I'm waiting for the day when Democrats, Barack Obama included, realize that bipartisanship can and should mean that we don't always have to be giving in to them in order to have "real" bipartisanship.  Standing pat on some issues and principles, and making it politically damaging for Republicans not to come over to our side, should be part of the Democratic strategy; so far, it seems like it isn't anything they have even considered.  

Knowing how to sit, stay, heel and roll over might get us a blue ribbon at Obedience School graduation, but it isn't going to advance a strong Democratic agenda.  Besides, as a recent book title suggests, Bad Dogs Have More Fun.

What worries me more than I would like is that by virtue of some of the people Obama has put in Cabinet and other positions in his administration, bipartisanship is already here, and I think we will be seeing policies and decisions that are less than what we thought we should be getting from a Democratic administration.  That means it is up to the Congress to push back and assert itself against further bipartisan incursion into the legislative process.  Argh.

The "Millennials" support useless bipartisanship in survey after survey.

And Obama will continue to play to this group's views, since they are a base of his support, rather than educating them on the issues.

Politics is about getting what you want while giving up as little as possible - it is an organized mess of competing interests. The bush regime was the primal scream of this: using their power to implement an extremist agenda regardless of consequence. The recent Stimulus Bill was a more normal case in point. Most republican Congress persons knew the Stimulus Bill was needed and they knew that Obama gave them a great deal, a far better deal than they would have gotten under any other Democratic administration. But none of that mattered. republicans calculated that they could have their double chocolate fudge cake and eat it too, i.e., get a Stimulus Bill (which many republicans are now crowing about the benefits to their states), hold democrats accountable if the stimulus fails (which it likely will, or at least not succeed greatly), and create the false impression that they have principles instead of the craven scum that they are.

According to plan, republicans provided the absolute minimum required to get the bill passed (3 sacrificial lambs - all in the Northeast where being a little moderate has no cost) while giving nearly every republican extremist the opportunity to say they were against spending. (Note, I am not commenting on whether or not the republican strategy was good one - time will tell, but only that they got what they wanted while giving the absolute bare minimal.)

Obama too got what he wanted - an inadequate Stimulus that buoys his centrist and bipartisan credentials at little cost other than some hackles about bipartisanship failing. Democrats got much of what they wanted. The only people to lose out are the usual suspects - the American people who got a less than needed stimulus and will suffer much longer for it, but still have to pay for their politicians failures.

This is why Obama's strategy of preemptive capitulation is either a) very foolish as it demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of how the system works, or b) the whole PPUS is a ruse to give him cover for not implementing progressive programs and for hiding his basic center-right positions orientation. (I vote for (2))