In short, despite the many positive bills he's been able to pass, Obama and his chief advisors have proven to be novices at the bare-knuckle street-fighting required in today's halls of Congress and so they are consistently rolled by the Republicans. His GOP opponents are open in what they want: full and total power. Obama isn't sure what he wants or how to obtain it. If he had passion about anything before he became president, he certainly doesn't evidence it today. He seems content merely to survive another day, while the other side chips away at his remaining power bit by bit.
5. BLOODY WALLPAPER
Part of the reason the Left is in despondent disarray is Obama's adoption of the worst policies of his predecessor regarding the two wars he's inherited, his imitation of CheneyBush in so many ways in the "war on terror," his unspeakable policies with regard to civil liberties (okaying continued data-mining of our emails, computer files, phone calls), his continued amassing of presidential powers without any checks and balances (e.g., the power to order assassinations of U.S. citizens without any judicial or legislative input or review).
Effectively, Obama's foundational flaw is an acceptance of the neo-con philosophy of "benevolent U.S. hegemony" over much of the world. But if U.S. leaders should have learned anything from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and Vietnam), it is the limits of Superpower military adventuring in a world of asymmetrical warfare. America has become a muscle-bound bully in a world that has moved on from accepting that imperialist/colonialist way of dominating the globe. Cheney and Bush simply smashed their "hard imperialism" way to dominance ("shock and awe"). Obama seems to realize that "soft imperialism" -- the fist wrapped in diplomatic velvet -- often can be much more successful. But both approaches remain imperialist/exceptionalist in nature, and the world doesn't operate that way anymore. There's an enormous price in blood and treasure to be paid for such militarist arrogance.
By swallowing the essence of neo-con philosophy, Obama has wasted trillions of dollars in wars that cannot be won. America's opponents can continue such guerrilla warfare forever, bleeding our treasury and will. Death by a thousand cuts. Those monies are needed at home, especially so during the worst recession in 70 years.
The U.S. is now in its 10th year of war in Afghanistan, fighting for a regime that is thoroughly corrupt and does not have the support of its people. If this sounds like Vietnam all over again, your instincts are correct. Better to get out now and pay the momentary political price for bad policy rather than to have to get out later, in embarrassed haste and after draining the Treasury of another couple of trillion dollars.
These wars, fought more or less off-budget by a mercenary army, have continued in stalemate for so long that they have become for most Americans unseen and ordinary, off to the side of most citizens' daily existence. They are our bloody wallpaper, just there in the background. The Vietnam War, on the other hand, was fought with a drafted army, which meant that nearly everyone at home knew someone fighting and dying in that Southeast Asian land.
Can Obama alter these foreign/military policies and get the U.S. back on a more realistic track? Perhaps he could have done so over the past two years, but he's so politically damaged at this point that he probably will just hunker down with the same policies and try to ride it out. Another opportunity lost for a would-be "transformational" president.
6. BEYOND KNOW-NOTHINGISM
It's not just the Republicans' perfidy and/or Obama's timidity that fuels the despair of so many progressives. What bothers me, for example, is not even the know-nothing tone of the Tea Partiers and their non-curious ilk. No, what's even more depressing is the voluntary ignorance of a huge slice (maybe one-third) of the polity. They choose to ignore reality, to close their eyes to fact, to deny scientific data. I'm reminded of the CheneyBush aide who said "when we act, we create our own reality."
Part of that ignorance derives from fundamentalist belief (if I didn't read it in the Bible, it's not true), part from poor education, part from a deliberate choice to shut down part of the brain (read: Sarah Palin, Christine O'Donnell, Ken Buck, Sharron Angle, Carl Paladino, Jim DeMint, James Inhofe, et al.), part from a political decision to keep the liberal opposition from defining the parameters of reality.
But regardless of the motivation, when one of the two major political parties decides to base its policies on ignorance, delusion and denial, democracy is in major trouble. That decision bothers liberals but it doesn't matter to the extremist Republicans since they don't really support democracy anyway. They are hard-wired for and feel more comfortable with variants of authoritarian rule.)
One would have thought that the Democrats would value airing out the truth. But, when it comes right down to it, they've been secretive, hiding their misdeeds, making it difficult for journalists and researchers to figure out how policies are made. Remember I.F. Stone's first rule: "All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out."
The current WikiLeaks cables dumps -- which day by day reveal the hidden policies motivating America's dangerous military and foreign policies -- could have been dismissed as "old news" or "raw" speculation or something, thus diluting some of their impact. But instead the administration, looking guilty and fearful, went into full-bore fright mode, ordering federal employees not to look at the cables at work or when at home. Censorship is always a bad move. They don't want government workers and troops and ordinary citizens to see how their political sausage is made, and the greed/imperialism motivations behind American decision-making. Thus the attempts to block or close down the website, the calls by rightwing extremists to attack the messenger rather than to plumb the messages, even going so far as to call for the assassination of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. These are symptoms of a weak, failing culture, unable to deal with its own history. (And let it be reiterated that had the major mass-media fulfilled their professional journalistic functions -- to dig, to question, to investigate -- there might not be a WikiLeaks.)
7. VIOLENCE AND THUGGERY
For the past several years, with most leaders remaining silent, American politics has been suffused with threats of violence, actual violence, uncalled-for suggestions of mayhem directed against the President, moves to remove legal protections from the Constitution, threats directed as Muslim-Americans or other minorities, talk of secession and nullification and McCarthyite hearings, Tea Party rallies with citizens proudly bringing their semi-automatic arms, etc. This coarseness of speech, this thuggish behavior, has been encouraged by rightwing propagandists and pundits (Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Matt Drudge, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Sarah Palin, et al.), and even winked-at by mainstream Republican columnists, candidates and Congressional leaders.
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