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Originally Posted by willravel
I don't think you're understanding what I'm saying. Had Obama concentrated on Senate Democrats voting the renew of the Patriot Act down instead of working to make minor changes in it, they may have actually been able to tie it up until the midterms, which were like 7 months out.
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So instead of working to contain the inevitable damage, he should have taken a massive gamble on what was then the vastly unlikely possibility of a Democratic majority after mid-terms, and stuck his neck out to hold the thing up? Remember--it wasn't until a couple months before mid-terms that it even looked like the GOP might be hurting. At that point they were decreasing in popularity, but even that didn't seem like it could stop the machine.
Democrats have never been good at legislative obstruction; that's a Republican game. To have expected Obama to have been the lone Senator to do that from the left side of the aisle is asking a lot, especially from the benefit of several years' hindsight. At the time, there would have been no way of knowing that's what should have been done--the PATRIOT renewal looked like just another turn of the Republican steamroller's wheel.
I look at Obama's response compared to the relative glee with which McCain and even Clinton voted to renew PATRIOT, and I can't help but think my money's on the right horse.