Why The Blame For Blocking Garland Belongs to Obama and the Democrats.

Democrats, showing again they can be every bit as dishonest as the Republicans they criticize (often with valid reasons) are now pretending that its the Republicans fault and their obstructionism that is blocking a hearing or confirmation of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court despite his unquestioned qualifications. That's because Democrats and their leadership will do anything to avoid the truth.

The fault of senate Republicans refusing to even consider or hold hearings on Obama's pick for the Supreme Court lies completely with Obama. If not for Obama's duplicity, dishonesty and a massive failure of integrity, Democrats,not Republicans, would still control the congress .

They don't because of Obama's betrayal right from the beginning of the Democratic agenda he was elected to implement aided and abetted by Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi who didn't have the backbone or integrity to stand up to Obama and his capitulations especially on health care ,that is the sole reason Republicans have the majority in the first place and so are able to block anything Obama does.

When Obama was elected in 2008, after 8 years of George W. Bush and a Republican controlled congress that ran the country into the ground, Barrack Obama was elected  president and along with Obama, a Democratic tsunami in congress that gave Obama and the Democrats the biggest congressional majority of any party in 60 years. That is what Obama had to work with. He could have passed just about anything.

What did Obama do with it? Practically nothing. 

George W. Bush saw more legislation passed in 3 months with a 52-48 Republican majority in the senate than Obama had in 2 years with a 60-40 Democratic majority.

Remember that it was Obama, when he was still running in the 2008 primaries, who was joked about as being the most unaccomplished do nothing candidate for president in history. And that was by many Democrats and liberals. He has shown why.

Did Obama reauthorize the assault weapons ban when he easily could have? No. It took what happened at Sandy Hook for it to have even occurred to him. And by then it was too late.  Did he eliminate derivatives, the instrument that banks gambled with that caused the financial  melt down? No. But it was what Obama finally did decide to do that proved a disaster not just for the country but the Democrats as a party.

Instead of simply passing the health care reform bill he had touted since 2007 which was all about the public option and which according to a NY Times/CBS poll 72% of the country wanted, he wasted everyone's time with useless unnecessary town hall meetings to "talk about it" that went on for a year resulting in the eyeball bulging, vein popping , spit running down people's chin spectacles everyone watched on television largely orchestrated by Republicans.

It had it's affect on Obama. At the last minute Obama did what has been his political hallmark : he caved in to the health insurance companies who didnt want the public option because it would hurt their business, and so Obama sold out the public option to the health insurance lobby and did it after healthcare reform with the public option had already passed the House and the votes were there in the senate to pass it (contrary to Clinton's lie that the votes weren't there to pass it).

Instead of seeing it pass easily, Obama, who has demonstrated his entire political life that he has no real principles, no real convictions, nothing he ever really believed in other than his own election, instructed Harry Reid to take the public option out of the health care bill. Obama kept quiet about it never admitting that he did and never saying why.What he did do was lie to Jim Leherer on PBS that he had never campaigned for the public option.

The result of Obama's sell out is the garbage called Obamacare which has been such a miserable failure, 22 of the 23 state exchanges have already or will go out of business due to low enrollment.

But it also failed Democrats who didn't stop Obama from selling it out. The result which I predicted in two articles one in February of 2010,  of what would happen if Democrats let Obama sell out the public option, was that in the 2010 congressional elections Democrats were wiped out and suffered the worst defeat of any political party in 80 years only two years after winning the biggest congressional majority in 60 years. It was solely because of the Democrats failure to deliver the promised public option when they could have. 

In 2014, in the first election after the first full year Obamacare was actually implemented and Democratic and Independent voters saw what garbage it was and rejected it, they rejected the Democrats too and sent them a "Thank You" note in the form of the Democrats getting wiped out again, losing  even the slim majority they had left over in the senate from 2010.

Thanks to Obama's callous sellouts of health care and what was called by Matt Taibi in Rolling Stone as Obama's "bait and switch" healthcare bill, the Democrats went from a 60-40 majority in the senate who would have confirmed Garland by now, to a 55-44 minority with one independent in Chaffee.  Given that senators have 6 year terms and how safe most incumbent senate seats are, losing 16 senate seats in 6 years is an unparalleled disaster that is as resounding as Obama's policy failures from health care to Wall Street, and the Democrats capitulation that went along with it.

A Republican majority in congress and a Democratic president unable to make a Supreme Court appointment is reaping what Obama,Reid and Pelosi sowed.

Had it not been for the total disregard of Obama and the Democratic leadership for doing what was right and delivering for voters what they were promised, the Democrats would still be in firm control of congress.And Garland would be heading to the Supreme Court. So there is no reason to blame Republicans for blocking anything Obama does when the reason they can is Obama and the Democrats in congress who sold out everything they promised. They are solely responsible for the Republican majority.

If Obama has any legacy its this: thanks to Obama and the Democratic leadership who didn't have the guts to stand up to Obama's sell outs,(the same sellouts presumably Clinton would continue) Republicans now have the biggest  Republican congressional majority since before WWII. That's Obama's legacy. That's what Obama will leave behind along with a broken and failed healthcare law.And that's what Clinton is pledging to continue. 

Those are the reasons Obama and Democrats can't get a Supreme Court nominee confirmed. And unless there are radical changes in the way Democrats do business, its going to stay that way.

It's called making your bed and lying in it.