I gotta say that the Left needs to be independent of Obama. Obama is not going to be in the White House forever. After all he maybe a one-term president. So the Left has think and go beyond Obama. Besides we don't want to suffer the same fate the Right now suffers. They never stood up to Bush thereby linking themselves to an unpopular president. Now you hear them say that Bush was not a conservative but it rings false because they stayed mum when all the deficit spending was going on. Another reason we have to separate ourselves from Obama is that we cannot lay all our eggs in one basket. From reading comments in the blogosphere I get the feeling that we sometimes are too passive in bringing about change. Look at the card check legislation. If Obama and the congressional Dems as well as the unions and other progressive were pro-active in responding to the lies disseminated by opponents of the bill then may be it wouldn't have died. Even if leaders are failing to take the initiative, we sometimes have to do it ourselves. Sad but true.
The same applies to the cramdown legislation, we knew from the get go that there was opposition by the Blue Dogs but not to the extent that people were asked to call their congresspersons to vote in favor of the bill. Or for that matter colllecting signatures in support of the bill. Yes the Obama administration didn't put any effort in making the bill become law but imagine if we had organize and force the administration to push the Blue Dogs to do the right thing. We need to get out there and talk to people about the issues and persuade to call and write to their congresspersons. We cannot wait for Obama to always do the right thing.
I do believe that making the Left independent of Obama is easier said than done because we really don't have anyone who is charismatic enough to compete against Obama. At least during the time of FDR, you had Huey Long and the United Mine Workers labor leader, John Lewis, acting as counterweights to FDR. At the moment I can't think of anyone. But one thing I do know is that we need a counterweight to Obama.