I'm not going to pretend that all of the Democrats issues will suddenly evaporate merely by pointing out the flagrant obstructionism of the GOP but it sure can't hurt. Today we see the administration doing just that with Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning.
To me this achieves two things. One, it leads the media horses to the proverbial water. If The White House clearly and unambigiously sends a message about obstructionism the media is likely to report it. Will it always be framed how we want? Of course not. But Democrats need to start breaking through to the public on these issues and that begins with leveraging the bully pulpit of The White House. The administration has been reluctant to do this but it's long past time to move towards more campaign style tactics; Republicans have been there since the day after the 2008 election.
The second benefit is this begins to appease a very restless and demoralized liberal base. After 8 years of George W. Bush the base is more than a little restless. We're into the second year of the Obama administration and liberals are not seeing the results that they (rightly or wrongly) thought were coming. If you don't give them somewhere to direct their ire it's going to be focused entirely on Obama and Reid and it will have repurcusions this fall.
It's not an immediate fix but the sooner Obama gets started with this change of tactics and temperment the better.
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