obama's horrible political instincts

ezra klein's analysis is that the president started whoring himself to the class war only because the republicans refused to let him govern as one of their own (probably because he's black black blackie black black and they just can't handle that), so now he has to settle for populist rhetoric instead of his conservative political values in order to get reelected.  that's sad, because he would have rather been that great compromiser right-wing corporatist tool, but the republicans were too stupid to let him give them everything they wanted.