Obama has decisive majorities in both Houses of Congress. All Obama has to do is knock some heads together and make it so.

That Obama can’t do this means he won’t do it which means he is kowtowing to Wall St and the military because Obama is too much of a softie and has been corrupted by Washington.

I’m not saying this makes sense….

His liberal detractors simply don’t share his concern for alienating traditional Americans. They want him to take one for the team and insist on shoving as much leftism down peoples throats, because the people simply don’t know whats best for them.

strcpy: Interesting post, but I can’t see Obama as anything but a leftist. He’s not as pure a specimen as Bernie Saunders, Obama compromises when he’s forced to, and he’s also as much of a machine pol as a leftist, but he’s still a leftist.

The left is upset with Obama and disappointed in him, but they don’t hate Obama, not yet anyway.

I have talked gingerly to liberals in my family and it’s true they don’t consider Obama much of a leftist, but this seems to come out of their fantasies about how the world works such as their belief that the NY Times is unbiased or skews to the right.

The dealbreakers for the left are Obama’s closeness to Wall St. and his involvement in Afghanistan. Never mind that the left had no problems when Obama reneged on his promise to accept public financing of his campaign, and they nodded sagely when Obama said Afghanistan was the good war and he pledged to fight there instead of Iraq.

A significant number, eloquently described by Steele, will always cling to the fantasy. But the rest will know.

I have a very hard time at this point trying to identify the circumstances that would allow for his re-election in 2012. It’s possible, maybe even probable if the world chooses not to revisit us. But as flight 253 revealed, that’s unlikely.

Danger close. Unavoidable, I fear.

In a way I feel somewhat badly for our President. He never was qualified to do this. Yet because of the Grand Bargain, he is where he is.

For instance, we are arguing how far left he is – the left hates him for betraying their ideals. He *is not* a leftst. Were he we wouldn’t be seeing many of the “pivot points” (as one of his advisers calls them) and health care would be a done deal.

Nor is he a centrist – the health care plan is another good example there. It is, kinda sorta a leftist/central plan.

And, of course, he isn’t on the right at all. Of all the things people paint him as it isn’t here.

The thing is it is easy to define what he is *not*, it is near impossible to define what he *is*. For a campaign there is something to be said for that – you get the leftist and the “centrists” and that is almost always enough to win (same thing with getting the right and centrist).

IMO he is struggling with the issue that as president he has to *be something*. We are here arguing what he is – he isn’t anything. You are missing his point – he has always been nothing and as such can appear to be anything. In all his previous jobs that Nothing Man worked quite well and now he has to *be something*.

As such he is falling on his classical background – a leftist. But not really being a leftist (again, not really anything) he botches that badly. Can’t be a centrist either, his understanding of that is even less. And of course he can’t remotely understand any other political ideology (right, conservative, libertarian, constitutional, anarchist, or a whole host of others).

IMO he is perfectly explained by someone who only really knows one side of the world but doesn’t really feel he belongs there. He is struggling to fit in someplace and can’t figure it out. I think he also does not feel he belongs anywhere else and I really do not think he does.

I have known individuals in the past who I knew would eventually be conservative or libertarian once the understood the philosophy – but in this case no. He is too steeped in leftist identity politics to think otherwise. I do think he is smart enough to realize that, but he is too far down that hole to come to the realization of what really occurred. Ass in a nice big dose of narcissism and you have Obama all the way.

In the end I do not think he has any strong sense of self and anytime we try and put one on him we are wrong and end up arguing. If we stop there and have no need to paint him as leftist then a lot of contradictions are solved. If we look no further than a product of our city/leftist edumacational (I refuse to call it an educational) system along with an innate intelligence and empathy then we have the whole picture.

rickl: That was Mark Morford. I met him once. He’s a Burning Man dude with a buff build, tats, a nipple ring, and lots of attitude. I don’t think he does humility or self-reflection, so Obama’s failure might not affect him.

Obama is not just another politician or president. He was elected on a wave of cultish adoration that we’ve not seen before. With a straight face he proclaimed his elevation as the occasion for the sick to heal and the oceans to recede, and people lapped the liquor up.

There is going to be a terrible hangover, when Obama goes down. They were not only raising up Obama as an idol, but themselves as well.

“We are the ones we have been waiting for.”