demtalk

Anyone wants to know how I'm looking at Barack Obama these days can get a fair idea from a column in Sunday's Denver Post by Ed Quillen.
Ed writes that while reading the news about the deal cut in Washington to extend the Bush tax cuts for two years (including, notably, a cut for the super-rich), he began grumbling, "Damn it, if I wanted Republicans to run things, I'd have voted for one."
Amen, brother.
And he proceeds to recall a few of the harsh words of Democratic presidents Andrew Jackson, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman toward those in government who, Truman said, "believe in taking care of big business first and letting the little fellow take care of himself."
Quillen also wonders how folks from the far right can possibly consider Obama to be a "Marxian socialist" -- as they say they do -- since "Obama hasn't even been talking like a traditional American Democrat."
Amen to that, too. He needs to work up a real good partisan Democratic sweat sometimes.

2012

Over time, I've grown increasingly worried that Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress were facing a big defeat in 2012. You know the signs -- the youthful enthusiasm of 2008 is gone, the president's personal charisma has faded, Republican vitality is surging at the grass roots.
It's all true. But as of the first week of December, I'm not as worried as I was.
Why? Well, because Washington itself seems to be changing. Getting more chummy. Too chummy for me.
Because just the other day our genteel president caved in to the GOP on a very important tax issue -- one he was committed to -- with barely a whimper. And because congressional Democrats continued to show how undisciplined and impotent they can be.
So why worry about 2012? Since the Republicans are having their way in Washington anyway, let's give them the whole thing. Let John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck explain why their Washington is such a mess.
They deserve it.