He seems to view himself almost exclusively as a mediator.  Even when he is picking a side like when he goes after Congressional Dems, I think that his rationale for doing so is basically all about relativism and that it has very little to do with what would be right or wrong actions to take.  The actions themselves are not assessed on the merits - only within the context of the political landscape that he perceives.

Well I know what I am told it means.  But I don't call that fighting.  I call that "demanding actions that you know will not occur for the sake of looking more liberal to voters on the left."

So, I see you are operating out of the Obama dictionary, borrowed apparently from the Cheshire Cat, for whom words mean whatever he says they do; good to know that "fighting" has nothing to do with leadership - it's just optics.

Another synonym for this is "waste of time".

Not in my dictionary.

At the end of the day, Obama is not going to be able to get the policies enacted that people want him to fight for. It is not possible and in fact, there is very little he gets from it in terms of bargaining power. The conservatives aren't going to be MORE willing to compromise because he moved left.  They'll just say NO much faster and with more authority.

So, why, pray tell, was he elected, if not to fight for the policies that matter to people - and that he ran on?  Did I miss the memo where the Office of the POTUS became the Office of the National Community Organizer?  This is the guy who ran on "Yes! We Can!" and now you want to tell us it's about, "Well, No, We Really Can't, Especially If There's Nothing In It For Me."  Splendid.  I'm sure that will be one winning Campaign 2012 bumper sticker...

He has to put out proposals that are so clearly right that conservatives can't deny their value.  That means coming to the center.  We all knew this would happen. The first 2 years, Obama pulled off a lot of liberal agenda items (people that say otherwise aren't being objective IMHO). The next 2 years we knew he'd have to come to the middle a bit more.

Uh, no he doesn't.  Leaders define the center, they don't let others do it for them, and there is no reason why - if he were a believer in progressive policy - he could not have defined the center quite a bit left of where it is now, with the strength of Congressional majorities and very high approval ratings behind him; he manages to get what he wants when he wants it, so I cannot and will not accept that he needed to pander to the right.  Ever.

As for Obama pulling off a lot of liberal agenda items, surely you jest.  Or else you are so conservative that you think what has been "accomplished" - or, as I like to think of it, "shoved down our throats whether we liked it or not," actually is liberal.

I'd rather him do that than waste time and resources fighting a losing battle to prove to 15% of the country that is on the further left that he's a liberal.  They are as likely to believe that as a Tea Party type is to believe that Obama is a moderate.

So ignore them all and do what you have to do.  That's what I want from him. Cut deals, kiss ass, do whatever.

See, it's statements like this that reveal your conservative nature: it's not about "proving" anything, it's about advocating for the best policy.  That's what leaders do - they lead.  They lead people to a better place where they can see and feel the improvement in their lives - and then they are yours forever.  Ignore them, ignore what you know will lift them up, and you lose - we all lose.  

And not to worry, if Obama is nothing else, he's really big on cutting deals; too bad they don't seem to benefit the average citizen, though - he's got some work to do there if, in fact, he gives a crap.

Just get the jobs back.  If he does, everything will work out, regardless of how conservatives liberals believe he is.

Is he still awaiting the arrival of the magic economy wand?  Is there something getting in the way of leading on policy that would help the economy?  I mean, he thinks HAMP is a fine program and we don't need HOLC because some people who don't deserve help might get some.  He still thinks tax cuts for businesses will create jobs when we know that those cuts have not created one single new job for anyone.  He's floundering, in spite of a wealth of advice about what to do to get things moving.

The proof of how he's doing isn't satisfying the liberal checklist, it's that d*mn unemployment number.

Well, only if you think that on every other issue, Obama and the Dems have just been knocking them out of the park.  For reasons that escape me, this seems to be all about making sure Dems get re-elected, regardless of what they're doing on every other front, as long as they help get the unemployment numbers down.

Among Summers' many recent failures, the biggest is probably how completely he underestimated the scale of the economic downturn, which is best expressed by Summers' refusal to even present to Obama suggestions by Christine Romer that the stimulus might need to be as large as $1.2 trillion.  link

That's what I want from him. Cut deals, kiss ass, do whatever.  . .

Nearly 59 million Americans went without health insurance coverage for at least part of 2010, many of them with conditions or diseases that needed treatment, federal health officials said on Tuesday.

They said 4 million more Americans went without insurance in the first part of 2010 than during the same time in 2008.

"Both adults and kids lost private coverage over the past decade," Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told a news briefing. link

But if you talk to any political scholar out there, almost all of them agree that his two years have been extremely progressive and effective.  There are a number of studies that go through, law and regulation by law and regulation, and analyze his track record that support my point.

If I talked to a bunch of [insert name of team here] fans, they'd probably tell me the [insert team name] are the best team in the NFL, and they would have the stats to prove their point.  So what?  You might as well tell me that the NYT and the WaPo agree that Obama is a flaming liberal.  Again, so what?  I'm supposed to think what some scholar says I should think based on his or her "studies?"  I prefer to think for myself, but thanks.

35 million people will have healthcare that didn't and he eliminated pre-existing conditions.  That alone would make it the most progressive 2 years in a loooong time.

Correction: 35 million people might be able to get health insurance, although there is some doubt whether they will be able to afford to do that AND get the health CARE they need; mandating that people get insurance from the same industry that has driven this whole thing off the cliff is probably the least progressive thing that could have been done - especially since there is so little regulation in the Act as to make it a good bet that insurance companies will easily game this latest "reform" to their extreme financial reward.

Hell, even Krugman (who those here trust) says that. This was how he viewed healthcare reform when it passed:

"Without question, the campaign of fear was effective: health reform went from being highly popular to wide disapproval, although the numbers have been improving lately. But the question was, would it actually be enough to block reform? And the answer is no. The Democrats have done it. The House has passed the Senate version of health reform, and an improved version will be achieved through reconciliation.  This is, of course, a political victory for President Obama, and a triumph for Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker. But it is also a victory for America's soul. In the end, a vicious, unprincipled fear offensive failed to block reform. This time, fear struck out."

Again, Krugman says so, and that makes it so?  Nope, sorry.  Krugman is talking politics, not policy, and however huge some people viewed that political victory, it has diminished significantly and we are left with crappy policy.  Boo-yah, Paul Krugman!

It wasn't perfect and he was one of the biggest critics of the concessions, but even he acknowledged what it mean on a macro level. Obama fundamentally reframed the entire healthcare apparatus in the country in a more liberal direction.

Yes, there are now much more liberal amounts of money pouring into insurance company coffers, as many of us can attest as we look at our premium increases; what Obama did was fundamentally squander a golden opportunity to restore to the people the balance of power that has been vested in the insurance industry for far too long, and to put this country on track to a system where health CARE is a right, not a recipe for financial disaster.

If you are arguing that healthcare reform was a conservative's dream, I can't help you because the facts don't matter for you.

First, you keep calling it "health care" reform - it was not about care at all, but about insurance.  And that was the dream of the industry with whom Obama cut deals in back rooms, even as he was out in public still bamboozling people about the so-called "public option."

But all of this analysis ignores the realities of his opposition.

Think about it this way: they paint him to be a communist based on the stuff you call "conservative".

And here is the key: it works.  It wasn't Obama's failures to trumpet the benefits of his policies that failed. It was that the right called him a socialist, Wall Street chimed in to agree and middle america bought it, hook, line a sinker. The lie was easier to believe than the truth.