Dream Act passage in a lame duck session?

[Badger]

The "Dream Act" is disgusting.

Really?? What's your thoughts, EH? You never struck me as a "amnesty" fighter.

[Badger]

It is going to be a very rough two years, and the election in 2012 is going to be brutal. Obama seems to have no interest in triangulating, and pushing through controversial legislation like this in a lame duck session, would poison the waters. But it will be filibustered, and die. I am beginning to think that Obama just is not a very effective politician. Bring back Clinton!

Triangulation doesn't work very well when the opposition abandons previously held positions when you reach out to them.  Senate Republicans of '94 supported a basic health care plan that looks very, very much like the current law, but when Obama stepped out of the gate with it, they turned tail and called it "government takeover" and "socialism."  At the end of the negotiations on the '09 stimulus bill, Chuck Grassley said that he agreed with 90% of what was in it, and still voted against it and excoriated the president for supporting it.  A number of Republicans in the Senate supported the creation of a debt commission to make recommendations for dealing with the deficit, but when Obama declared his support for it, they withdrew theirs.  McCain pledged over and over and over again for the last four years that he would strongly consider repeal of DADT if a study was done which concluded that repeal would be feasible, and now that all that has been done, he has decided to stonewall.  Now, John Kyle, having asked for investments in shoring up existing missile defense as a condition for getting behind START has, now that it was provided, opposed the treaty. 

The notion that Obama has not reached out to Republicans in the last two years is just as ludicrous as the suggestion that Obama constantly caters to his base.  Bullsh**t.  Abject bullsh**t.  Obama's base, almost the entirety of it, is utterly and completely pissed at him, as the views expressed by posters on this very forum daily attest.  What is actually the case is that the Senate Republicans in the last two years have baited and switched on everything under the sun, and are nothing more than a bunch of unprincipled, hackish, cynical asswipes who ought not to be trusted with governing a telephone booth, much less a country.  And for their part, congressional Democrats have screwed the president six ways from Sunday since he took office.  I fault Obama for not being able to control his own caucus.  He has tried to triangulate plenty, but triangulation doesn't work when you're constantly trying to draw lines between disappearing dots. 

<Standing Ovation>