So we find ourselves in a political doldrum. The daily deluge of news and hysterics from the campaign season turned off on November 5, sending the media into a frenzy of reporting on nothing more than embarrassing speculation and innuendo. Must. Hang. Onto. Ratings. and. Clicks. Watching MSNBCCNNFOX these days is like watching Showbiz Tonight. Will Hillary take the SoS job? What about Joe the Evil?

Of course, their audiences and visitors play right into this. But I don't recall Obama or his approved spokespeople saying a single word about Clinton (beyond Obama's gracious remarks on 60 Minutes) or Lieberman (beyond that they don't want to referee Senate squabbles). And yet a whole cottage industry of concern trolling on both points has emerged. As has the complete overstatement of the "Team of Rivals" business. On 60 Minutes, Obama mentioned reading a lot of Lincoln because he thought "he was very wise." Not sure how we leapt from that innocuous statement to Lincoln's cabinet being a template for Obama.

It's also getting tiresome hearing that the "progressive left" (now reduced to commenters on Daily Kos and FireDogLake) own the keys to the kingdom. Talk about ego! How about instead of the characteristic worrying, we find some new websites to visit and TV shows to watch and let the Obama administration take shape as it will. Or at least shut up for five minutes.

Change was always about issues, not about people.

Now if only the rest of the netroots would follow. Between Leiberman and Clinton, it's like reliving FISA all over again. I have no patience for petulance and the exaggerated position blog commenters take in their own superiority complexes. As a longtime Obama supporter, there was no one more opposed to Clinton in the primaries than me. But I'm over it. They were fighting for position on the same side. This ridiculous notion that Clinton is a "rival" is absurd. For crying out loud, even David Axelrod once worked for Clinton. Obama and Clinton are on the same team. Always have been. The primaries found them, logically, jockeying for the winning position. But the primaries are over. Together they're quite a team.

And, finally, this idea that "change" is equal to cabinet choices - absurd! Change was always about the issues, not about the people. In the post-election season Obama has already doubled-down on closing Guantanomo, stopping torture, pursuing green initiatives, restoring habeus, and pushing forward with healthcare. Folks, meet change.

And you're probably right. I expect this kind of crap from Republicans (who, in their "ownership society" refuse to own their failures). Good thing voters are onto them.

But Frank's comments are mystifying. Maybe he's passing the buck from the House onto Obama to save his own hide? And I've never been impressed with Pelosi - another mistress of Word Salad who never seems able to say anything definitive. Obama needs to stop calling in congratulations to Republicans who hang up on him and get on the horn with Frank. It's unclear what he expects Obama to do since he has no actual power at all at the moment. He's not even a senator anymore. Wouldn't it make more sense, Congressman Frank, to call out the actual president at the moment - instead of giving him a free pass (as you've done for years)?

Someone going by the ID "The Watcher" has posted 59 letters to this post alone. Isn't there medication for that?

I think Obama was born in Vince Foster's bedroom, atop a mountain of dcoumentation proving we never sent a man to the moon. He also killed Kennedy and coordinated the 9/11 attacks. He likes to keep busy!

You're broadening the borders of Wingnut City Limits whenever you indulge these fantasists. Enough! Let's get back to the real issues, please.

It's always better to be on the right side of history than the wrong side, and from that perspective the need for this confessional makes sense (although the overall tone is a bit heavy in the hectoring, judgment and superiority departments. e.g. even when I'm wrong I'm sort of, well, right, you crazy Obama zealots).

As one of the early Obama zealots myself, I do take issue with a Walsh stratagem, on display here: the idea that the yawping of individual bloggers or blogging communities serve as a representative sample of the larger body politic and conclusive evidence of anything at all. Luckily the Obama story is bigger than bloggers and the MSM. Obama has higher approval ratings going into office of any president-elect in modern history. Those poll numbers just don't square with your notion of fading support among most Obama supporters - Chris Bowers and Tom Hayden notwithstanding - and in fact suggest exactly the opposite.

PS - Given that the year is about to end, indulge me a final: GOBAMA!

These self-serving Obama-is-not-who-I-thought-he-was stories are getting tedious. Someone really needs to start counting them up and building a database (think terabytes not gigabytes when looking for servers). And don't get me started on the readers' comments, with their repeated Great Sighs of Disappointment from people who never supported Obama in the first place - especially those folks who are able to divine what Obama really means, in spite of what he actually says. Isn't that a characteristic of a narcissist? Burp.

So the pattern is set. The model is in place. The Village and its online spawn pile on no matter what. The good news is that, as in the campaign, voters were smart enough to tune them out. Obama's approval ratings are at about 80%. I like me an electorate that thinks for itself!