There may be some hope, after all

After Scott Brown's election to Ted Kennedy's former Senate seat, there was lots of chatter about how Obama would need to move to the center to shore up flagging support from independents.   That didn't seem right to me.  Clearly, that election was an early referendum on Obama's leadership, but the problem was not that he was too leftist.  Instead, it seemed like BO had long neglected what might be fundamental law of politics: Dance with the one that brung ya.  In BO's case, that meant energetic youngsters as well as older, less robust progressives like myself who made up for what we lacked in energy by dropping dollars into BO's warchest like we'd never done for any candidate before.  Barack had charmed us all and we were swooning to glide away in his arms.

The Tea Partiers are livid about Obama and healthcare, sure, but he ain't never gonna make them happy anyway.  Heck, they voted for Palin.  What he's sorely missing is any enthuthiasm in his base.  Massachusetts voters, like many of us, have failed to see the change we could believe in. So I suspect good numbers of progressives sat on their hands.  You certainly didn't see them rocking the streets, knocking on doors, dialing the phones, to rouse up support for Obama's girl.  If they had, there's no question Scott Brown would have been a brief, unmemorable flash. 

So today's NY Times story about Obama finally taking on the banks, promoting Volcker and sidelining Geithner and Summers, comes as wonderful good news.  I especially liked the hints about how Geithner and Summers might soon be shown the door. 

Maybe, just maybe, with all the bad news coming out of Chicago about Arne Duncan's failure, universal disparagement of the Race to the Trough, Bloomberg faced with parents protesting outside his house, Michelle Rhee's luster noticeably tarnished -- BO might come to realize that those 3 million teacher votes and voices and energy and 30 million fingers and 6 million feet could be more useful to his political longevity than all Broad's bucks.  And Flunkin Duncan will maybe start looking for a job doing something he could do well -- coaching high school basketball somewhere.