Fallout boy.

With the economy still faltering and jobs still being lost, Mr. Obama’s credibility is sinking and his job approval rating is declining along with the popularity of his initiatives. Republicans, who had insisted the stimulus was wasteful and wouldn’t work, are being vindicated.

The political fallout that mattered most, however, has been among Democrats in the House who will face tough re-election fights next year. They’re in a state of near-panic over the lingering recession. Their confidence in Mr. Obama is fading, and they no longer believe in quickly passing the president’s agenda. Cap and trade has been put off until the fall and health-care reform is starting to stall.

For Mr. Obama, this is all a potentially disastrous turn of events. On Capitol Hill, delay favors the opposition and tends to lead to defeat. The longer a bill sits around, the more its contents are dissected and the less likely it is to pass. Mr. Obama realizes this fact, which is why he is pressing for a quick vote on his health-care reform.

His plan has been to exploit the economic downturn to enact his entire agenda, not just the stimulus. The president’s position, which he repeated again this week, is that his health, energy and education reforms are necessary to create a sustainable economic recovery. It’s a clever political argument, but it makes little economic sense and few people buy it.

That’s not all. The stimulus is such a large increase in spending that it turned the deficit into a political issue. There is a growing national wariness to adding billions (or trillions) to the budget, even for a relatively popular cause like health care.

Had Mr. Obama and Democrats proceeded differently, they’d have better odds now for enacting their agenda. They are victims of their own tactics.

via The Obama Agenda Bogs Down – WSJ.com.

I disagree with that last sentiment, actually. Had he and the Democrats proceeded differently, they’d have succeeded in enacting “some” form of their agenda, but surely not the agenda that’s currently sitting like a steaming nugget on the floor of the American barn. It’s the nature of a radical agenda to be unpopular (thus the term “radical” or “outside the mainstream”), and that’s exactly what their agenda is—radical. The best chance they had of getting it through was to create a diversion and then force feed it down our throats before we had the presence of mind to snap our jaws shut. The economy presented the perfect distraction and the Democrats commenced with the force feeding. They got as far as they could before we caught on and gagged.