Hammer and Tickle

by digby

Does anyone else find it odd that the Obama administration consistently uses the most hardball, down and dirty, tough guy tactics when it comes to Democratic Party electoral politics but pleads that it is required to observe every arcane, institutional ritual when it comes to legislation?

I guess we are supposed to believe that the president who is powerless to bend his own Democratic congressional majority on the signature progressive legislation of the past 60 years is the same president who goes around the country acting like Tony Soprano when it comes to deciding who gets to run for office and who doesn’t.

Of course, those two different approaches aren’t inconsistent at all if the president’s own goals are being served in both situations. And it certainly does show that the closer one gets to the fundamental basis of democracy — elections — the more the powers that be feel the necessity to bring the hammer down. Interfering with the working of the ruling elite however, simply isn’t done.

.