why can't obama stand up for anything?

with the debt limit finally going to the vote, i can't think of any significant piece of legislation that has passed in the last three years that obama can call his own.

i've had this creeping feeling that he has drank so heavily from his cup of "reaching across the aisle", that he's willing to sell out his base just to get anything "done" -- especially with his health care bill that got watered down to 'obamacare', a shadow of its former self that completely erased any snifflings of a public option.

now with this debt limit deal does almost nothing for the people who need it, and much of it will be determined later in later congressional hearings.

while i am completely sure that this whole 'debt limit' talk has only been a big deal because a (black) democrat is running the country (it was raised 8 times under bush (2000-2008), and a whopping 14 times under reagan, all with pretty much zero press coverage), i just don't understand the long-term viability of obama's administration. it just seems every compromise he's made is just another step towards catastrophic failure come election time next year.

every compromise he's made will come back to bite him in the ass, from both the left and the right. the right will expose all the failures of said legislation (stimulus package, health care, the way the wars were handled), and the left will talk about how they really haven't benefited from anything he's done (and they are right to say so).

he seems to have not learned that 'compromise' in american politics generally lends itself to pissing off both sides of the political spectrum because both will say they did not get a big enough piece of the pie. thus, he is in extreme danger of alienating his base. even his most ardent supporters in the "liberal" media have questioned whether or not he even has a pair of balls to stand up for anything he said during his campaign.

it's pretty sad that a country like the united states, with its diverse culture of ideas, has absolutely zero viable progressive alternatives. unless he actually starts flexing some muscle, i get the feeling that obama's only supporters come 2012 will be because his party affliation does not say 'republican' beside his name, and that's a shitty reason to vote for anyone.