What happens to a president who romps to reelection, channels a national tragedy that sparked coast-to-coast outrage into a deeply personal crusade, then fails to get a measure backed by nine out of ten Americans through the Senate, where his party holds a majority? Thanks to the NRA-fueled defeat of a bill that might have mildly tightened limits on gun sales, President Barack Obama is learning the hard way.
For the families of those killed or wounded by gun violence and who watched with judging eyes as the Senate killed the measure by a vote of 54-46 (it needed a supermajority of 60 votes to pass) what to make of the vote was an easy call.
“Shame on you!” Patricia Maisch shouted from the visitors gallery above the Senate floor.
Maisch, a grandmotherly figure who disarmed the shooter in the Tucson carnage that nearly claimed the life of former congresswoman Gabby Giffords, was happy to elaborate as reporters swarmed her after the vote. “I decided I could not sit still,” she said. “They have no souls, they have no compassion.”
But on Wednesday, they had the votes.
That’s Message One for Obama from this stinging legislative defeat: Having emotion and the majority on your side isn’t enough. NRA leader Wayne LaPierre, after all, didn’t even need to show up.
The knock on Obama has often been that he’s Mr. Spock, viewing his approach as the most logical and assuming that logic will trump the other’s side’s arguments and emotions. But only the most cynical observers will argue that the president didn’t take this fight personally – with frequent flashes of very public anger and anguish ever since the slaughter of 20 schoolchildren at Sandy Hook Elementary. And supporters of the legislation deployed the families of the slain as lobbyists in the weeks leading up to the vote.
Moreover, as the White House never tired of pointing out, polls show roughly 90 percent of Americans support expanded background checks.
“I will put everything I’ve got into this, and so will Joe,” Obama promised in January, with Vice President Biden at his side. “But I tell you, the only way we can change is if the American people demand it.”
In the end, though, four red-state Democrats joined 41 of the Senate’s 45 Republicans to defeat the bill. Why stick their necks out for legislation whose death in the Republican-led House of Representatives was essentially foreordained?
Click below for the full article.