Learning the Wrong Lesson:
There's one question that the Rude Pundit gets all the time: "What would you have done?" He got it all the time during the Bush administration. Whenever anyone asked him what he would have done to, say, end the Iraq War, he always said, "I wouldn't have gone to war in the first place. I wouldn't have supported Saddam Hussein for decades and supplied him with weapons. I wouldn't have sent in British troops to colonize the joint in the first place."

Usually, the person gets flustered. "No, that's a bullshit answer," he heard on more than one occasion. "What would you do now, now that we're there?"

"But what I would do now is just as much a fantasy as what I would have done before," he would say, before giving in and saying that he'd pull all the troops out and let the U.N. take care of the inevitable civil war that's gonna happen if we leave now or in a hundred years.

So now the WWYHD question has to do with the decisions of President Obama. You didn't like the health care bill? Well, what would you have done? You didn't want the Bush tax cuts extended? Well, what would you have done? You don't like the debt ceiling bill? What would you have done? C'mon, motherfucker, what?

It's fun, you know, to throw out there the fantasy. It's like getting that Facebook friend request from someone you wanted to bang back in high school, and you sit there and think about how you should have asked them out, how you should have let them know how you feel, how you should have nailed the shit out of them. Whee, see? Wasn't that great? Feel better? Did you masturbate to a fantasy of you getting ass fucked by that hot football player who winked at you a couple of times and who's kept his body tight? Wasn't that a great way to spend your time? We all love to wallow in what-never-was-and-cannot-be.

Instead, howzabout a minute or two spent on shit what we know that might have an effect on the future.

The people who advise President Obama on his re-election must be fucking idiots. 'Cause this equation was not difficult. In 2010, discouraged by Obama's failure to call out Republican motherfuckers who were blocking his agenda (and appointments) in a Democratic-controlled Congress, as well as the shitty economy, a good chunk of the people who elected Obama stayed home and allowed the teabagger nutzoids to get in. Democrats were punished in 2010, not by the teabaggers, but by the voters who should have been on a continuing buzz post-Inauguration.

The White House believes the lesson was "Make nice more with the right." The lesson should have been that you don't back down. Fuck the mythical independents. All those bastards want is someone who takes a stand. And what did they get? A cave on the Bush tax cuts right after the election, with a promise that "No, really, really, next time I won't extend the ones on the rich." And a debt ceiling deal that will put the economy in the shitter.

Obama's got another bunch of battles coming before 2012. The Rude Pundit's got little hope that the President and the suckers of Wall Street ass who surround him can grasp the need to do something more than gay rights to get the left back in the fold. The GLBT community needs jobs, too. Yeah, he's gotta show that he can beat the Republicans, not get their approval. But if he believes differently (as he apparently does), then 2012 is a loss no matter what happens.

Later: The answer to the question the Rude Pundit got asked constantly yesterday: "Are you not gonna vote for him?" and "What about the Supreme Court?"

(By the way, the answer to the WWYHDs above there are 1. Started with a national health care plan and negotiated from there; 2. Let the tax cuts expire on everyone; 3. 14th Amendment, motherfuckers, and then said, "Blow me." Do you think a Republican president facing recalcitrant Democrats wouldn't have done it in a heartbeat?)