The Obama response to the prospect of gridlock was not to meet the other side half-way and at least try to accomplish something in the remaining two years of office, or even to think (as Clinton almost certainly did), “How can I make some concession that will pay off for me?” No, in the spirit of the Left-wing True Believer, Obama stuck with paranoid demonology: his opponents were determined to undermine him out of sheer personal animosity, or else they were just wicked. It was unthinkable that there could be any alternative moral code that they might uphold with as much sincerity as he held his. Their supposed belief in individual responsibility, or self-reliance, or economic liberty must be nothing more than a cover for greed, or callousness toward the poor. Ah yes, the poor. This is what it all comes down to, this revival of the Left-wing Old Faith: not only one’s remedy for poverty, but even the definition of the word. Oddly enough, poverty has become a more difficult issue for the Left than for the Right.