Buyer's Remorse On The Left?

Noman is having a what-planet-does-this-guy-live-on?-moment.  Alex Spillius of the Telegraph--whose name unfortunately looks like a blend of Syphilis and Silly--reports on the left's disenchantment with President Obama because his cojones aren't as large as Hilary Clinton's.

Mr Obama's capitulation to Republicans in the recent tussle over deficit reduction is being seen as the lowest point of his presidency and the latest in a series of blows to the liberal agenda. 

Faced with the staunch opposition of the Tea Party contingent of the Republican Party, he agreed to widespread cuts in government spending without winning any revenue increases in exchange.

Come again?  Capitulation in the recent tussle over deficit reduction?  The question doesn't come up again until after the 2012 election.  Advantage Obama.  $2.6 trillion of supposed deficit reductions will be negotiated by a super committee of politicians dealing in back rooms that will consider tax increases and reductions in military outlays.  Advantage Obama.  After doubling the national debt since the Democratic legislative takeover in 2006, and running $ trillion-plus deficits for every year of the Obama presidency, the deal yielded $21 billion dollars in illusory cuts.  Advantage Obama.

Series of blows to the liberal agenda?  Let's see.  Financial reform that reforms nothing that led to the crisis of 2008, but creates a super regulator that answers only to the White House.  Victory for the left.  $1 trillion of stimulus that stimulated nothing but Democratic constituencies and big government.  Victory for the left.  Cap and trade being enacted by regulatory subterfuge.  Victory for the left.  America's influence throughout the world, and especially in the middle east, frittered away.  Victory for the left.  Unconfirmed left-wing Czars running roughshod through the American government, doing the whacky left's bidding without interference.  Victory for the left.  Bond holders of two of the Big Three Auto makers stiffed, while the United Auto Workers union that killed them are given equity in the reborn enterprises courtesy of the American taxpayer.  Victory for the left.  Don't ask don't tell eliminated, and the Defense of Marriage Act ignored.  Victory for the left.  America's borders left undefended, and pro-abortion orthodoxy run amok throughout the Department of Health and Human Services.  Victory for the left.  Two leftist, feminist jurists of dubious sexual orientation on the Supreme Court.  Big victory for the left.  And, the grandaddy of them all, ObamaCare, which puts the government's paws all over 16% of the American economy while it creates thousands of premium government jobs for liberal-voting Democrats.  Victory for the left.

When the history of this epoch is written, Barack Obama's first two years in the White House will be viewed as the most wildly successful period of time that the left--or any political impulse--has ever had in this country.  And all of it accomplished without firing a shot on the populace--just a few tea-partiers roughed up by SEIU goons, and the media's unremitting complicity and cooperation.  All the President has got to do is to hang onto power for another four years in order to consolidate and preserve his statist triumphs between 2008 and 2010.  But, even if he accomplished nothing more than what he's already achieved, and lost the 2012 election, his Presidency would still mark the  high water mark of statism in America, rivaled only by FDR's much longer reign.

For a more sober look at liberal fretting over the public's buyer's remorse, Noman suggests James Taranto's piece in the Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Clinton was ideologically flexible, whereas Mr. Obama is rigid. Yet the left stuck with Mr. Clinton even through his impeachment. Everyone loves a winner, and progressives are angry and disconsolate with Mr. Obama because they increasingly see him as a loser. But if the president is a loser, it is precisely because he is one of them.

If the left is not happy, it's because the left is on drugs.    Lefties should be building monuments to Barack Obama, something to go along with his Nobel Peace Prize, which they will do once its safe to quit posturing for political purposes.