"Don't call it a comeback"?
Words.
"The gloves are off.
President Obama made a brief effort to sound bipartisan last week, saying he still hoped to find some ideas that both parties can embrace.
But the affability was mostly tactical, and so were the professions of hope. The reigning emotion at the White House has been frustration -- frustration that Obama's mandate for change has eroded and that Republicans have been so successful in mounting an effective opposition.
The message from Obama's aides, who don't labor under their boss' obligation to sound charitable, has been blunt and bitter: no more Mr. Nice Guy.
...Obama's proclaimed goal of bi-partisanship was always a long shot.
It never meant meeting the GOP all the way in the middle; he hoped his popularity could detach a few moderate Republicans and help him enact big changes. Instead, sharpening partisanship on both sides has eliminated the middle.
By last week, bipartisanship was no longer an aspiration; it was a cudgel.
...In a conversation with journalists, Obama's chief political strategist, David Axelrod, was blunt about what Republicans can expect if they don't find a way to compromise.
"We are going to very visibly seek their support moving forward, and we will shine a bright light on them when they don't," he said. "If they want to block everything . . . they will be held to account."
Axelrod accused the GOP of "rooting for failure."
...Until now, he suggested, Obama has been too gentle. "They didn't pay enough of a price for what was a determined strategy not to work with us," he said.
Now, "they either work with us or they have to pay the price for working against us."
...At the White House last week, Axelrod sounded as if he were preparing talking points for a defeat.
"The country needs to know that we tried to do it, that we reached out, that we tried that opportunity," he said. If the effort fails, he said, he wants to make sure the blame falls on Republicans, not on the failures of disorderly Democrats. "It has to be on them; it's not going to be on us."
Obama hopes to win his popular mandate back by running against the congressional minority, putting their flaws in the spotlight instead of his own.
It won't be transformational. It won't change the way Washington works. It won't be pretty. But it's a strategy.
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