Pass the popcorn

In case you missed it today, the Senate failed to move forward with Obama's trade agenda due entirely to opposition from his own party.  A couple of hours before the vote, the Washington Post's Dana Milbank wrote of Obama: "Why he's in danger of losing."

Here's why: Obama doesn't deign to explain his position and convince even members of own party to his point of view.  There is no principled opposition: only sheer stupidity and base politics practiced by everybody else.

Instead of coming clean, Obama prefers to inform fellow Democrats that he’s the smartest guy in the room. “Some folks are just opposed to trade deals out of principle, a reflexive principle,” Obama told an audience at Nike headquarters in Oregon on Friday. “If you’re opposed to these smart, progressive trade deals, then that means you must be satisfied with the status quo,” he added, also suggesting critics are stuck in the 1993 NAFTA fight, when “I was just getting out of law school.”

Then, with Bai, he mocked those who would “deal with climate change by shutting down global trade,” and he derided Warren as “a politician like everybody else” and one who is “absolutely wrong.” Warren’s arguments “don’t stand the test of fact and scrutiny,” he said.

Oh Dana, it's precious that you think this is a new thing.  The only reason this is newsworthy is because Obama is aiming his standard vitriol at Democrats.  And how!

Mr. Obama’s tirades on trade have included accusations that these liberal Democrats are ignorant about trade policy, insincere when offering their opinions, motivated by politics and not the national interest, and backward looking towards the past. Obama’s repeated attacks against Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), in which he charged that Warren’s concern about the trade bill is motivated not by a reasoned view of what is right for America but by her personal political motivations, is one of the most dishonest and repellant examples of character assassination and contempt by any American president, against any leading member of his own party, in my lifetime.

As I've said before, if you want to understand Obama's modus operandi, look at everything through the prism of his own vanity.  By dismissing opposing viewpoints, he confirms his own wonderful resolve and principled leadership against all those jerks who are probably getting paid by the Koch Brothers.  And Fox News.

Speaking of which: when you can't debate worth a damn, break out the straw men:

You’ll be hard-pressed to find a more stunningly brazen example of Obama’s preferred debating tactic than this. The president just loves erecting slanderous straw men in order to reject a “false choice” that precisely no one is suggesting in favor of a more reasonable course. This is a prime example of his compulsive need to engage in that manner of juvenile self-flattery.

Yup.  If you want to understand why virtually all the Gulf State leaders are snubbing Captain Fantastic's Camp David jamboree, here's why:

There are two reasons for the boycott.

The first is that the “key Arab allies” already know that Obama, who genuinely believes he is always right, does not listen to anybody.

Everybody knows, dude.