Disappointed and Disillusioned with Obama

Paul Krugman's op-ed from ten days ago describes my feelings about Obama fairly well. Obama seems to be stuck in a fantasy where some sort of post-partisan middle ground that he can stand on actually exists. For the past couple weeks now Obama's (and the Democrats in Congress's) popularity numbers have been taking a nose dive (although from a very high place so his numbers are still very high overall).
When Obama makes concessions to conservatives it gains him nothing - they aren't going to support him no matter what he does, and half of them think he wasn't born in the US anyway. These folks are too busy getting excited over the latest fake Kenyan birth certificate to care that Obama is sacrificing his principles in order to win their support.

Krugman also mentions the bank bailout. It seems like a lot of people are confused over the difference between the bank bailout and the stimulus package. Just so everyone's clear the bank bailout was $700B to rescue the financial industry while the economic stimulus package was $700B to help the rest of the economy. I think the bank bailout was too big, and the stimulus too small. The line we were given about the banks was that they were too big to fail, that their failure would have led to much worse problems in the rest of the economy.

Perhaps that was the case at the end of 2008. However even if it was true it should have represented a terrible outcome to everyone. Our entire economy is dependent on the health of a handful of banks? And these banks have to award their executives millions of dollars in bonuses, even when they fail miserably? Obama's unwillingness to take a harder line against bank executives receiving millions was disappointing to me. Also maybe some of those banks should have been broken up into smaller, non-too-big-to-fail companies.

On the bank bailout, on health care, on accountability for torture, and on the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Obama is going to have to start to walk the walk if he expects to hang on to the support of progressives like me. I know that it's not realistic to expect that we'll get everything done right away, but, as Krugman writes, "there’s a point at which realism shades over into weakness, and progressives increasingly feel that the administration is on the wrong side of that line." Aim big, Mr. President. Don't shy from the fights that need to be fought. Follow the example set by the late Senator Kennedy. That way if you only achieve half of what you wanted to, you'll still have accomplished a lot of positive change. That would be change I can believe in.