And they never stopped beating up on Obama and the Democrats. Those of us who followed his campaign closely knew we were getting a progressive centrist (No, PUBs, that is not an oxymoron!), but they apparently envisioned him showing up on inauguration day wearing a dashiki and giving a “black power” salute. I used to laugh at the right wingers who derided liberals for treating Obama as if he was a messiah, until I realized they were right, if you think the professional left actually reflects progressive thought. I mean, President Obama, in concert with the Democratic Party, got us out of the deepest recession in the post-War era more quickly than anyone believed possible, and they did so with absolutely zero help from the Republican Party. For all of the professional left talk about Democrats being “anti-worker,” they managed to rescue unionized auto workers from losing their jobs at a time when the economy was still tanking.