Keeping Up With the Clintons

I'm a bit more optimistic than Digby about the Obama administration's strategy for the midterm elections. With that said, it would be hard for anyone even the slightest bit left of center not to agree wholeheartedly with this:

Therefore, his political advisers should know that when the country is still reeling from unemployment and foreclosures after nearly two years, the passage of an inadequate stimulus bill, which unrealistic benchmarks and a giddy victory party ensured would be the only chance they got, the only people who will consider that a "success" would be beltway insiders. They should have realized that a health care bill that nobody in their right minds would have designed from scratch, the worst aspects of which liberals will be asked to defend for years to come, would be met with dampened enthusiasm by those who watched the process devolve from a sense of progressive purpose to an exhausting farce. They are expected to be able to predict that financial reform without accountability for what's gone before, combined with the administration's unwillingness to confront the civil liberties abuse of the last administration -- indeed expanding on them in some cases -- would show a lack of fundamental concern for justice among those who care about such things.

I think that about sums up the last 18 months. You come in on a wave of populism, a huge progressive victory backed up by the largest majorities in a generation and you give us tepid policies designed to not step on the toes of the people responsible for the mess you'd been rebuking for 4 years.