Republicans shouldn’t count on an anti-Obama/anti-Dem sweep in 2016. They’re not in such great shape — for sure — but there’s something else that drives them crazy: too many people don’t actually associate Obama with what political analyst Greg Sargent calls the “smoking hellscape” vision of the Obama presidency. Maybe some on the right embrace the hellscape view when they’re in tribal meetings. But they haven’t taken it into the voting booth or Obama wouldn’t have won a second term.
…After the 2010 rout, Republicans were shocked to discover, a mere two years later, that their core assumption about Obama’s first term — there was no way he could get reelected, given how much of a disaster he had proved — was deeply flawed. …Sargent,WaPo
Obama is still in the White House; the economy is growing; we are not at war.
… As Jonathan Chait notes, there is a decent chance the economy will continue to expand; that the desire for change will not prove as potent as Republicans expect; and that national demographics will continue to favor Democrats.
The Clinton gamble is that swing voters won’t necessarily be seduced by the GOP promise of dramatic change, particularly after hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars are spent defining that change through a contrast of the GOP nominee’s agenda with her own. Just as happened in 2012. ...Sargent,WaPo
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The Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, Congress’s first legislative effort to muscle into the continuing talks to rein in Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions, will formally go before the committee on Tuesday afternoon. Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, the panel’s chairman, and Senator Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland, its ranking Democrat, pushed to reach bipartisan consensus by Tuesday morning, then join forces to stave off threats to the bill from the right and the left.
A Democratic aide familiar with the negotiations said Monday night that Mr. Cardin was optimistic that a bipartisan accord would be reached by morning.
To try to get there, Mr. Corker and Mr. Cardin focused on watering down two provisions. One would require the president to certify every 90 days that Iran is not supporting terrorist attacks against Americans, an issue that has not been part of the nuclear negotiations. The other would prevent the president from waiving any sanctions until the expiration of a 60-day congressional review period. ...NYT
Kevin Drum sees Republicans as so screwed up on the subject of the Iran nuclear deal that they now find themselves siding with Vlad Putin rather than their own president. The struggle is top news today as Senate Republicans reach for control of Iran negotiations.
The first test for President Obama’s nuclear framework with Iran will come Tuesday when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee considers legislation that will allow Congress to review and vote on a final deal. …TheHill
In the end, this is less about Iran than it is about preventing Obama from having yet another political “win,” putting Republicans squarely on Putin’s side.
Putin is eager to undermine any possibility of a US nuclear deal with Iran. This gives Republicans a choice: they can side with Putin or they can side with Barack Obama.
Decisions, decisions. I wonder what they’ll choose? …Drum,MoJo
Republicans haven’t shown that they know how to handle irony — or even know it when they see it. Siding with a communist dictator over their twice-elected president? There’s irony for you, a trap Republicans are building all by themselves.
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David Rothkopf, writing in Foreign Policy, sees Hillary Clinton as the tougher, better negotiator in dealings with Iran. ”
…Much greater clarity and specificity around this issue is required” he writes. “And negotiators should realize that our leverage over Iran will decline precipitously should sanctions be relieved. So setting or abiding by artificial deadlines should be avoided. Getting this right is key.”
… For any deal to be truly effective, it will require that successors to the Obama administration in Washington be resolute enough to impose the most potent unilateral sanctions America can muster on an errant Iran — financial sanctions that will make it very difficult for Iran to operate in the international system thanks to the importance of the American dollar and the banking system in international trade. It will also require that the next administration be willing to use all the pressure it could bring to bear on our allies to counter their general foreign-policy inertia. In other words, it will require leadership so strong that it would be willing to do whatever was necessary to impose real pressure on Iran — including, if required, the credible use of military force.
We can debate whether the Obama administration meets these criteria. Certainly, during the first term, when the administration was home to advocates of a much tougher and more skeptical Iran policy, like Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, Leon Panetta, and others, it embraced the idea of tougher sanctions that were initially pushed upon it by Congress. Some of its best diplomatic work was done at that time, ensuring those sanctions would be effective and respected internationally. On the other hand, reports from some of America’s partners in the nuclear negotiating process have suggested that the current Obama team repeatedly showed itself to be too eager for a deal with the Iranians, capitulating on issues where our allies felt we could have gotten better terms absent artificial deadlines and too great an impulse on the part of senior Americans to smooth over differences. ...ForeignPolicy
All of this has a familiar, strong aroma of Republican chicken hawks, of the old century’s addiction to militarism, and “bomb, bomb, bomb”. That’s where I step off Hillary’s campaign trail — and stay off.
Cross-posted from Prairie Weather