Al Hunt: 100 Days of Failure

Here’s the Bloomberg columnist on President Obama’s second First 100 Days:

The White House thought a comfortably re-elected president would have more clout, and face less-resistant Republicans, to strike a compromise on the deficit, avoid the mindless across- the-board sequestration cuts, pass a gun-control measure, and immigration overhaul and get Congress to embark on a broad, new agenda, including universal preschool education, a higher minimum wage, an ambitious infrastructure program and something on climate change.

Let’s talk about this word “clout” for a moment. Clout — to do what? It’s all well and good that Hunt thinks Obama and Congress should be reducing the deficit and eliminating the sequester (at the same time?) and passing gun control and overhauling immigration and all the Progressive BS he means by a “broad, new agenda.”

But Obama didn’t run on any of that in 2012. His platform, boiled down, was “Mitt Romney is evil and I’ll raise taxes on the rich.”

Well, OK then. Obama defeated the evil rich dude, and then he got his tax hikes.

He doesn’t have the clout to do anything else, because he never mobilized the electorate to push for anything else. What Obama said he set out to do, he’s done. Now he gets to twiddle his thumbs from now until January 20, 2017 — and he knows it.

And so does Al Hunt.