December 10, 2010.

It will either go down as the day that the Obama officially became a lame duck, or the day that Obama hit the bottom, and had nowhere to go but up.

But either day, it's the worst.

With Bernie Sanders speaking on the Senate floor about the tax deal, and then the incident where he got pushed out of the briefing room by Bill Clinton, Obama has never seemed smaller or less relevant.

The tax deal is falling apart, and on this sinking ship Obama is going down with... the Republicans?

Obviously it took a series of mis-steps to get into it this badly. Negotiating with Mitch McConnell without gauging the temperature of Democrats was idiotic. Beyond that, Obama gave up all his bargaining chips before sitting down. For example, he might have saved the pay freeze, so that right now he could offer that to the GOP in exchange for, say, that ethanol nonsense that Democrats want. Or maybe the Build America Bond Program.

But instead he used that up before this began, without anything in exchange.

And there's your Presidency. No political capital, overshadowed by a former President and by the farthest left member of the Democratic caucus in the Senate.