and we mod Dems and Indies see it all over the walls

corporatist shills in this Admin

What I did expect was that Democrats would seize the opportunity to govern as the majority party and implement the changes that the people put them in power to make.

I will laugh all the way to the doctors office to treat my twisted funnybone

but anywho the union exemption for the excise tax will not be in the Ping vote....heh, they will have to deal with it like the rest of the Middle Class

"Shared values" seems like code for "fixing" Social Security and Medicare, and finding some acceptable middle ground on abortion rights; hasn't the man done enough damage on the health care front?  President B+ wants to mangle those, too?  

He's getting terrible advice.  Axelrod can run a campaign, but since his boss has never stayed in one office long enough to run for re-election, he seems to be pretty clueless about how hard it's going to be to for Obama to make rhetorical magic this time around, when there's a real record that, so far, reads - and feels - more like Bush III than "Change You Can Believe In."

Of course, nothing would help like good governance, and that has, in my opinion, been in dreadfully short supply.  Can't say that I am surprised, since there were no signs evident in Obama's background that he was much interested in that part of holding office.  The combination of incompetent governing and ignoring the mandate he was given to change the conservative policies of the previous administration is losing him both liberals, "progressives," and, I suspect, independents.  Now that there is both a Democratic president and a majority Democratic Congress, the American voter no longer sees them as separate entities, but as working hand-in-glove, with the result that declining approval ratings for either are working against both - and, unfortunately, rightly so; neither has distinguished their offices with stellar performance to the benefit of the American people.

As for offering a critique of conservatism, well, that's hard for the party to do when the president is embracing more than a few of conservatism's policies, so that's not likely to happen; the "not a dime's worth of difference" now appears to be apply more as between Obama and true conservative policies, with little sign of Obama separating himself in any significant way.

Which is the real problem: the party leadership and the loyal OFB have allowed Obama to continue to run away from core Democratic ideology, and are resisting liberals' attempts and pleas to move him leftward out of their misplaced loyalty to a person, and the need to save face.  

George W. Bush campaigned in the middle, but he governed from the Right. And he was very effective at serving the powerful interests he actually represented.

Obama has done something like the opposite -- he campaigned from the Left and is now trying to govern from the middle.

NO!

And that's why I'll be out there waging a great campaign from one end of the country to the other, telling Americans with insurance or without what they stand to gain -- (applause); about the arsenal of consumer protections; about the long-awaited stability that they're going to begin to experience. And I'm going to tell them that I am proud we are putting the future of America before the politics of the moment -- the next generation before the next election. And that, after all, is what we were sent up here to do: standing up for the American people against the special interests; solve problems that we've been talking about for decades; make their lives a little bit better; make tough choices sometimes when they're unpopular. And that's something that every one of you who support this bill can be proud to campaign on in November.

That's not exactly ideological.  Also, I hope these benefits start kicking in early, otherwise Obama is going to be in a rock and a hard place discussing how awesome things are.

also digby:

I think those things are important, but they aren't the whole story. If the Republicans make a comeback -- a big "if," in the short term -- they will do it because they have spent the last thirty years indoctrinating the American people into a certain way of thinking. It doesn't give them a permanent hold on power,obviously, because at some point their bad ideas have consequences. But unless somebody explains why those bad ideas were the reason for the bad consequences, they can manipulate the electorate into believing that the problem wasn't the ideas but the implementation. Since the people are comfortable with those ideas --- and nobody's offering a real alternative --- when a crisis hits they naturally gravitate to the ideology they have internalized without even knowing it.

But the best politicians are phoenixes.  And Obama is a good politician. However, he'll need a lot of grit and determination to regain his favor with the public.

This isn't the kind of thing he can fix with one grand gesture.  It will be a slog.  He'll have to claw himself back one day at time.

The Saturday speech showed he understands the basic course to his political recovery.  It was abysmally written and delivered, and had deep conceptual flaws.  But it was a baby step in the right direction.