Mr. Quarter says "Excuses are like @$$holes - everybodies got one"

The liberal elitists that comprise the fly-over media understand that something is going badly wrong. But they are reluctant to attribute it to the failure of liberalism or admit that Obama and this Congress have made things much worse. Ultimately they will probably throw Obama under the bus, but for now they are searching for any other excuse they can think of - the "throw enough spaghetti at the wall and sooner or later something sticks" method of intellectual analysis. Peter Wehner of Commentary Magazine.com provides a nicely comprehensive list of the published excuses to date

E.J. Dionne, Jr.: Obama “has chosen not to engage the nation in an extended dialogue about what holds all his achievements together.”

Joe Klein : “If Obama is not reelected, it will be because he comes across as disdaining what he does for a living.”

John Judis: The Obama administration has an “aversion to populism.”

Mr. Quarter loves this one...

Maureen Dowd: “Obama is the head of the dysfunctional family of America — a rational man running a most irrational nation, a high-minded man in a low-minded age. The country is having some weird mass nervous breakdown.”

and this claptrap...

Jonathan Alter: The American people “aren’t rationally aligning belief and action; they’re tempted to lose their spleens in the polling place without fully grasping the consequences.”

Jacob Weisberg: “the biggest culprit in our current predicament” is the “childishness, ignorance, and growing incoherence of the public at large.”

Is Mr. Quarter incoherent? Then there are those that place the blame on the in adequacy of the American system of government to accommodate the liberal ideals.

George Packer: “the world’s greatest deliberative body is incapable of addressing” the problems in the country today.

Paul Krugman: the Senate is “ominously dysfunctional” ands “no longer consistent with a functioning government.”

Todd Purdum: “The evidence that Washington cannot function — that it’s ‘broken,’ as Vice President Joe Biden has said — is all around.” The modern presidency “has become a job of such gargantuan size, speed, and complexity as to be all but unrecognizable to most of the previous chief executives.”

Mr. Quarter also senses the presence of that vast right-wing conspiracy.

Ezra Klein: “powerful structural forces in American politics that seem to drag down first-term presidents”

Frank Rich: the problem lies with “the brothers David and Charles Koch,” the “sugar daddies” who are bankrolling the “white Tea Party America.”

Michael Cohen: “Perhaps the greatest hindrance to good governance today is the Republican Party, which has adopted an agenda of pure nihilism for naked political gain.”

Mr. Paul (diarrhea of the laptop) Krugman: “What we learned from the Clinton years is that a significant number of Americans just don’t consider government by liberals — even very moderate liberals — legitimate. Mr. Obama’s election would have enraged those people even if he were white. Of course, the fact that he isn’t, and has an alien-sounding name, adds to the rage.” “powerful forces are promoting and exploiting this rage” — including the “right-wing media.” If they come to gain power, “It will be an ugly scene, and it will be dangerous, too.”

Mr. Quarter thanks the efforts of Mr. Wehner to assemble this group of quotes.