It's amazing to see President Obama (finally) taking the initiative with a flurry of policy actions and proposals: immigration, climate change, faster Internet, methane emissions—the list goes on and will probably get longer.
Part of the explanation, I'm sure, is that Obama is finally liberated from worrying about the next election and can do whatever he wants (including building a legacy). But I think there's something else in play. And that is…worrying about the next election.
I suspect that Obama and the Dems, with all these recent lame-duck policy initiatives, are trying to build a record for the 2016 Congressional elections. They’ll say “Look, we tried to get you faster and cheaper Internet, but the Republican Congress killed it. We tried to fix immigration, but the Republican Congress killed it. We tried to do something about climate change…" And on down the list. "That’s why it’s important to elect more Democrats to Congress!"
This strategy is sort of a mirror image of what Republicans did during the Clinton administration: proposing all kinds of things, even while knowing they would never pass. It’s good to see Dems doing the same thing. (Ted Halstead wrote a great piece about this over a decade ago, which is still an interesting read today.)