I have seen suggestions that Obama can now take the upper hand in the deficit debate by fighting to defend Medicare at all cost. He could suggest instead to try and get more taxes from corporations, cut defense, and work on health care cost control.
Instead the only thing that has transpired so far is that Obama doesn't seem to want to extend the Bush tax cuts even further. Big deal - that's what he said in 2008 and look what happened.
Indeed it seems to me very clearly that Obama will not really fight for anything. Except war money.
Remember this quote? "You vote against this bill and you will never hear from us again." This was the threat used against Democratic Congressmen - they better vote FOR the war, or they could forget about the White House helping them in any election race.
This is the only instance that I can remember, and I've been following politics pretty closely, where Obama was fighting hard for something (namely for killing people). He got a lot of credit for reforming health care obviously, but what did he actually do there? Wasn't it more Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi who pushed on with the reform plans after Scott Brown won his election? Maybe Obama gave some big speech which turned things around after that Massachusetts election, but in that case I missed it.
Please correct me if I am wrong, and I really do mean that. What instances can you give where Obama was actually fighting for something, as opposed to letting Congress handle things? Here I do NOT mean some milquetoast quote like "The president is pleased that the current plan includes a public option", a quote that begs to be compared and contrasted to the one above.