Netroots Nation is, naturally, full of talk about how President Obama isn’t as thoroughgoing a progressive as various people might like. At times this takes the form of very reasonable tactical or policy critique, though at times it reads to me more like a fairly baroque conspiracy theory. Under the circumstances, Michele Bachmann would fit right in with her explanation that the entire health reform drive is a secret plot to undermine Canadian-style single payer health insurance:

“This hasn’t been talked about very much – the president’s plan for senior citizens is Obamacare,” Ms. Bachmann told party activists here. She added, “I think very likely what the president intends is that Medicare will go broke and ultimately that answer will be Obamacare for senior citizens.”

Of course there’s no literal way to make this cohere with Bachmann’s nominal ideological commitments or her recent vote to privatize Medicare. But politics is mostly about identity, and older white people have developed a very conservative ideological self-identity as the rest of the country moves past them in attitudes toward race and LGBT equality. Under the circumstances, adopting a health care politics that’s oriented around relentless pursuit of the financial interests of the oldest couple of cohorts of Americans makes sense.

Matt Cameron wrote a good post yesterday about the toll of high unemployment on the employed majority. When the economy’s at or near full employment, then quitting your job is a very credible threat. You, as a worker, have some real leverage over your employer that lets you bargain for better wages or working conditions or find them elsewhere. When unemployment’s at 9.1 percent, it’s a very different world. Unless you’re Dwight Howard, you need your job more than your boss needs you.

Something else to think about is the impact of this no-quit economy on broader economic performance. Some entrepreneurs are guys like Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg who start their company right out of school. But I believe the more typical scenario is for someone to be in the labor force for years, compiling savings and getting skills, and then deciding one to quit a meh job at a blah firm and try to strike out on his own. This is, obviously, always going to be a risky undertaking. In particular, a would-be entrepreneur tends to stand to lose a lot of his savings. But in a healthy economy, you can quit your job to start your own business with a reasonable amount of confidence that even if things go sideways you’ll be able to return to your old profession and go back to work. With unemployment at 9.1 percent, you really need to think twice about that assumption. The downside risks become enormous, so fewer people do it, so incumbent firms face less competitive pressure and we overall have less innovation.

Anna North on Barack Obama, scary dad:

Malia Obama turns thirteen next month, meaning our President will officially be the father of a teenager. He doesn’t seem too worried: of his girls, he says, “I have men with guns that surround them often.” And thus Obama joins the ranks of the Scary Dad.

According to AFP, Obama has said, “I’m not anticipating complete mayhem for the next four or five years, but I understand teenagehood is complicated.” In addition to the guys with guns, he says, “a great incentive for running for re-election is that it means they never get in the car with a boy who had a beer.” Also, if Malia does get a beau, “I might invite him over to the Oval Office, ask him for his GPA, find out what his intentions are in terms of career.” He added, “Malia, Sasha, if you’re watching this, I’m just joking.”

The Secret Service thing is the most striking, but I actually think it’s the car with a boy who had a beer bit that does the most to highlight the problems here. Obviously, all parents should be worried about their teenage children engaging in drunk driving. This would be an excellent reason for Barack Obama to step up his support for progressive transportation reform, aimed at shifting the United States away from near-exclusive reliance on auto-centric suburban development. Sprawling suburbs are often perceived as an ideal place for child rearing, but this is much less the case when the children in question are drunk and seventeen.

But instead of placing the very real drunk driving problem in the context of alcohol regulation and transportation policy, it’s located in a nebulous realm of sexual threat. Why is the drunk car driver a boy? Would it be better for Malia to get in a car driven by a drunk gal pal? To drive drunk herself? There’s something very odd about conflating the legitimately dangerous activity of operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated with the completely benign practice of having a high school boyfriend.