Why the Political Center-Left is Fed up with Obama

I'm sure that I will hear from Obama defenders because of this and past posts who will as is the norm chastise me about Obama being better than the GOP alternative. That may be true as far as it goes, by why ares too many willing to a mediocre lesser of two evils instead of demanding something better? This willingness to accept the lesser evil only seems to encourage Obama to ignore those who put him in office and assume that he's free to do so because we'll come running back to support him rather than the GOP bogey man. Matt Miller has an op-ed in the Washington Post that expresses much of my exasperation - and that of growing numbers of voters. Here are highlights:

I know who the real villains are at this volatile moment. So why am I so mad at Barack Obama? I know I’m not alone. In conversations with folks across the center-left in recent days, everyone’s basically had it with the president.

[S]omehow the debt-ceiling fiasco and the downgrade, punctuated by these horrific jobs numbers and stock market gyrations, has made something in me (and, I suspect, millions of others) snap. It’s the sound of confidence in Obama’s leadership breaking.

Yes, other forces may be “responsible” for the bad news. But in the end a president has the most power to shape the debate. How could Obama have let the entirely foreseeable debt-ceiling standoff turn into a hostage drama? Why didn’t he have the spine to say “send me a clean debt limit increase or I’ll raise it myself and see you in court”? How could he leave us in a position where every future debt-limit hike now becomes an occasion for blackmail?

Events keep screaming that the president is weak, weak, weak. That this can happen so soon after his gutsy call to take down Osama Bin Laden is striking. First the president gets rolled on the debt limit. Then S&P lowers the boom. Then China piles on. Then the White House rushes out word that Tim Geithner is staying put. Can anyone explain exactly who that news was meant to reassure?

Then there’s the president’s measurably ineffective pep talk as the market plunged on Monday. And the cynically inadequate “pivot” to jobs. Coupled with what will surely be a more-than-ample pivot to character assassination, with news that Team Obama’s plan for 2012 is to metaphorically “kill” Mitt Romney.

Will Obama go big? I think not, because no honest agenda for American renewal can avoid trims and taxes that impose costs on the middle class (as part of a long-term plan to save it). Yes, the president will sound “big,” and so will his opponent. But it’ll be phony. Instead, we’re in for another season of charades as both parties fight for 51 percent with symbolic “ideas” unequal to the size of our challenges.

If this is how it plays out, people like me won’t just be mad at Obama. We’ll be mad at ourselves for believing he was going to be different.