That New Yorker issue is pretty damn good, and a validation of Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign. In some ways it doesn't go as deep as possible into the failure of Obama's post-partisanship delusions. There's a brief mention of Max Baucus being an Obama democrat in terms of yearning for bipartisanship, but no mention of the large amount of time he wasted testing that theory out on his committee. He let Sen. Snowe, Grassley, and others run out the clock, and Reid and Obama did next to nothing to address this.
Even if Obama wins in November it's unlikely dems will retake the house, assuming Romney is the nominee. Which means we'll get more brinkmanship and no legislation. That's not Obama's fault, but the fact remains that his administration wasted precious time to get a series of things done. And while he's first two years were no doubt legislative victories/historic, they could have been even more so if Obama decided to govern as republican governors do: get as much shit done as possible and worry about the consequences later. The economy was going to accuse him of spending too much and being too liberal regardless in November 2010, so why not at least try to get democrats to push through the DREAM Act when you had super majorities, or pass some of the jobs bill ideas, or start a fight on the Bush tax cuts when there was a shot at getting rid of them, etc.
