Either way, Obama ran from a fight instead of baiting the GOP to ensure one.

But conservatives don't fight on czars, they whine. What we need is a fight.

It's all about how you present it. Friday news dump doesn't bait anyone.

I think the business lobby would have feared Obama making a recess appointment and turning this into an electoral fight.

Recess was the smart move. Obama should have done that on the first day of August recess. That was six weeks ago.

The goal should have been to bait the GOP into a fight. You don't do that with a Friday afternoon news dump on appointing an assistant.

You're only looking at it through the prism of villiage media. Local press covering elections in battleground states aren't going to care what Dodd's lame-duck ass thinks, they're going to care about the local election dynamics. And this is an election year when Democrats are spending hundreds of millions of dollars. This elevates an issue that Democrats want to spend money on.

But Obama chickened out, has refused to change course on the economy, which is awful news for Democrats.

Government is politics, don't be naive. That's why it's important to view actions through their effect when it comes to policy and politics.

This could be effective policy, that is yet to be determined. Yves Smith could easily be right that this is the sidelining of Warren. What's clear when it comes to policy, is that this certainly isn't a best case scenario, nobody who supports consumers wants the consumer protection head having to answer to Rham and Geithner.

But while we don't know the results of this when it comes to policy, we do know that this is piss-poor politics in a year the GOP is likely to win the House.

It isn't logical to conclude that if Warren decided to take a lesser job and make the best of a bad situation then she's a pawn. That's just silly.

Unhappy is the feeling after Demcrats getting their asses kicked in an election. This was a great opportunity to minimize those loses, but Obama chickened out on doing right by Democrats.

I don't know the actual policy effects, that remains to be determined. And effects matter far more than how anyone says things are going to work at the start.

What I do not is that on the political side, Obama chickened out of a fight with the GOP on a great issue and squandered a huge opportunity to minimize losses in the midterms. That Obama let the GOP off the hook is simply obvious, just as obvious as how Democrats wanted the GOP defending the right of Wall St to rip people off.

The point of a political fight isn't to poke eyes or do what the conseravtives really really hate, the point is to lose less seats this fall. Obama's disdain for fighting apparently ranks higher than his need to preserve congress, that's a problem.

That's a false choice.

Is Warren the strongest potential choice? Yes. Is she being used as a rube? No.

She's making the best of a bad situation to protect the program she created. I don't see why this surprises anyone, that's the same exact move she did in supporting financial regulation even though the bill was far, far short of including the necessary reform.

She's taking what she can get. It isn't much, and that's on Obama.

And while it will be some time before we see the policy implications of this move, the political implications are clear: Obama blew it.

Warren may be putting on a brave face, but this is obviously less than optimal or the bill would have been written to have the interim head report to both Treasury and the White House.

We need to have a battle over this, we can't be scared of fights when it's a 70/30 issue. That's just crappy political instincts from the WH political and economic teams.

She should have started more than a month ago. She could have stayed through the end of 2011 under a recess by tradition and through the end the next congress by reading of the constitution. And I don't want her there longer than the end of 2011 so that she'll have plenty of time to run for senate.

1. She should have been a recess appointment six weeks ago.

2. That there is division over such a no-brainer doesn't reflect well upon Obama

3. There didn't have to be confirmation hearings to be a fight. Obama made a mistake by not forcing Republicans to fight on such favorable ground for Democrats.

No way Denny Rehberg beats Pat Williams statewide in Montana.

By that reasoning, no male would ever vote on the issue of Choice. But plenty of us do. The government requiring citizens to pay a corporation is something that should be considered on the grounds of fundamental civil rights, in which case even those with insurance should proudly fight against such a ridiculous policy.

1. I'm sure, but DiFi deserves blame, as is usual

2. Prop 19 may pass without the CDP, but I think the better question is can the CDP win without Prop 19. Today's message to all those new, single issue voters is to skip the rest of the ballot because Democrats are just as braindead as Republicans.

3. Totally, the CDP is not only incompetent, but counterproductive. They lack legitimacy as a vehicle to elect Democrats, much less progress the state.

But Fiesta was a great book by Hemingway, who had the right approach to living in Idaho.