'We have met the enemy and he is us'

Jonathan Chait has written a keeper. It is a timely antidote the incessant meme that liberals -- and by implication, Democrats -- are profoundly disappointed with President Obama. By "liberals," he means the Twittering Starbucks revolutionaries (and their equivalents in the past) who populate the ranks of both activists and pundits. (Contrary to the myth propagated by the media, recent polls show that rank and file Democrats have Obama's back.)

Though Chait goes deep and takes six pages in New York magazine to explain the political dyslexia of the left, his bottom line is clear:

"Liberals are dissatisfied with Obama because liberals, on the whole, are incapable of feeling satisfied with a Democratic president. They can be happy with the idea of a Democratic president—indeed, dancing-in-the-streets delirious—but not with the real thing. The various theories of disconsolate liberals all suffer from a failure to compare Obama with any plausible baseline. Instead they compare Obama with an imaginary president—either an imaginary Obama or a fantasy version of a past president."

As Pogo (the cartoon character) succinctly put it: "We have met the enemy and he is us."