Postcript To What's The Matter With Obama

It's not just me. But it should be instructive to readers of this blog that my policy-centered fulminations on President Obama's "kowtowing" to his opposition, particularly the Tea Party, whose candidates totalled far fewer than half the votes we gave the President — if anyone wants to talk "mandate" or what "the American people" want — independent of prominent progressive voices of criticism are in sync with a growing consensus among liberals and progressives.

Moreover, I've been no starry-eyed lib who "needs to grow up" and awaken from "recurring liberal fantasy that if only the president of the United States would give a stirring speech, he would sweep the country along with the sheer power of his poetry and enact his agenda." This is a variation on the Melissa Harris-Perry theme that President Obama is not "Superman." But I am in complete agreement with Stephen Kaus, who writes in the Huffington Post:

Liberals understand that Obama is not going to enact an economic policy by fiat; that something has to actually pass. But all this kowtowing to the need for a long term deficit fix at the cost of ignoring the spending necessary for jobs, indeed not even advancing the cause of a second stimulus, has made the President not only look like he has pre-settled, but that he has been pre-rolled.

The time for compromise is OVER. The time for fighting for a DEMOCRATIC, AMERICAN POLICY AGENDA is NOW. That is, if the President and his clueless advisers harbor any hopes for his re-election. Ultimately, it's about President Obama using his mothballed bully pulpit to redirect the terms of the debate to the American people's turf. Odds, anyone? I have my doubts the President's up to it. Partisan political combat doesn't seem to be in his character.

Word is, President Obama is consulting with Warren Buffett before his big jobs speech. A millionaire talks to a billionaire regarding us other 99.9 percent of the American population. No offense to Mr. Buffett. I'm a fan. But if this isn't an appropriate metaphor for the Obama presidency and the times we live in, I don't know what is.

P.S. Could we please have more of the informed and insightful Ms. Guthrie on MTP and less of Mr. Gregory? He could do the third hour of the Today Show.

Forget it, Stephen. Haven't you heard? The untouchable David Gregory is the High Priest of the Idiot Punditocracy. As I've written here before and reiterate, Gregory is a disgrace to his profession. But it's nice to know that liberals outside the Beltway are noticing. Thom Hartmann (who is immunized from the Idiot Punditocracy) said listening to Gregory makes him walk out of the room; the guy's too upsetting. It's a typical reaction for progressives.