Sam Stein at the Huffington Postprovides a dose of candor following the Evan Bayh bombshell:
In the wake of the Indiana Democrat’s announcement, a host of figures — from the progressive wing of the party to devout centrists — have chimed in to warn that failure in jobs and health care legislation have sapped the party’s momentum and fortunes. No one is asking them to go out on a limb and do something they didn’t first run by the American people,” [Daily Kos founder Markos]Moulitsas said, in an email to the Huffington Post. “The Dems are where they are because they got elected promising to be a party able to govern, and then spent the last year proving themselves wrong.”
The “we told ‘ya so” Clintonistas are back too. Lanny Davis, barely concealing his glee, tells us that “[President Obama's] failure to pass something showed him to be an ineffectual president. And the absence of effectiveness combined with the cynicism of government because of that absence of effectiveness… is toxic.” (Emphasis added)
That was, in fact, the message that Bayh was trying to deliver: (Emphasis added)
“My advice to my fellow Democrats is the only way we can actually govern in this country is make common cause with the independents and moderates,” the Indiana centrist said during an appearance on MSNBC. “Sometimes half a loaf is better than none.”
But on trudge the Obama-Reid-Pelosi troika. Pushing health care — maybe via a reconciliation sleight of hand — and spinning the Obama budget as fiscally responsible. The collapse of the bipartisan jobs bill in the Senate (too many tax breaks to please Reid), we are told, may have been the final straw for Bayh. But it was also more evidence of what can result from a president who never ever sends up his own legislative proposals. Where is Obama’s jobs bill? He doesn’t have one.
I await the mea culpas from those who assured us that Obama had lots of executive talent. (Which will arrive shortly after the “He really is a Zionist” crowd atones for conning wary American Jews.) He hasn’t much. But he has plenty of hubris, which prevents him from finding a new team that could help him with his deficiencies. That’s the price of electing a “sort of God” who sort of never did anything before running for president. (Emphasis added)