Obama and the Democrats: A Deficit of Purpose

I frequently get beat up by defenders of the Liar-in-Chief and the feckless Democrats because I expect accountability and want things done. The common excuse - and I got this again just yesterday on a piece I wrote on Bilerico - is that the Democrats never had 60 votes in the Senate. Actually, they did briefly, but even that ignores the fact that the Republicans got things done (albeit often bad things) under Chimperator Bush without 60 votes and have done a brilliant although short sighted job of blocking Democrat efforts. The question is how have they done it. I believe it comes down to two things: party discipline - something unknown to the Democrats - and a clear purpose and willingness to play nasty to further it. It drives me to distraction that the Democrats have been so spineless and allow themselves to be screwed by the GOP over and over again. And the problem starts at the top in the White House. The New York Times looks at this ongoing problem in an editorial today. Here are some highlights:
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A sense of resolve and a clear purpose should not be partisan commodities, yet, in Washington, only the Republicans seem to have them. They know exactly what they want and pursue it with ruthless efficiency: preserve all the Bush-era tax cuts, no matter the cost, and make sure President Obama gets nothing done.
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In the last few weeks, Republicans have blocked or vowed to kill: an extension of jobless benefits; the first real arms reduction treaty with the Russians in nearly a decade; the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell”; and, most significantly for the nation’s financial future, the expiration of unnecessary and expensive tax cuts for the rich.

Where has the president been through all this, as the sand runs out on a Congress with two Democratic majorities?
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[I]magine if he had taken to the airwaves, raised his voice and said he would not allow tax cuts for the top 2 percent of households when the money could better be spent on creating jobs? There are limits to this kind of jawboning, of course, and he might still have lost the battle. But at least the public would know the president has core positions.
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A new CBS News poll shows that only 26 percent of Americans support continuing the high-end tax break, which in the 2008 campaign Mr. Obama unambiguously vowed to end. In the absence of presidential leadership, the Republicans have a much stronger hand. The dismal November jobs report, which showed that average wages grew by a Scrooge-like penny an hour and unemployment rose to 9.8 percent from 9.6 percent, made unemployment benefits a more valuable hostage.
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This need not have happened if Mr. Obama and Congressional Democrats had forcefully asserted their agenda before the midterm election and held a vote on the tax cuts.
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It may be that Mr. Obama still believes that bipartisan gestures can overcome extreme policy differences. But the rest of Washington woke up from that dream long ago. It has become a snare.