Well, if I was in the agenda derailing business, I would not be too worried about the Republicans at this point. Whether or not you believe Obama's early bi-partisan play was simply to back them into a corner and get them to reveal their new mantra as the party of NO (No plan, No ideas, No clue, No future) or to actually see if there was a chance they would work for the good of the American people and not just for the upper 1 percent-ers and the base, the answer has pretty much been mailed in.

But, that is not the real problem looming to derail the progressive agenda anyway.

There will be zero or near zero votes for any of Obama's agenda from the Rush-publicans. Seems all their efforts are to rewrite history (Pelosi's recession?  WTF?)and to kneel and kiss the ring of Limbaugh the Great and Powerful.

Where we will see our chances for real reform in basic economic fairness (tax policy), health care reform and energy policy deep-sixed is from Congress members who, though they have a "D" behind their names, are really ideologically closer to Ronald Reagan then Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

We don't need an opposition party, we have one already. In spite of the fact Obama ran on a platform that was overwhelmingly approved by the American people, our Democrats in Congress are going to over-ride that electoral mandate.

Sadly, and not to open the primary war wounds, Obama was correct. The most successful President of the last 50 years was Reagan, he turbo-charged the move to the right that Nixon had started coming out of the LBJ era, and, ever since, we have seen our politicians move center right.

My take has always been, it was a con-job, a slight of hand, a triumph of marketing.

I believe the country was never, and IS not as far right as the Republicans took us.  

I think they have been amazingly successful in creating a number of untouchable totems, that raising taxes is always bad, that parts of the federal budget are in financial crisis (SS, Medicaid etc) while other parts, primarily defense and intelligence spending have to simply be put on auto-pilot, never questioned as to their impact in bankrupting the country and never put to the test of, is it always going to be Guns and never Butter?

Watch closely in the next 3 months, it's clear who the party of opposition is, and who are its leaders. Max Baccus, Evan Bayh, Ben Nelson, Senators from Agri-business states, even so called liberal New Yorkers such as Schumer will come home to their true constituents (Wall Street) and shoot down real regulatory reform and changes to implement basic tax fairness.

Sadly, our politicians are stuck in the beltway time-warp. They are a generation behind, political children mostly of the 70s, 80s and 90s; I believe what may be Obama's fate is to be the harbinger of a new political mantra, but to be a prophet who never makes it to the promised land with the children.

I think our PUMA buds have the wrong religious figure in mind for Obama, He's not so much The Christ as he is Moses the Prophet, who will start the exodus from the Egypt of Reaganism, but will not complete the journey and bring us to the promised land.