I don't know about others, but I am completely ready to write off Obama, all of the Democrats in Congress, and the Democratic Party as a whole.
These future lobbyists and empty suits weren't the change we were waiting for. Collectively, they've been the equivalent of the Maginot line.
But Obama does have one last chance to rescue his re-election prospects, and his legacy.
How?
1) Refuse to cave to right-wing blackmail: he should let the debt ceiling deadline pass
2) Strategically manage which bills to pay, and messaging around his choices.
Many ideas have been laid out to describe obvious paths around the fabricated impasse (Trillion dollar coins, 14th amendment claims, etc.).
However, maybe the Obama Administration should, instead, embrace the impasse, and take the opportunity to cut off the cash flow through the vast pork sluices created by Republicans over the last 15 years, which are the foundation and core plumbing of the baroque patronage system Republicans constructed out of the K Street Project.
When Tuesday comes and goes, cut off oil the oil and coal subsidy checks.
Cut off the farm subsidy checks.
Cut off progress payments on boondoggle weapons systems preserved only to funnel cash to red states (Tom Delay and friends very deliberately moved as much of the defense-industrial base to red states as they could - some may recall the tens of thousands of layoffs in the Bay Area of California in the 1990s when several bases and aerospace plants were closed over the course of a few short years).
By contrast, the federal government should keep paying Social Security and Medicare bills - and Obama should make a big deal - hourly speeches - about prioritizing these. (This step might be the only thing that could save him in 2012 at this point.)
The Administration might also state the following as a guiding principal,overall,for choosing which bills to pay:
Payments to each particular state will be capped at the level of receipts from that particular state until the crisis is resolved.
The squeals from red-state welfare queens like ADM would reverberate across the country and through every cranny of Capital Hill.
This exercise would serve the purpose of focusing the whole country on the inescapable fact that it is red states that disproportionately "suck on the teat" of the federal government, drawing far more in expenditures than they contribute in taxes.
Maybe this strategy would "change the tone" in Washington.
This is, after all, what both Obama and Boehner pledged to do, wasn't it?