Ouch: “Lame duck swims to Asia”

07 Nov, 2014 by William Teach

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Quite frankly one of the most amusing headlines regarding Obama and the midterms, something I really would not have expected to appear in Politico

I almost don’t even care what the article says, but

If President Barack Obama expects to escape the spate of brutal post-election news by traveling 6,000 miles and 12 time zones to Asia, he’s in for a surprise.

Regional players are taking stock of whether the U.S. president once seen as a global rock star will now have diminished heft on the world stage, and some are delivering their verdict well ahead of his arrival Monday for an eight-day trip to China, Burma and Australia.

Global Times, an English-language newspaper published by China’s state-run People’s Daily, has carried two withering editorials in recent days.

“The lame-duck president will be further crippled” in the wake of a GOP victory, the newspaper warned in one before the voting was complete. “He has done an insipid job, offering nearly nothing to his supporters. US society has grown tired of his banality.”

Conservatives often note that international news outlets often do the job that the US media doesn’t. The big question for the US media is whether they turn on Obama at this point. He’s a drag on the party, he has rarely provided any help to other Democrats, he tends to be stingy with the cash he raises in regards to other Dems, and his brand is seriously damaged. What we should expect from him for the next two+ years is for him to significantly ramp up his partisan rhetoric, and to do things which the voters repudiated him over. Right now, Dems have to think about 2016, and Obama will be a helper.

“When Southeast Asia looks at this trip and him coming, they’re wondering, you know, who is Barack Obama now after the midterm elections?” Bower said. “They’ll be trying to discern whether he has the commitment and political capability, the political capital to follow through on earlier commitments.”

When has Obama ever had the commitment and political capability to follow through, other than on campaigning? By his own words he’s “lazy”. He rarely puts in the hard work the job requires. That said, there’s a better chance of Things Getting Done with a GOP Senate, which supports the Transpacific Partnership trade agreement, something Harry Reid was dead set against. And it may well be that other Democrat Senators will join the GOP majority on this, once Reid is out of the way.

One interesting thing to note, the GOP congress may make Obama look good by the end of his term, if Obama follows along with the economic measures the GOP will pass.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.