My Depth of Despair and My Heights of Anger -- I am emotionally spent. After the health care debacle and the Coakley election, all the hard work so many of us put in week after week, day after day, hour after hour, creating emails, letters, articles to papers, telephone calls, conversations and anything else one could do only to see our causes fail. I am SO dismayed and so sad about our president's lack of effective leadership and how to USE the power of the presidency and shape Congress I am thinking about stepping on my own toes and backing away from the political fray. The president INEFFECTIVELY in an attempt to return the balance of power to a Congress which does not know what to do with it handed power over to them with little direction. Congress has conflicting interests beholden to big pharma, big insurance or their own states, gets little done on the big issues of our time: bank regulation, jobs, and health care. Both parties, as Bill Moyers said, are equal opportunity employers of big corporate lobbyists and money. The lobbyists are gracious and will give to any party. It is beyond insane that in the middle of a near Depression and when health care and jobs for Main Street are in the mix to help get us out of this quagmire, to decide one is going to return power to an entity, Congress, that is spinning around blindfolded not knowing what to do next even begging for White House leadership.

This is NOT Harvard Law Review and it's not 1789 with a country of only thirteen colonies. It is 2010 with country population of over 300,000,000 on the heals of a near Depression with lives and generations hanging in the balance. If health care and a solid jobs bill die, my heart is dead for this president. I will not invest the time, money and emotional effort to support him. I have to see a change in him returning to what I thought he was in the first place especially on the big ticket items. I feel like a jilted lover. I am upset, furious, demoralized and just plain sad how a Democratic Party could squander the total control it had of Congress AND the presidency with a mandate from the people for change. This WAS my dream come true. The dream is turning into a nightmare because, I believe, the president has NOT led effectively. He speaks loftily with or without a teleprompter but he does NOT lead. He apparently does not know how or is relying on poor advice from his minions which turn its back on the desperate needs of the people. Maybe, too, big pharma and big insurance are simply even bigger than he.

Whatever the reason, he is the leader of our party. Yes, he has done some things that are laudable BUT on the big things he has fallen woefully short. How the Democratic Party did not see the handwriting on the wall with the Coakley election until it was MUCH too late, I will never know. The National Democratic Party and the president as its leader FAILED to keep Ted Kennedy's seat. I STILL cannot believe it. Teddy Kennedy would not believe it either that a party and a president could fail SO dismally when power was at their feet -- and still is -- waiting for them to grab it. It is a damnable thing to those of us who care about human rights and humanitarian principles. I thought Barack Obama was on our side. Often, I do not, so far, see that he is.