No Lame Duck Yet

“President Obama, as he has shown all year, isn’t about to go quietly into the lame-duck night, even with Republicans ready to take full power down the street. With the stunning announcement Wednesday that the U.S. is set to normalize relations with Cuba, the president is closing his self-termed ‘Year of Action’ with a thunderclap,” National Journal reports.

“In doing so, Obama is serving notice to the new Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that a sitting president trumps a Congress divided both along party lines and within them. The shift comes about a month after the last time the president thrust his stick into the GOP’s eye, when Obama announced he was unilaterally providing widespread deportation relief to as many as 5 million illegal immigrants.”

“On both occasions, the president signaled that he’s willing to bet his view of history will prevail and that Republicans continue to occupy the wrong side of it.”