A couple of issues came into focus for me after watching the interchange between the two the other night on The Daily Show. Obama's excuse for being a disappointment to the Dem base is that he couldn't be the visionary reformer he presented himself to be during the campaign because he had to deal with the emergency of the financial crisis. Sounds reasonable, but why is it that we have good reason to doubt that he would have even attempted to deal with the deeper, underlying sturctural problems if there were no financial crisis to contend with?
If the dam is breaking, do you call back the contractor who built it to clean up his mess, or do you hire a different contractor with more competent engineers to fix it? Obama chose the first option.
So when Stewart asked Obama why he hired a guy who was largely complicit in the creation of the crisis, Obama had his worst moment by defending Larry Summers as having done a "heckuva job." Stewart laughing says, "You don't want to use that phrase, Dude." Obama's was a classic Freudian slip that captured exactly why people are so diappointed with him: There's way too much continuity between his and the Bush/Cheney regime, and there's way too little holding establishment types responsible for getting us in this mess in the first place.
Obama defended his record by insisting that "it's complicated", and that he got a lot done in extraordinarily difficult circumstances. But he also admitted that he hadn't even begun to deal with the underlying issues that caused these "circumstances". And in fairness, maybe there isn't much that he could have done. But putting aside the question about the substance of what he has accomplished and whether he's getting enough credit for it, he seems particularly obtuse when it comes to his understanding of the optics.
The one issue that unites both Tea Partiers and the Dem base is disgust with corporate Dems for having sold out working and middle-income Americans to big money. Obama doesn't seem to get that he's seen now as aligned with the corporate sellouts. He's brought nothing new. He's perceived now as just another DLC hack. And sure, it's better to have a DLC hack in the oval office than anybody the GOP would put there, but, Dude, whatever you think about yourself and your accomplishments, it's hard to see you as anything more than just another sellout who's more a part of the problem than the solution.
Obama asks us to be patient. That he's getting things done step by step. But if next year he will have a more oppositional congress than even he has now, what makes him think he can get anything done by playing-the-politics-as-usual game. He has had his opportunity, but it looks very much like he's blown it. Maybe he'll find some way to surprise us, but at this point it would be a very big surprise.
There is, I believe, a broad spectrum of Americans--perhaps as many as Stewart's sane 75-80%--who would be enthusiastically supporting Obama now if he had found a way to use his first two years to fight for some fundamental changes, especially regarding the structural power issues in this country that inordinately favor money and power elites.
I believe he would be a hero today and that the corporate Dems in alliance with the GOP could be easily branded as the villains. If that were so, then the 80% would have a clearer picture about whom to throw out of office. Nothing changes until the hacks are thrown out, but Obama has thrown his support to the incumbent hacks, even a guy like Arlen Specter, when challenged by more progressive candidates in the primaries. This is politics as usual, not change we can believe in.
If politics could be about getting rid of the hacks to give Obama the support he needs to fight the bad guys, then, at least in some districts, these midterms would mean something. It would be about real change, nob gossip about Christine O'Donnell or everybody taking a bet on how badly the Dems are going to lose.
Right now, the Dems seem as much a part of the problem as the GOP, folks cannot embrace them as a path to a real solution. And it's hard to vote for someone who's campaign slogan boils down to "Vote for me. Sure, I'm a corporate hack but not as crazy as my opponent."