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"A man is known by the quality of his enemies." This is a trite saying, which does not make it any less true—and it's certainly true that the current President would like to have some decent enemies to play off of if he wishes to still be the current President in 2013. President Obama likes to play the "false Hegelian dialectic" gambit, which is apparently Overeducated for "makes up stuff about his opponents so that he looks like the normal one"; it's a strategy that has stood him in good stead so far in his professional career of running-for-things, and if he can just hold on until January he can start running for re-election again.
Normally, at this point one might assume that the President would seek to define himself primarily against the Tea Party and the GOP (contrary to one conventional perception, the two groups are not identical, nor should they be*). And he probably will, to some extent--but he can't use them as foils next year as much as he expected to use them this year, and certainly nowhere near as much as he actually used them this year. That's because the Tea Party and the GOP are proving to be popular—and, before anyone starts quoting polls, let me gently point out that even if such polls are accurate, being cordially hated is apparently not going to stop the Republican Party from retaking at bare minimum the House in November.
Put another way: it’s hard to define yourself as being against the fringe and for the mainstream when that same mainstream has just enthusiastically put the “fringe” in a position of authority. Obama will eventually try, if only because he has to run a re-election campaign soon—but in the meantime he's going to need a short-term fringe group to push back against. Preferably, one that is unpopular, out of power, and tediously petulant about it.
Yes. The President will be hippie-punching.
This charming phrase apparently originated as jargon among a subset of the more shrill Left-blogs, and it denotes the (perfectly justified) attitude that the Democratic party's leadership can do whatever they like to progressives without fear of reprisal. In many ways, going after the netroots is perfect: they’re already upset that the President has no intention of indulging them further in their fifth-grade geopolitical and third-grade national security views; you can always count on a progressive to go from "silently seething" to "full-bore primate screeching" at the drop of a hat; and nobody actually likes them very much. If you tell one of them that last bit, by the way, pack a lunch: they'll spend the next hour pounding the table and insisting that progressives are actually loved by 114% of the population**. Then they’ll call you a racist.
So, given that I fully expect the upcoming Democratic electoral debacle to be blamed on those same progressives anyway, it only seems logical that the first six to nine months of next year will see President Obama mumbling generalities about the reactionaries on the Right, loudly and clearly enunciating the problems with the freakazoids on the Left—and then bravely placing himself right in the (false) middle.
Who knows? Maybe it will even work.
*The discussion of why must be left for another time; for now, suffice it to say that the Republican party’s leadership is better for having to look nervously over its collective shoulder on occasion.
**They’re also bad at math.
