So much for bipartisan governing

Derrick Z Jackson has an excellent column today:

It was less than a year ago that angry Americans, concerned about the ditch the Republicans and the Bush administration drove this nation into over the prior eight years, voted in Obama and an increased Democratic majority in Congress. Only a half year into Obama’s presidency, the only strategy the Republicans have is to stoke so much anger in Americans that they forget what they want.

A May CNN poll found that 57 percent of Americans thought policies of Democratic leaders in Congress would move the country in the right direction. The same poll found that only 39 percent of Americans thought Republican leaders in Congress would move the country in the right direction. Republican Party ranting, raving, and road blocking may have pulled Obama’s favorability ratings ratings from 78 percent at his Inauguration to 64 percent in a CNN poll this week. But its obstinance has not lifted its own. While the favorability rating of Democrats in Congress was at 47 percent in a New York Times/CBS poll last week, the Republicans had a favorability rating of 28 percent, virtually the same as the 29 percent rating in a June poll by the Pew Research Center.

If the Republicans continue to get in the way of what Americans want - and it sure looks like they are from the conservative groups disrupting the Democrats’ constituent healthcare town halls around the country - then Obama has to seriously consider that bipartisanship is a lost cause. In 2008, the nation said Nay to the party of Nay. It is rapidly coming time for Obama to do the same.