Obama and no change

Steve Clemons, a sober political analyst and no hard-core progressive, is the latest to weigh in on Obama's failure to deliver on a promised agenda so far.

Unfair, perhaps, but Clemons notes that Obama in ome ways bears the hard bigotry of high expectations, or high needs, at least:

Barack Obama can’t be measured by the same stick as most American presidents. He must be better and do more.

And, in many ways, has failed to deliver:

Obama has failed to realize that the kind of “change” he promised during his campaign is actually the kind of change the nation needs. During the global financial crisis, he elected to ally himself with the architects of the previous financial order -- Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers and their followers. And these neoliberal practitioners delivered a financial recovery course that helped Wall Street and yet again sacrificed the interests of the American middle class, just as they did in the past.

Time to step up to the plate. The end game on health care, and the State of the Union address, will be key touchstones.