That's what I was thinking. He perfectly described Obama's style of leadership. (The dude was way too inclusive for my taste; I would have preferred him to start curb stomping Republicans from day 1.)

And yet, despite meeting Mr. Ryan's criteria, the Obama years didn't produce harmony & accord. I wonder why.

Can't really curb stomp republicans while they control congress with their hive mind voting block

It could definitely be done, but you'd need a seasoned street fighter like LBJ. Obama is too committed to his brand of "community organizer" to make substantive change happen under our current political system. Actually, a guy like Don Trump is exactly what the Left needed eight years ago. Oh well.

How?

Let's take it further; if sanders somehow magically wins 2016 he will have a house and senate full of republicans that will never vote for what he wants and on top of that he's burned a bunch of bridges with democrats too, possibly to the point that he's pissed off enough people to form a veto busting majority.

Given that, how could sanders be anything but the lamest lame duck 1 term president ever?

Point counterpoint... The dems did have control of the house and the senate in 2009 but we still kowtowed and ass-kissed the republicans in the name of 'compromise'. We had a 60 seat majority in the Senate and yet liberals still caved to be 'nice'. Liberals don't have a spine.

And, with Bernie, what we could have ended up doing is let the wave of progressivism grow in hopes that it would also take back the congress and leave the Senate in better shape. All seats are up for grabs in congress this year. Why are we only concentrating on the president?

I blame spineless liberals for being apathetic and going for the 'safe' choice rather than fight for not only the president but congress and the senate as well. I blame spineless liberals for not calling out the GOP on their bullshit. I also blame them for not standing up for actual progressive values and instead sticking with the status-quo and the establishment that helps only the rich.

Both sides aren't equal, and the GOP should share a lot of the blame - way more than democrats. But, I really think in some ways liberals let this happen.

No, I meant actual solutions. Not demagoguery.

How does a president "radically change the whole system" with or without a basic majority in congress (especially without) on his own?

I'm just not seeing how 'having more backbone' gets it accomplished.

"It could definitely be done, but you'd need a seasoned street fighter like LBJ."

ANY president can gain a reputation as a "seasoned street fighter" with overwhelming Congressional majorities and a minority party that is fairly reasonable. There were 68 Democrats in the Senate when Medicare was passed, and nearly half of the Republican Senators supported it too. And when it came to the Civil Rights Act, what Democratic support LBJ lost in the South, he more than made up for with Republican support in the North.

"The dems did have control of the house and the senate in 2009 but we still kowtowed and ass-kissed the republicans in the name of 'compromise'. We had a 60 seat majority in the Senate and yet liberals still caved to be 'nice'. Liberals don't have a spine."

Wrong on all counts. At best, the Democrats could count 60 non-Republicans from July 2009 to February 2010, in the form of 58 Democrats (57 for a while when Ted Kennedy was dead) plus Sanders plus Joe Lieberman. On matters where all 58 Democrats plus the very liberal Sanders plus the very conservative Lieberman happened to concur, the Democrats could overcome a Republican filibuster. In all other matters, some degree of compromise with Republicans was required or nothing would pass.

The public option is a great illustration of this: Almost allt he Democrats were on board with the public option -- there were a couple like Ben Nelson who might have been a hard sell but I don't think it would have been insurmountable (just throw Nebraska a bone and he'd support it) -- the holdout was Joe Lieberman. And because just one of the 60 didn't back the public option, that was enough to scuttle it altogether.

http://www.wsj.com/news/articles/SB125900412679261049

And, it needs to be said: our government runs on numbers, not "spine". That's by design. You want more progressive legislation, you need to vote Republicans out of Congress. But the Left sat out 2010 and 2014; if you want to complain about someone it's not the Democrats in Congress but the fucking retarded non-voting Left.

It's been a lot more than 8 years.

So what is the magic secret that makes all the republicans vote the same way? It is called leadership. That's a vacuous word, so I'll spell it out for you Bort. You bribe and you threaten.

So President LBJ would go to old Joe ( perfect example, BTW ) and say "you vote with us on this, you get whatever pork you want. Against, and we cut you off the party entirely. We fund your opponents, including republicans if need be, until you are driven from office". Immense and largely legal pressure can be brought to bear on individual senators and congressmen in this manner.

That is also called spine. LBJ had a rep for these kinds of things, Texas Crude I believe was the phrase. I know, you hate me when I write these things, but really, that's how politics are done here in America. I wish we lived in your world, it sounds a lot nicer. But I've lived most of my life in states entirely controlled by democrats and I am afraid to say that nothing much changes. Who am I to believe, you or my lying eyes?

Ah, so it's possible to REASON with the Republicans. The past few years have seen the Republicans filibustering their own bills -- let that sink in -- because their one and overriding goal has been obstruction.

You can't achieve good government with a party that is trying to keep government from functioning at all.

You sound like one of those people who thinks that you can get a public option by asking for single payer and then negotiating downward. The glaring flaw with that plan is that the Republicans have no incentive whatsoever to grant any progressive reforms. Obstruction costs them nothing, and in fact helps them weather primary challenges (the biggest threat to their incumbency).

By the way, LBJ's great talent wasn't threatening people; it was knowing when to push for change rather than missing the window of opportunity. But as for his ability to threaten people, less than 8% of Southern Democrats voted for the Civil Rights Act. Behold the magic of the bully pulpit, he couldn't even get his own party members to change their minds and support him.

Well, we're getting a masters class in power politics right now with the rise of Donald Trump. The entire republican party establishment hates his guts, and yet, he is prevailing. Now they are lining up behind him. How is this magic possible?

The Republican Party has been naturally selecting for authoritarianism and racism for some time now, for maybe 40 or 50 years. Meanwhile, they gave up on being fact-based in the 1980s, and in the past few years they've even stopped trying to push policies (probably because all the big ones like voodoo economics failed spectacularly in Bush years). Trump is winning because he is what the Republicans have been reduced to.

Most Republicans will support trump because to them winning, but more importantly keeping he other side from winning, is more important than anything.

It's a game to them.

Who cares if trump fucks up the country, they're rich and well connected enough to ride it out

And republicans don't need to push policy anymore. As long as they can keep the Supreme Court stacked with conservative activists, they can be much more effective rewriting critical parts of the law and constitution through lawsuits.

Other than that their base is quite happy with them just blocking anything the left does and juggling some shiny dog whistles in front of them

The Republicans have their base convinced that Democrats are out to gouge them to help minorities, and the Republicans will protect them from the Democrats. Which makes a lot of obstruction inherently palatable to Republican voters.

Once you've decided that a given group is your enemy and you won't let facts or information convince you otherwise, there is no way to reach you, none that I am aware of anyway.

Oscar, you sure were one dumb cunt.

I love all the Bernie supporters trotting out the "spine" and "standing by principles" argument. The most common response I hear from Bernouts to pointing out that Bernie has done nothing in his decades as a senator but grandstanding and protest votes, is "that's because we didn't give him ENOUGH power!"

Bernouts are pissy little children who WANT to toss out democracy and get their own strongman cult leader in charge.

We can be both those things, meme! We're a highly adaptable species, after all.

More likely they're all just paid actors