Obama says the Republican Party, on Obamacare, "has gone through the stages of grief — anger and denial and all that stuff."

I transcribed that from the press conference that's going on right now. He's answering a question about whether there could be some legislative amendments to the Affordable Care Act, to deal with some flaws, and he's saying that nothing can be done until Republicans change their attitude. They need to get through their "stages of grief" "stuff." Why the Kübler-Ross model? It's that meme that the Republicans are dying! They need to deal with their death, eh?!

Well, the first stage, which Obama put second of the 2 stages he bothered to enumerate before resorting to "all that stuff," is denial, and of course, the Republicans are going to deny that they are dying. As for anger, that's stage 2, and why shouldn't a political party get angry over its setbacks and want to fight for what it believes? Obviously, in life, when we are actually dying, getting angry is a stage, because anger isn't going to conquer death. But this is politics, not dying, and plainly the fire will rage on.

The stages Obama failed to enumerate are: 3. bargaining, 4. depression, and 5. acceptance. Maybe he didn't want to say bargaining, because he doesn't want his party to have to bargain with the other side. He just wants the GOP to get over it. The analogy to dying is, once again, terrible. Because in the stages of death scenario, the dying person seeks to avert death by somehow finding a way to make a deal, perhaps with God. Obama doesn't want to talk about deal-making. He wants the Republicans to give up and die already.

As for depression, I guess he's hoping the GOP will reach that point, but that's unlikely in this election year, and clearly he knows it. Ditto acceptance. But let's not talk about "all that stuff."

By the way, the Kübler-Ross model isn't too scientific. And to tell someone who's angry and unaccepting of a political situation that they should go away until they've accepted what is being done to them sounds to me like taunting and bullying. There's absolutely no reason why they should back down because some of their emotions correspond to Kübler-Ross's (bogus) stages. You're saying if someone doesn't believe that a political cause is dying or feels angry at the idea that it's dying, all you need to do is wait out the process, because bargaining and depression need to occur and then you win because finally there will be acceptance. Infuriating nonsense! It only intensifies and justifies the anger. Your opponents aren't just going through a "stage," and you sound inert and supercilious talking about them that way.