Krugman also said there was a moral collapse in the WH, and Democrats should look elsewhere for leadership. I think he nailed the situation sufficiently.

know for sure WHY Obama is doing these things, nor can we. He, as we do, looks as WHAT he is doing and its effects on the body politic. He sees disasterous actions, with conservative leanings, which will lead to continued pain for many people in this nation and for a long, long recovery which will leave many people permanently economically, perhaps psychologically, damaged.

For the bully pulpit Krugman has, at the establishment paper which the NYTimes is, I think this is a very strong, clear, and unremittingly critical attack IMHO. But my opinion is also based on what he's been saying in his blog area of the NYTimes; many readers have never seen those postings, I would think, so perhaps based just on his op-ed's, he needs to do more clear educating of the general readership.

Here, where we've got more freedom to speculate and also have had time for many of us to internalize that Obama is, all together now!, a conservative, we are further along on the learning curve than the general public. Krugman is, I think, trying to educate and influcence readers of the NYTimes, without scaring them off.

Of course, I cannot know what he is thinking. I can speculate that Krugman is coming to grips with what seems unthinkable, that an elected Democractic president is actually a conservative. A real true DINO. And a danger to the common weal.

It’s hard to escape the impression that Republicans have taken Mr. Obama’s measure — that they’re calling his bluff in the belief that he can be counted on to fold. And it’s also hard to escape the impression that they’re right.

The real question is what Mr. Obama and his inner circle are thinking. Do they really believe, after all this time, that gestures of appeasement to the G.O.P. will elicit a good-faith response?

What’s even more puzzling is the apparent indifference of the Obama team to the effect of such gestures on their supporters. One would have expected a candidate who rode the enthusiasm of activists to an upset victory in the Democratic primary to realize that this enthusiasm was an important asset. Instead, however, Mr. Obama almost seems as if he’s trying, systematically, to disappoint his once-fervent supporters, to convince the people who put him where he is that they made an embarrassing mistake.

Whatever is going on inside the White House, from the outside it looks like moral collapse — a complete failure of purpose and loss of direction. (My emphasis)

Reading through the op-ed, I can't find one sentence which exonerates Obama or praises him. And Krugman is now noting that the Dems in Congress need be their own leaders and strike off on their own. In order to survive? In order to do at some things to help their constituents? Clearly, there is no good leadership to be found coming from Obama

So what are Democrats to do? The answer, increasingly, seems to be that they’ll have to strike out on their own. In particular, Democrats in Congress still have the ability to put their opponents on the spot — as they did on Thursday when they forced a vote on extending middle-class tax cuts, putting Republicans in the awkward position of voting against the middle class to safeguard tax cuts for the rich.

It would be much easier, of course, for Democrats to draw a line if Mr. Obama would do his part. But all indications are that the party will have to look elsewhere for the leadership it needs. (My emphasis)

This is very strong tea for the NYTimes. Comments should be interesting.

http://peterdaou.com/2010/12/the-new-oba...

Personally, I've always maintained Obama is an incompetent and a conservative.

--there is just so much grist for the "category error" mill, it almost had to be on purpose!

That said, I'm glad to see him hitting the White House pretty hard. It would, of course, be better if he'd burst the surly bonds of civility, but how likely is that?

The thing about Obama, and the Democrats, is not that he/they fought the good fight and lost. It's that they never fought at all. The only hardball they ever played was with their own base. More than that, as Chief Executive, there were all kinds of things that Obama could have done on his own without the Congress from ending the wars to prosecuting Bush Administration and Wall Street wrongdoers, including progressives in his Administration, closing Guantanamo, ending DADT, not creating the Cat Food commission, etc.

Add in all the Wall Street bailouts and the healthcare sellouts and what you have is not a poor liberal record but a good conservative one. You see if Obama was a poor performing liberal we would still expect him to make overtures to liberals and deliver at least in those areas where he could. But what we see is that even in areas where he has wide latitude and complete discretion he doesn't.

As for Krugman he is a Trojan horse working for the Establishment and the Democrats. Until and unless he breaks with the Democrats and the elites to which he belongs, he will remain what he is a shill. Criticism without opposition just delays and distracts. It's the same problem I have with sites like FDL. They rail against the Democrats, but then turn around and tell us how important it is to support this Democrat or that Democratic initiative. But what they won't say is that scary and crazy as the Republicans are at the end of the day we get from the Democrats what we would get from the Republicans. That's why their and Krugman's critiques ring hollow.

Here:

What it looks like to me is Obama methodically reversing the desires of the people who voted for him, inverting every virtue and intention they projected on to him. If someone was trying to deconstruct the Democratic Party from the inside - betray its hopes, derail its changes, destroy its legacy - you couldn't ask for a better example.

Almost like an act of revenge.

I said in Primary Objective that Obama was not mortally unpopular with the base, but I'm having to rethink that claim much more quickly than I imagined given the way he has increased his pissing on the Democrats since the mid-term losses. If he has no loyalty to any part of the party and is eager to walk around with a big "Kick me" sign taped front and back, then it makes no sense for the party to follow him off the cliff.

It's like Obama's playing "Now I've Got You, You Son Of A Bitch!" except with the Ds for whom, ostensibly, he's the party leader.

Oh and that quote Daou uses:

Privately, Mr. Obama has described himself, at times, as essentially a Blue Dog Democrat, referring to the shrinking caucus of fiscally conservative members of the party.

I've been calling Obama a Blue Dog status quo corporatist for an age. I should add that Obama did not run as a Blue Dog. Sure, you can see the Blue Dogism there in his campaign policy positions, but that is not how he sold himself to voters. The change in "Change we can believe in" was not an embrace of Blue Dog values but progressive ones.

In exactly the same way that millions could project all their dreams onto the vague slogan, so millions can now measure their daily lives against "hope and change" and see that nothing was delivered.

Groucho Marx or Barack Obama's subconscious re Democratic Party?

I loved Krugman pinning the metaphoric "kick me" sign on Obama's back, but somewhere the evil MOTU are probably offering him a Manchurian cigar for the sabotage he has carried on and continues to -- continuation of the Bush devastation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvePQXdYs...