How is Obama Doing?

Greg Sargent's Washington Post "Plum Line" column asks, detailing some CNN polling numbers for Obama and the GOP.

But I think all of this stuff will be long-forgotten after the conventions next summer. After that, the two sides will engage in massive media barrages of negative advertising.
Meanwhile, none of our real problems will be meaningfully addressed, because too many of our politicians have lost interest in doing their actual jobs, instead preferring to feather their nests and run for re-election in their gerrymandered districts, using their clout to buy campaign contributions.

What is America About?

Well according to Barack Obama, it is this:

“What’s happened to the bargain? What’s happened to the American deal that says, you know, we are focused on building a strong middle class?”

This is the reason people accuse Obama of not "getting" America.

There never was such a deal. America is (or at least used to be) about providing equal opportunity and treating all citizens equally under the law, i.e., the exact opposite of trying to "build" a "class". The American social strength is that we do not really care about class; we want everybody to be treated equally with respect to their legal rights. Those legal rights do not include, for example, the right to own a house, to achieve academic and economic parity with all other ethnic groups, or to have ones income rise every year while doing the same job.