the big O, part 2

The first two years of the Obama administration have been a failure, and there's every reason to think things will be worse in the second half. I'm starting to think he may even be a one-term President.
In today's news: 4 million more Americans went without insurance in the first half of 2010 than in the first half of 2008. What was supposed to be a review of Iraq/Afghanistan War policy preparatory to withdrawal is backing off from previously set deadlines. The co-chairs of Obama's fiscal commission are recommending benefit cuts to Social Security and Medicare.
Benefit cuts to Social Security and Medicare!? (Where's an interrobang when you need one?) The third rail is finally grasped, by a Democratic administration?
I would have written "a nominally Democratic administration," but dese are our Dems. That's it. They're diluted Republicans. Their efficaciousness is homeopathic, and maybe not even that. (Apologies to the holistic, but belief in the effectiveness of homeopathy or Obama requires similar leaps of faith at this point.)
I don't think Barack Obama is a bad man. I wish I could really know what he was thinking when he campaigned and as he formulated plans for his administration. It seems so hallucinatory to believe that financiers could be shamed and noodged into honesty, that pharmaceutical and insurance companies would yield to the public weal, that political opponents who said over and over again that they hoped you would fail, crash and burn regardless of the consequences to the rest of the country would maybe give a little, take a little.
When does it stop being reasonable to expect people to be reasonable? When does it become senseless to hope people will be sensible?
So I think Obama has pursued a moderate course, according to his better nature, when a radical course, fiercely proposed and defended, is what was necessary. It was his mistake to make. But now he has suffered what he calls a "shellacking" at the polls, and has decided to change... nothing, that I can find. He still thinks he can reach compromise with his enemies, who are plain and sincere in their expression of desire to thwart him at every turn and deny him a second term.
These people, these Repugs and their Teahadists, are going to shame and disgrace him with every tool and rotten vegetable at hand. They are the worst forces in our society, and our President doesn't seem ready or able to oppose them. Barack Obama may end up being a one-term president, and unless he stops collaborating with people who wish him ill and the rest of us nothing that will impede their naked gluttony, it will be nobody's fault but his own.