Winning

The election is over but the pundit class is acting like Obama didn't really win, or maybe lost since the Inauguration. But maybe they'll rejigger their bullshit conventional wisdom over the weekend now that he's held his Party together (never an easy task with Democrats) and passed the historically huge stimulus package, a combo of job creation and tax cuts all centered around improving infrastructure and helping the middle class. And for his, Obama remains incredibly popular -- outside of the moribund D.C. beltway.

Per Frank Rich in a great article about this disconnect between the true elites and the rest of us:

Am I crazy, or wasn’t the Obama presidency pronounced dead just days ago? Obama had “all but lost control of the agenda in Washington,” declared Newsweek on Feb. 4 as it wondered whether he might even get a stimulus package through Congress...

...Just as in the presidential campaign, Obama has once again outwitted the punditocracy and the opposition. The same crowd that said he was a wimpy hope-monger who could never beat Hillary or get white votes was played for fools again...

...Republicans will also be judged by the voters. If they want to obstruct and filibuster while the economy is in free fall, the president should call their bluff and let them go at it. In the first four years after F.D.R. took over from Hoover, the already decimated ranks of Republicans in Congress fell from 36 to 16 in the Senate and from 117 to 88 in the House. The G.O.P. is so insistent that the New Deal was a mirage it may well have convinced itself that its own sorry record back then didn’t happen either.

Great point, Frank. Maybe, after showing that he tried more than gamely to work in bipartisan fashion only to be rebuffed, Obama is already taking your advice:

U.S. President Barack Obama plans to travel and campaign more to pressure Republicans in Congress

rather than trying to win their loyalty, sources say...

...Obama plans to use the tactic in upcoming pushes to pass New Deal-style plans to rescue struggling homeowners and rewrite regulations on the financial markets, plus a budget proposal that lays the groundwork for sweeping healthcare reform, Politico said.

As for the guy who left office not three weeks ago, how is he faring with his post-Presidential plans:

Friends tell us that it has slowed the drive to raise some $500 million to build and endow the George W. Bush Presidential Center at Dallas's Southern Methodist University. "It's a bad environment," says one. Bush is taking no chances: He's making donor calls himself, and even his dad, the 41st president, is helping out, as are former aides like Karl Rove. In the future, say associates, look for Bush to host fundraising events in order to meet a goal of completing construction in 2013. But for now, "he's laying low," says one.

Can't raise the money for the George W. Bush Presidential Library? Wow, $500,000,000 for just three volumes...

...And they aren't even colored in yet.