The most sensible thing I've read in weeks is Kucinich's: "Afghanistan is a racket" remark.

If I didn't have a job and the government was borrowing my kid's money to keep me home rather than paying me to work, I'd be pissed.

After all, Congress is a separate branch of government, Obama doesn't have a vote, and 60 votes are needed to do anything.  How is it his fault if centrist Senators won't support what he wants to do?  Apparently, this is the type of conversation we're to believe takes place in the Oval Office:

The President:  I really want a public option and Medicare buy-in.  What can we do to get it?

Rahm Emanuel:  Unfortunately, nothing.  We can just sit by and hope, but you're not in Congress any more and you don't have a vote.  They're a separate branch of government and we have to respect that.

The President:  So we have no role to play in what the Democratic Congress does?

Emanuel:  No.  Members of Congress make up their own minds and there's just nothing we can do to influence or pressure them.

The President:  Gosh, that's too bad.  Let's just keep our fingers crossed and see what happens then.

In an ideal world, Congress would be -- and should be -- an autonomous branch of government, exercising judgment independent of the White House's influence, but that's not the world we live in.  Does anyone actually believe that Rahm Emanuel (who built his career on industry support for the Party and jamming "centrist" bills through Congress with the support of Blue Dogs) and Barack Obama (who attached himself to Joe Lieberman when arriving in the Senate, repeatedly proved himself receptive to "centrist" compromises, had a campaign funded by corporate interests, and is now the leader of a vast funding and political infrastructure) were the helpless victims of those same forces?  Engineering these sorts of "centrist," industry-serving compromises has been the modus operandi of both Obama and, especially, Emanuel.

Glenn goes on to remind us of the power he used to strongarm reluctant freshman Dems to vote for his war funding bill - remember that?  The cross-us-and-you-will-never-hear-from-us-again strategy?
Remember that?

Yes, we know Barack Obama is no longer in the Senate - heck, Barack Obama was hardly in the Senate when he was in the Senate - so there should be even less surprise that, now that he is the president, leader of the Democratic Party, he's just sitting on the sidelines making people guess about which side he's on.

Also from Glenn's post:

Progressive opinion-makers, as always, signaled that they can and should be ignored (don't worry about us -- we're announcing in advance that we'll support whatever you feed us no matter how little it contains of what we want and will never exercise raw political power to get what we want; make sure those other people are happy but ignore us).