If President Obama were a liberal

He would have made this case forcefully and pointedly for his entire presidency.

Some people ... are wishing our economy harm for political reasons, and those are people whose attitudes will have terrible consequences for virtually every working family in this country in terms of higher interest rates, in terms of significant job loss, in terms of making a very unstable global economy even more unstable. ...

Those are the choices that our right-wing Republican friends are giving us. Default with horrendous economic consequences for working families in this country and for the entire global economy or massive cuts to programs that working families desperately need. ...

In my view a group of people in the House whose views represent a small minority of the American people are holding this Congress hostage. It is time for the American people to stand up and say, enough is enough; the function of the United States Congress is to represent all of our people and not just the wealthy and powerful.

If Barack Obama had made this case instead of trying to please everyone - something Republicans chose never ever to permit anyway and damn the consequences for America - the teabaggers and wingnuts would not have won in November and would not be holding everything good about American government hostage to their neo-Confederate agenda.

Obama would have said, as I'm saying, You wanna call me a socialist? Whoop-de-do. You would anyway, you goddamned aristocrats and robber barons.