'The Obnoxious Middle-Aged Turk' didn't have as much of a kick to it.

More like common tater.

He's like some horrible genetic mix between John Stewart and The Tick, without the charm of either.

I was thinking the love child of Eugene Levy and Charles Krauthammer, but really, there's many many ways to produce an abomination of this kind.

Ed Schulz and Chris Chan.

Probably the main reason I can't stand him is because he has potential that he squanders on being an idiot. He carries himself like a straight shooter cutting through the bullshit, like in this video where he talks about reading tea leaves and being able to draw hidden meanings out of phrases like a Talmudic scholar divining the will of the almighty. But scratch the surface and he has no deeper understanding than the average commentator on Huffington Post. For example, Cenk spent the first two years of Obama's term apparently oblivious to the unprecedented level of obstruction generated by the Republicans, and basically blamed Obama for not being able to get things done. I suspect Cenk could do better if he applied himself.

Then there's the matter of his influence on a certain stripe of the Left. Back to Obama's first two years; Cenk did what he could to convince his audience to turn against the Democrats for what they couldn't accomplish. Which led to the 2010 elections, and we all know how poorly that turned out for the country.

There are no end of criticisms an informed, thoughtful commentator could make about Obama and the Democrats. Unfortunately, we get Cenk.

I guess I agree more with Cenk than you do with regards to the Obama administration. The Democrats had a chance to enact the real change that was promised during the 2008 campaign, and they let their own incompetence, corruption, or lack of conviction flush that opportunity.

The way I see it, the 2010 election was a reaction to the failure of the Democrats to do anything of substance with their majorities. The 2008 election was a high, and (maybe overly optimistically) a lot of people on the left expected this administration to come out of the corner swinging. Instead we got a continuation of the most offensive Bush policies, no real reforms, a bunch of weak excuses, and a constant, inexplicable infatuation with "bipartisanship" that looks an awful lot like capitulation. To top it off you have example after example of people in the administration straight-up mocking and insulting the left for their disappointment. Nobody should have been surprised when Democrats didn't turn out in 2010.

Can you tell me how long Obama had a filibuster-proof majority, and what that majority consisted of by party? Because you claim that the Democrats had a chance to enact real change, but if you are unwilling to even factor in Republican obstruction, you are missing about 90% of what actually happened. That's not a good basis for analyzing what's wrong in Washington, or whether to withhold your vote and "send a message to Obama" or whatever.

Man. Even ignoring the idiocy of their anchors, Young Turks is liberalism candy dressed up as news. The Daily Show presents a more objective perspective.

I'm not trying to downplay the Republican's behavior at all, but it's silly to pretend that they were/are the only thing preventing Obama and the Democrats from enacting real change. The Republicans didn't force Obama to sign the Patriot Act. They didn't make him ramp up the abhorrent drone program. They didn't make him go absolutely apeshit on medical marijuana after explicitly promising not to during the 2008 campaign. They didn't make him prosecute government whistleblowers and journalists more aggressively than even Bush did.

If you want to know what is wrong with the modern Democratic Party a fantastic example is how Reid just folded on filibuster reform. To some extent the Democrats WANT this obstruction because it gives them their best excuse for doing the bidding of their corporate masters; they can just throw up their hands and say "We wanted to reform everything, but the GOP keeps blocking us!". We have to stop letting them get away with this.

Seriously; if the roles were reversed, and a Democratic minority was arbitrarily blocking everything, how long would it take the Republican majority to make that impossible? Certainly not five + years. Probably not even 5 months. We need to expect the Democrats to play hardball or they are going to keep getting their asses handed to them.

Well yes you ARE trying to downplay the Republicans' behavior. You're the one who said that the Democrats had a chance to enact real change, but when said change requires the support of every single Democrat plus Sanders plus Lieberman -- and even then, it must be within a six-month window between 2009 and 2010 -- then no, they didn't have much of an opportunity for change at all.

Here's why this matters. Around 59% of disgruntled "Progressives" sat out the 2010 election because they were mad at the Democrats, and not at the Republicans who were the real problem. Which resulted in massive Teabagger victories, plus the gerrymandering that has allowed the Republicans to retain the House this time around.

Which is to say, about 59% of "Progressives" were so mad that the guys in office weren't doing what they wanted, they put in people who promised to do the exact opposite of what they wanted. How smart is that, on a scale of 0 to 0.00001 (where "0" is Cenk Uygur and "0.00001" is a tapeworm)?

You know how Rahm said that some liberals were "fucking retards"? He was right about 59% of them. Mind you, he was speaking specifically about a group of liberals fucking retarded enough to run attack ads against Democrats who didn't agree with them on health care issues, but the old adage remains true: fucking retarded is as fucking retarded does.