> The question was why Obama thinks it won't hurt his reelection, not why he wants to do it in the first place.
> Because he's trying to position himself as the "reasonable" alternative to a gang of loons. And, like they say in the movies, it might just work.
Right, that's Klein's explanation. And as the post said, maybe it will work. But the subtitle of the post was "a puzzle in the study of American politics." There's a reason for that: the claim you're making is that the voters might actually reward a politician for openly attacking their most important material interests in a way that they will notice and strongly object to because it will demonstrate the politician's "reasonableness." You try to play this off as if it's so obvious that questioning it is Byzantine speculation. I'm saying it's a puzzle.
SA