I hope to see this coming, but I don't really believe that we are anywhere close to it being a reality:

We can moan all we want about Obama’s shortcomings, the mistakes his Administration has made and his inability to take on Wall Street. But we haven’t exactly applied a lot of heat. A million people on the mall demanding "Jobs Now" along with serious Wall Street reforms might help. A million people showing up repeatedly might actually get the job done. Why have we forgotten how to build a mass movement just as the Tea Party shows that it can be done?

The free market on Wall Street is dead and has been for a long time. It’s been replaced by a billionaire bailout society that will provide decades of chronic unemployment and on-going bailouts for the super-rich.

It’s a damn shame Obama can’t deal with it. It’s a bigger shame that we won’t force him too.

Les Leopold is the author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street’s Game of Fantasy Finance destroyed our Jobs, Pensions and Prosperity, and What We Can Do About It Chelsea Green Publishing, June 2009.

It's a very fine post by Leopold, over on FDL. But this moment to me, seems quite a bit more like the '93-94 period of 'checking out' of politics by those who supported the Democrats. But back then, I really did check out. I didn't follow politics at all in '93-95, and I wish somedays that I were not following it at all right now either. It feels like a couple of cold winters of wilderness ahead, in spite of the already cold enough one we are in now.

But, I do not believe that there is plenty of time for the political winds to change prior to the 2010 mid-terms. I have long expected for Obama to attempt a shift to recovering some sort of bipartisan mantle, and that's part of his current pitch on HCR and having a meeting with Republicans.

If it is coupled with Democrats actually amending, through reconciliation, a more progressive HCR bill, prior to Obama meeting with Republicans, that could be a good start. That's been my guess as to where things are headed-- but its also in part my wish that Democrats get their act together (if I'm going to have to suffer watching and supporting them through the attempt at governing).