The problem is they're still right wingers.

Sure, they may be center-right, and I generally view Obama's economic policies as center-right in nature, especially given the limitations imposed by the House and Senate, but when you have center-rightists competing with leftists in one party, you're going to have a party that has a difficult time coming to any consensus that isn't outside of center-right.

For example, even if the left had an opportunity to pass a Public Option through the Senate and to President Obama, they would've needed well over 60 votes in favor of the bill, not just 60. If it were just 60, the right wingers in the Democratic caucus at the time would've insisted on watered-down language or even opposed the inclusion of the Public Option at all. As it stands, the Public Option had to be deleted in the Senate or risk the defection of Senate members such as one or both Nelsons, Lieberman, Baucus, and McCaskill.

To get a robust Public Option through the Senate likely would've required the numbers of Democrats found in the Senate under LBJ or even FDR himself. The collapse of the New Deal Democratic Coalition is still being felt to this day.

and he is not - He would strike a deal with the bulk of the Democrats and enough moderate republicans to move forward on a deal ...

Leave the Tea Party caucus, and his speakership, in the dust ....

That would be the most honorable way forward ....

Of an interesting fight that I hope neither side wins, at least not yet. They need to just keep swinging and axes and cudgels for a while.

While I am no fan of chained CPI, calling something that might reduce the annual benefit increase (COLA) by 0.3% a year "shredding the social safety net" is a bit over the top.

I look forward to collecting these benefits fairly soon and don't think the benefit growth rate should be cut, but it is not "shredding" the safety net to do so. It is closer to "unfortunately trimming" than it is "shredding".

As a friend of mine said-that's good for about two taco dinners a month.

It would go up $13.50 a month instead. Not a great thing, but hardly the destruction of SSI.

it's unnecessary. Oil companies would continue to get millions of tax dollars on top of record profits while struggling seniors would choose between heat, food, or medication.

Any change to Social Security that allows the advocates of that change walk away and avoid seeing the victims that change, no matter how many, is palatable to the blind. The specious posture that Social Security "was never intended to be a retirement system" ignores the wholesale destruction of employee pensions and all 'traditional' forms of retirement.

Quibbling over the rhetoric of "shredding" vs. "trimming" is akin to claiming that the victims of Sandy Hook died of "heart failure" ... since their hearts failed to continue functioning after the invasion of .223 caliber slugs. It's the stance of a butcher to call it "trimming."

The benefit remains and actually continues to increase. I am not a fan of this at all, but some manner of putting it in perspective would be useful and more accurate than "shredding". Analogies to gun slaughter are over the top, and don't match the facts well at all.

Again, I am going to be collecting these benefits fairly soon, so I am no fan of their reduction.

are against it.

Just remember, if you dont fight the goblins, they eat you!

I do agree with much of what you say about the R's, but attacking Obama and centrism is wrong, hyperbolic, and wreaks of purist nonreality.

One could also look at some progressives and note how ultra liberal and intransigent THEY are and acccurately label them as the TeaLeftist Party. These are the ones who will equate Obama and many Dems with the Republicans, will stay home and not vote (as so many did in 2010) as a "protest" about lack of purity, and then whine bitch cry and moan even louder when Obama and Dems are stuck having to find way to compromise with Republicans as is REQUIRED in order to actually govern. It was these "progressives", at least way too many of them, who ALLOWED the ReSCUMs to take over the House and take over so many state houses at the state level in 2010. As Pete Seeger wrote, WHEN WILL THEY EVER LEARN?

..... pu·ri·ty noun \ˈpyu̇r-ə-tē\ - expecting someone to do what they SAID they would do

Apparently an impossible standard for any politician and anyone who doesn't like it is a "whiner".

They don't like him okay. I think Boehner and the few other goblins might deign to work with Obama, but they don't like him.

Most Americans are some flavor of Center. And the majority rules.

Current Right wing ideas would have been considered quite Extreme in 1975. Extreme Right Wing ideas become Normal while Normal Left wing ideas become extreme and we call that the Center

But we still live in the here and now and must acknowledge the current paradigm.

Send in Bob... from accounting.

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