Obama Lays A Trap for Eventual GOP Nominee

Next year’s election is shaping up as another ideological struggle between right and left, a situation President Obama is working overtime to avoid.

Some of the president’s supporters are disappointed that he has not laid out a big and bold agenda for the second half of his term and is instead focused on advancing and implementing the work he has already begun. After two years of towering ambitions, Obama is offering a 25-year plan for high-speed rail and some tax-code simplifications. Audacity has given way to incrementalism.

Part of this is practical. The Democratic supermajorities of his first two years have been replaced by arguably the most conservative House since the Coolidge Republicans and the Senate is more evenly divided.

But another part is political calculation. Obama is not looking for 2012 to be an ideological clash but rather a debate over details.

Democrats did so poorly in 2010 because the election was a national referendum on Obama’s agenda in the first two years. It was all bold strokes and black and white choices – “Repeal and replace” versus Obamacare, small government versus big government; Tea Party versus Washington.

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