. Once he has done this for a bit, the morons will fall in line. It's what they do.
