Last Friday’s latest Obama cave on the date of his “big speech on jobs” reminded me, once more, how our President will compromise on everything!! The weird thing is, it appeared to me that he wanted to have that stupid fight with “Boner”, since clearly all of the jockeying on the date for his speech should have been done by various assistants behind the scenes.  If he did want to have a public fight, to what end?  So he can look like he is caving once more, to make us progressives think even less of him than we already do? How many “independents” will give up the first NFL game of the season to listen to yet another cave-in speech? . . . It’s a mystery to me. . . .

At any rate, it got me thinking that we will be waiting for Obama just like “Waiting for Godot.”  I fear the outcome will be the same — he will go for the “little things” like extending the FICA tax holiday (which won’t create any jobs since you have to be employed to get the FICA tax cut in the first place! but I suppose it might stimulate a little demand) and talking (for the umpteenth time) about an “infrastructure bank” (whatever that is).   I’m pretty sure he won’t suggest taxing the rich by ending the Bush tax cuts to pay for spending billions to rebuild badly needed roads, bridges and communications infrastructure, since he caved on all of that during the first, so-called “stimulus” of 3 years ago.  So it will be the same old, same old, and he may as well have not shown for the speech at all, since his pitiful attempt to “get something done” by the do-nothing Republican House of Representatives will be doomed to failure, as we all (except, apparently, Obama)  know that no matter what he proposes, the R’s will oppose it.  So, IMHO, he may as well go for the “big thing” and propose a huge, Keynesian infrastructure stimulus (i.e. the second WPA) that really would both produce new, well-paying , jobs and fix our lousy, aged, infrastructure which sorely needs fixing!!  He has nothing to lose, and the R’s won’t vote for it anyway, but at least it would look like he really is on the side of the working people and the middle class. . . .

But no, he won’t do that, because he really is a Republican in not so Democratic clothes (the Emperor’s New Clothes??). . . .  If he does “go big”, I will be extremely surprised, and it might even help me not vote for a third party candidate. . . but I don’t think it’s very likely that I would have  to worry about that . . . Just saying . . .