Obama came in and said - whatever Ben Nelson wants.

After all, Obama is the one who yaps constantly about compromise, so all the Right has to do if he bellyaches about obstructionism is say, "Listen, we fight for what we believe in, and we fought hard for low taxes, yap yap yap, and Obama did his arguing and we came to a compromise, just like the President said we all needed to.  But it didn't work, the Obama compromise philosophy has failed the economy."

The Republicans, Speaker Boehner or Majority Leader Cantor DID NOT call for Social Security cuts in the budget deal.  THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES CALLED FOR THAT,"  declared US Representative John Conyers in a press conference held by members of the House "Out of Poverty' Caucus on 07/27/11." link

BTW, the tea party did not exist when Obama first put SS on the table and the Democratic Party had majorities in both houses of Congress.

2008: Obama elected.

1. Inadequate and poorly structured stimulus
   
2. Appointment of Geitner rendering all help from the Treasury department going to banks and nothing to main street
   
3. Dedicated his first two years to ramming through a health care bill that was stripped of all the reforms that would actually work (and were very popular with voters).  This did not hurt the economy much IMO but it helped hand congress over to the GOP that is hurting the economy now.
   
4. The Deal
   
5. No focus at all on job growth after stimulus

1. The lack of support from the GOP put constraints on how big the stimulus could be.  Obama needed unanimous support from his party (always difficult) and still needed 3 votes from republicans in the senate.  Could he have gotten this if the stimulus was structured differently and/or larger?  Who knows?  But post mortem reports I have read stated that Obama/Summers got the stimulus they wanted so that does not hold water.
   
2. Not sure why he was selected (the thought process).  Geitner had the funds needed to have an adequate program in place to help main street with housing problems.  It is inexcusable how he has done his job or that Obama has not replaced him.  GOP deserves no blame for this.
   
3. Again, failure to get any GOP support meant Obama had to run the table with his caucus (Specter is now a Democrat).  You could argue this put constraints on what Obama could pass in the senate.  He could not get a public option passed Leiberman, Nelson, etc.  But again, post mortem reports show Obama always planned to drop the PO (and other things).  Some GOP support would have made things easier, but it appears Obama got the bill he wanted.
   
4. Inexcusable.  The Deal sealed Obama's fate for his last two years.  He is going to dilute time every 3-6 months fighting with the GOP over how much we should cut spending.  GOP may be wrong on their policy beliefs and are to blame for what they are doing, but Obama should have anticipated this last December and used his leverage removing the GOP's ability to do this so he could spend his last 2 years focused on job growth.
   
5. Inexcusable that Obama did not put any plans forward nor use the bully pulpit to push for them.

All he had to do was nothing.

As hard as it is to believe, I don't think our elites -- and that means all the people who advise Presidents and other members of government on economic policy -- with the exception of a few contrarians (who never have any President's ear) had a glimmer of what our real situation was until, maybe, just the last week. And I'm not certain they are comprehending it yet.

This is the reality of our 10% economy. Ever more extreme income inequality means that those in that top 10% are living in an alternate economic reality (and a much more globalized reality) that for decades has been basically untouched by whatever bad consequences are being experienced by the bottom 90%, especially those who labor in or sell to people who labor in the domestic economy. Elite disconnect affects how they interpret data, deforms their expectations, leads to bad decision making.

I think yesterday's drop in the market may indicate the first glimmer of fear that what is happening on Main Street MAY negatively affect what is happening on Wall Street. But I'm not convinced, yet, that they really believe it. Or really understand what is happening on Main Street.

I'd like to think that all those money guys in Chicago with Obama, handing out the checks, are saying "Holy Cow did we misread that! We need some new thinking around here. This is serious! Let's get serious!"

We've already seen that it was Dems who, in 2009, wanted a deficit commission whose main focus would be on entitlements, and who threatened to hold the coming debt ceiling increase hostage if they didn't get it.  Well, Congress didn't pass the Deficit Commission bill, but the door was opened to hostage-taking for purely political purposes.

We know it was Obama who kept it all going, convening his own commission, naming two known entitlement-haters to chair it.  That commission failed to vote out recommendations, only issuing a report, but Democrats vowed to incorporate as much of the report's findings into legislation as they could.  

Let's remember that the Gang of Six wasn't six Republicans, but three Republicans and three - yes - Democrats.

The debt ceiling debacle saw Democrats in leadership positions take up the debt/deficit cudgel, and beat up on entitlements, creating provisions for a SuperCongress to be charged with finding trillions more to cut, with everything - especially the social safety net - on the table.

Is Leon Panetta a Democrat?  Well, here - via Glenn - is what's going on with him (emphasis in the original):

Yesterday, President Obama's Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta, donned his Dr. Strangelove hat and decried these prospective cuts as a "doomsday mechanism" -- doomsday! -- warning that these would be "very dangerous cuts" that "would do real damage to our security, our troops and their families, and our military's ability to protect the nation."  Then, this morning, we have this from The Washington Post:

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned Thursday of dire consequences if the Pentagon is forced to make cuts to its budget beyond the $400 billion in savings planned for the next decade.

Senior Pentagon officials have launched an offensive over the past two days to convince lawmakers that further reductions in Pentagon spending would imperil the country's security. Instead of slashing defense, Panetta said, the bipartisan panel should rely on tax increases and cuts to nondiscretionary spending, such as Medicare and Social Security, to provide the necessary savings.

Just think about that for a minute.  We have a Democratic administration installed in power after millions of liberals donated large amounts of their time and money to help elect them.  Yet here we have a top official in the President's cabinet demanding cuts to Medicare and Social Security in order to protect the military budget from further reductions.  That's the position of the Democratic administration.  While it's true that Pentagon officials reflexively protect the Pentagon budget, there is zero question that Panetta -- the career-long supremely loyal Democratic Party functionary -- is speaking here on behalf of and with the authorization of the White House; indeed, he said exactly that in the written message he sent about these cuts to the Pentagon's staff ("this outcome would be completely unacceptable to me as Secretary of Defense, the President, and to our nation's leaders").

So, excuse me, Kevin Drum, but you need to STFU, and put away the magic fairy glitter.  Have a little come-to-Jesus meeting with yourself, review the real history of Democrats and the economy that you have so neatly re-written just so you can lay the blame at Republicans' feet.  Not that the GOP doesn't share in the blame, but what has transpired since Bush left office  - and even before he left - has occurred with a lot of Democratic help.  

if i start out with majorities in both houses (as obama did in 2009), i really don't need to give two nanny-goat sh*ts what the republicans think. oh sure, i can pat them on the head, tell them i'll give all due consideration to their expressed concerns, and then go ahead and do what i planned to do in the first place.

sure, they'll howl and bay at the moon, so what? remember, elections do have consequences. had obama done this, and forced his guys in the house & senate to grow a backbone, we'd now be commissioning a sculptor, for the celebratory statue of him, to be erected on the mall, after his second term was completed. clearly, such is not the case.

Although that's certainly giving Obama some serious benefit of the doubt on that one that I'm not sure he deserves.

From the public option, to a real stimulus plan, the Democrats (and Lieberman) were the worst enemy in the beginning, the republicans were irrelevant.

obama is either:

1. a semi-moderate republican (assuming there is such a thing), masquerading as a democrat., or

2. a complete political naif.

He came into office knowing the economy was in the tank. He had months to prepare and put together a capable team to deal with it.

see "The Deal"

obama had the opportunity to raise taxes on the rich and took a pass...just like he will next time.