It ain't gonna happen.

The latest NYTIMES/CBS poll says 82% of Americans blame Congress for the near shutdown of the government, and 72% blame Republicans. Obama successfully communicated the problem, and the majority of Americans got it. That majority does not I suspect include ideologues on the left and right who predicted the apocalypse from their limited perspective.

They can take the blinders off, but as ideologues we known damn well they won't, even when this is ancient history they'll find the next drama to exploit. If I hadn't seen it so often I'd find it hard to believe they don't learn some lesson along the way--except that isn't how ideologues work. A lot of them are so pig headed don't even know they're ideologues.

I've been reading their blogs on OS for over three years and there's always the last straw that "breaks the camel's back."  They can't take it any more.  Obama selected the wrong staff, didn't get through the health care reform act that was best, didn't come from the best bargaining position, let them bastards get away with too much, and sold out to the corporations because they gave him money! (Like somebody is going to get elected without corporate contributions.) 

They think because they've found their place on the spectrum that gives them an "analytic" point of view. All it does it make them polemicists and usually not very original ones.  When the smoke clears, Obama will be back in the running and while some of his initial constituency will undoubtedly abandon him he may do better the second term, especially given the Republicans inability to find another candidate like Bush--both a member of the ruling class and a fundie. That's the Rove ticket and it may well be out of date.

When Obama looks back at his first term, it won't be the bailout that troubles him, or the decision to send in more troups, health care reform, the budget squabbles, Guantanamo, or any of the lefty agenda.  Ready for this? The hardest thing he's done so far is his concession to appease the birthers by releasing his full birth certificate.  This is the cultural reality that underlies the political consensus.  That's personal.

It came after he won the presidency by a solid plurality, following a president who was a fraud and incompetent, who never recognized any interests that weren't corporate, at the hands of a purely racist segment of the population who were still able to gain ground among the ignorant and dispossessed.  And not only that, but if any president did reach office illegitimately, it was Bush and that story still remains to be told. And still these bunnie rabbits equate him with Bush.  The old power elite doesn't need any better friends.

I'm sure Obama was ready for the political battles, as were more Americans than we knew, but not the racial backlash, not given where he came from and what he already achieved, and not taking into account his own piece of the American dream. His Achilles' heel isn't one any other president has had to face, and the dignity with which he has done it is one of the things I most admire about him. He is among everything else the standardbearer of the Democratic party. 

I'm well aware this isn't the "accepted" mainstream conventional ideological interpretation, but a nation capable of re-electing a president who took it to war under false pretenses is capable of anything, including denial of its worst secret. 

I wouldn't give most of the Tea Party caucus the time of day but he's been forced to make major concessions that ultimately make no sense for the country.  You know damn well he knows better.  It must have hurt not being able to wipe out the Bush tax cuts knowing what it meant to the budget and to the cause of equality in general. America may have no greater enemy than the current disparity in income.

I know a lot of wealthy people who think so.  I even agee with most of the lefty agenda, but not when it doesn't seriously take into consideration the reality of what he's had to contend with--the folks who never thought he'd be elected because of the color of his skin who were taken by surprise.  It's a relief to see the polls demonstrate that moderates aren't oblivious.

I know: the hotheads don't want to hear a word of it.  They're transfixed by the headlines.  They want Krugman to run the economy, and the wars to end.  They want their next shinning star to appear before it's too late since they've been disillusioned once again.  The poor fools.  Politics after all is a dirty business and they are sick and tired of all the compromise.  They're no better than the boys and girls on the other side of the spectrum gnashing their teeth, declaring their own version of the end of time.

At least I'm not the only one saying cool off and grow up.  We're lucky to have him and if they aren't careful an even more incompetent fraud will come to power than Bush.