The game plan on Syria seems to coalescing on getting something passed in the Senate, then bombs way. To encourage Senate Democrats to that end, sources sympathetic to striking Syria have begun concern trolling the notion that failure to approve a resolution will have dire consequences. Which is silly for two big reasons:

BBC — Barack Obama is “staring defeat in the face” over a vote on Syria and it would be “devastating for the president if he loses”, said Andrew Neil in New York.

The BBC political presenter said he would be a “lame duck president for the rest of his tenure” if he failed to get American politicians to back his call for military action in Syria.

That may be useful to generate dem support, but the reasons its silly are 1) Obama is in effect a lame duck President now and has been since Jan 2011, and 2) this probably won’t matter for shit anyway.

Nothing new that will help ordinary Americans is getting through this Congress. What are the Repubs gonna do, be so much uglier and so much more obstructionist that all that great progressive stuff they were gonna pass gets voted down? The only way that’s going to change is if those clowns are invited to leave office by voters.

Secondly, Syria may be all the rage to opine on, but odds are it blows over so much that it won’t make a peep a year from now, much less two or three years. A year ago the big foreign policy story was the revolution in Libya and a terrorist attack on Benghazi. Despite the best efforts of wingut media and teaparty Republicans to keep the latter alive, today those two headline stories are as dead as Moamar Qadaffi. That was just a year ago, much less two or three years, and it had the full might of a united GOP tugging on it for all they were worth. And if Syria does blow up in some awful way, from a purely political viewpoint it’s always better for a President to come off the like the hard-ass who warned those wussies opposing him. While we’re on the subject, who here thinks if only Obama had refused to act in Syria those in the GOP now opposing him would instead be praising him?

Naturally, the right had a hate-gasm at the mention of lame duck, some almost cackling in the belief progressives will burn their union cards and sign up in the nearest Teaparty militia. But I’ve seen this same stuff over and over again all across the aisle. Democrats were gleeful as the right consumed itself during the 2012 clown show and for good reason, it was damn entertaining! But that’s all it was, theatre. Any dem who seriously thought that that bitter primary would cause substantial portions of the right to switch sides was either high or dreaming.

The same applies here: sorry to let down my right-wing friends, by all means keep sending those emails about this democrat disagreeing with that democrat. But even without the abysmal foreign policy and economic track record left by the GOP, the odds of me voting for the party that wants to steal my Social Security and Medicare on behalf of creepy wingnut billioniares, fuck over minorities and women in every way, establish a de facto state religion, and repeal affordable healthcare for tens of millions of Americans, all over what happens in Syria, are on par with the odds of me becoming a Jehovah’s Witness.