Cutting Noses; Spiting Faces

I don't expect tears from Republicans, not when their senate leader stated his primary goal was making Obama a one term president. Not when Fox Noise and right-wing Websites proudly declare their recalcitrance on jobs, the economy and raising the debt ceiling, regardless of the impact on the country, will help accomplish Sen. Mitch McConnell's objective.

Not when Republican House Speaker John Boehner enthused he "was pretty happy" having gotten 98 percent of what he wanted in the debt ceiling deal that in turn cost the U.S. its Triple A rating. How proud you must be, John.

What I do expect, but should know better, is for Democrats to rally around their leader in a crisis. Instead they're braying like stuck hyenas. But then the left never ceases to dismay.

Obama inherited a disaster on Jan. 20, 2009. Two wars; one we should never have been in and the other that should have been over five years previously. Burgeoning deficits as a result of Bush's unwarranted tax cuts, a crashing stock market, millions unemployed and unprecedentedly malicious opposition that made it their business to ensure he failed from Day 1.

To top it off, a senate under incessant threat of Republican filibuster, a right-wing Supreme Court resolutely dismantling consumer, labor and voter protections and the Democrats lose the House majority in 2010.

Yet given about the worse possible conditions under which to govern, Obama accomplished universal health care reform, something that eluded seven previous Democratic presidents; an $800 billion stimulus without which the economy would have totally tanked; the toughest Wall Street regulations since the 1930s; the first ever Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; enhanced clean air, water and emissions rules; salvaging the American auto industry; and the end of DADT.

Obama has been the most successful Democratic president since FDR but all liberals can see is that the stimulus didn't go far enough, health care isn't "one-payer," Guantanamo's not closed, immigration's not fixed, the Bush tax cuts were extended and they didn't get a pony for Christmas.

Their nutty notion that by "playing hardball," Obama could have changed those outcomes is delusional. Obama's not going to sway teabaggers by "jawboning" and can ill afford to tick of moderate voters - whom he needs to accomplish anything - by more partisan rancor. This is not 1932 or 1948 or 1964. Lefties need to grasp the political landscape.

Believe me, he got everything he could.

Two words. Supreme Court. By 2016 three justices will be 80 or older. Will the president in office at that time be nominating Ginsburgs or Scalias? Liberals think they've got it bad now, keep undermining the closest we've come in six decades to achieving progressive goals and just wait for the right-wing shit storm.