What’s costing the president and courting danger for Democrats in 2010 isn’t a question of left or right, because the president has accomplished the remarkable feat of both demoralizing the base and completely turning off voters in the center. If this were an ideological issue, that would not be the case. He would be holding either the middle or the left, not losing both.
What’s costing the president are three things: a laissez faire style of leadership that appears weak and removed to everyday Americans, a failure to articulate and defend any coherent ideological position on virtually anything, and a widespread perception that he cares more about special interests like bank, credit card, oil and coal, and health and pharmaceutical companies than he does about the people they are shafting.
Then there’s Copenhagen. Lots of pretty talk from Obama about cleantech and wanting to stop climate change, but when it got down to it, he sided completely with corporate interests.
The only question is, is he weak and rudderless or simply advancing corporate interests regardless of political costs? I think it’s the latter.
I have my doubts that President Obama will be able to complete his first–and likely only term. From here on out his presidency will be in free fall, especially after the 2010 elections. When democrats finally face the horror of being swept out of office, they will probably find some way of obliging him to resign. (It could be the Occidental College scandal, which is the elephant in the living room that everybody pretends not to see.) This would clear the way for ole motor mouth and party hack Joe Biden to finish out the term. Joe is hardly above the level of a high grade moron–remember the plagiarism scandal?–but despite his flaws we assume he at least would try to serve the republic in an honorable way.