Shoulda, woulda...

Some things I should have been blogging about but haven't gotten around to...

• Any good liberal out there would surely identify with some of the Obama critiques laid out in Drew Westen's NYT piece. The problem is, as Chait noted, Westen's piece is a "parody of liberal fantasizing." John Sides, meanwhile, shows how Westen misunderstands the presidency, Eric Schickler shows how Westen misunderstands FDR, and Andrew Gelman offers a pretty compelling theory for why Obama didn't immediately toss the moneylenders out of the temple upon becoming president.
• A pretty innovative map of Confederates along the eastern seaboard, courtesy of Susan Schulten.
• If you compare economic growth during the Great Depression and the Great Recession, Obama's record is about as good as we could expect.
• Jonathan Bernstein and Josh Putnam catch some shockingly bad reporting on the Iowa Caucus and remind us that yeah, you really do have to compete there if you want to be president.
• Ryan Lizza has an interesting profile of Michele Bachmann.
• Damn I wish I could write like Ta-Nehisi Coates.
• Kenickie and Cha Cha DiGregorio died within a few months of each other. Scary. Meanwhile, I am opposed to the remake of "Dirty Dancing."
• There is nothing more gangster than a cephalopod.