"Never before had President Barack Obama put the moral force and political muscle of his presidency behind an issue quite this big — and lost quite this badly, says Politico.
The president...broke his own informal “Obama Rule” of never leaning into an issue without a clear path to victory — first by pushing for a massive gun control package no one expected to pass, and then sticking through it even as he retrenched to a relatively modest bipartisan bill mandating national background checks on gun purchases. It was a bitter defeat for a president accustomed to winning, a second-term downer that may foreshadow the slow decline suffered by so many of his predecessors." Read it all.
[Thanks: BJS]