On The Fiscal Cliff Negotiations: Obama Has Now Become The Community-Organizer-In-Chief

You would think by now, that most Americans would understand that the man occupying the White House, Barack Obama, has no leadership skills and is completely incapable of negotiating anything.  That's why there has been nothing but gridlock for the last 2 years in which he hasn't had complete control of Congress.  You see, this President avoids negotiation at all cost.  He would prefer to use executive orders rather than try and get a divided Congress to agree with him.

Now, the country is faced with the infamous Fiscal Cliff and where is the President?  He's M.I.A.  Sure, he had one meeting with Congress on the topic; but, that only came after he met with like-minded union leaders and left-wing organizations like MoveOn.org, and sympathetic business leaders that he was completely comfortable with.  Obviously missing in any of those meetings was the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; a group that represents more than 3.3 million businesses and businessmen in this country and whom would be greatly hurt by any tax increases.  But, you see, to invite the Chamber of Commerce would probably set up a face-to-face debate over the tax increases on the rich; and, Obama has no intention of debating the subject.

Of course, when he "did" have that one-and-only meeting with Congressional leaders on avoiding the Fiscal Cliff, he was sure to have it in front of the cameras; further, making it quite sure that the American public could hear that he had an expressed willingness to negotiate and work with the Republicans. Naturally, everybody was seen smiling at the end of the meeting with renewed hopes of cooperation.  But, that was then and this is now.

On Wednesday, he clearly signaled that he lied about his willingness to negotiate.  He did that when he held a rally in Washington where he called on his supporters (and, I guess, hopefully some non-supporters) to use a Facebook and Twitter campaign to force the Republican House members to agree with his belief that only the tax cuts on the rich should be allowed to expire on January 1st.  Using the recently established hash tag of #My2K, the President clearly signaled that he's wants the people -- his people -- to do his bidding; and, this is so like him, a former community organizer. In essence, this Facebook/Twitter campaign is signalling that any negotiations with him are over (as if they had even really taken place).

Basically, Obama is attempting to use one of the primary tactics of all community organizers: The mobilization of people in a community to either picket or have sit-ins or writing campaigns to publicly embarrass or force businesses to cede to the demands of the organizers.  Never are there any prior negotiations.  Clearly, this #My2K is a new form of that old tactic; making Mr. Obama the Community-Organizer-In-Chief and clearly proving, again, that he is a man has no true negotiation skills.

--- Chicago Sun-Times: Lynn Sweet:  Obama on Fiscal Cliff: Facebook, Tweet ( #My2K) your congressman. Transcript: http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2012/11/obama_on_fiscal_cliff_facebook.html