I'm surprised I haven't seen anything here about a Salon column titled "Obama should have listened to Paul Krugman." It is an analysis of what went wrong with the Obama administration from the beginning from a progressive point of view. Author Walden Bello lists ways Obama failed to maintain the wave of passion he rode to election night in 2008, concluding:
"With his preference for a technocratic approach and a bipartisan solution to the crisis, Obama allowed this base to wither away instead of exploiting the explosive momentum it possessed in the aftermath of the elections.
"At the eleventh hour, Obama and the Democrats are talking about firing up and resurrecting this base. But the dispirited and skeptical troops that have long been disbanded and left by the wayside rightfully ask: around what?"
This last question seems to be the essence of the argument here at Kos over the Obama presidency. Sure we supported him over Romney, but only because Romney and the Republicans were so god-awful. It was all many of us could do to choke back our disappointment in Obama's performance for four years.
Of course, he achieved a few things, but he didn't give progressives what we desperately wanted - leadership.
Bello goes on to contrast the Republicans take-no-prisoners approach with Obama's confrontation-avoidance style. The book from which the article is excepted "Capitalism's Last Stand?: Deglobalization in the Age of Austerity" is out in paperback. It looks like a good read.