Obama = Bush

The current annoyance among the base (read: liberal wing) of the incumbent party (read: Democrats) is that Obama is not the revolutionary his adversaries have made him out to be.

At every point in the Democratic primary, it was clear that Barack Obama was to the right of both Hilary Clinton and John Edwards.  By his very demeanor, there is nothing revoutionary at all about Barack Obama, his politics or his process.  This is why the repeated attempts to characterize him or his policies as revolutionary or socialist continue to fail.    At this point, the president just doesn't fit that bill.

This is what makes the frustration on the left, particularly on around the subject of Guantanamo Bay and the detainees, an interesting marker of where we are in the wall of worry.  Whatever a person takes away from Barack Obama's policy on Guantanamo Bay or on detainees, to call it a carbon copy of George W. Bush's seems to me more about petulance than policy.  The simple fact that the burden of proof will no longer weigh on the shoulders of the one accused by way of hearsay is one difference with plenty of distinction, it seems to me.

The point being, we are at a stall in what was a spring betterment of mood.  The attempt to undermine Nancy Pelosi (doomed to fail) is a part of this stall, which I doubt will result in a meaningful setback in the sense that things might actually get better.

I'm not predicting a summer rally.  But I think the fact that we've heard more about the likelihood of retesting the March lows than we have rallying into the first post-Bush 9/11 anniversary seems significant to me.  Sentiment among the average investors remains very negative, and there is plenty of cash on the sidelines ...

I can't help but recall now - some two months into the market's rally - how the president, speaking the obvious in March that stocks were at historical lows and attractive from a longer term perspective, was ridiculed at the time (paging CBNC).  The point wasn't that Obama was some market timing genius.  The point was that too many of his critics were still so emotionally involved in the decline - and looking for an opportunity to transfer blame -  that they couldn't recognize a recitation of the obvious when it was broadcast to them in high-definition.