Read these stories from today’s New York Times back to back. The first tells how the disgraced and incompetent but very, very rich gamblers from Wall Street rolled the President of the United States. The second tells how the Prime Minister of Russia rolled Russia’s richest man.

Okay, okay, I know. The parallels are not exact. Russia is not the United States. Putin is not Obama. Fine. But here’s something to think about. Unlike the unpaid factory workers in Pikalevo, our unpaid factory workers are, by and large, taking their beating from Wall Street and shutting up about it. Only when they start kicking and hollering as loud as their Russian counterparts will Obama have the political muscle to cram down his various cram-downs.

Tangentially on this point, here’s Heather K. Gerken at Balkinization:

Some naively think that the Obama administration can pass anything it wants because the Obama campaign had so many energized supporters and such an impressive grassroots network.

That’s a mistake. Electioneering is different from governing. Note, for instance, how hard it’s been to convert Obama for America into an equally muscular Organizing for America. Elections are the rare moments when voters pay attention; the drama of the race focuses people’s attention on the issues, and candidates provide human stand-ins for abstract policy proposals. Politics, in short, is what happens when policy gets personal.

When candidates turn to the workaday project of governing, voters tend to fall away. They stop organizing, they stop volunteering … they even stop paying attention. That is precisely why passing policies comparable in scope to the New Deal is exceedingly hard to do…

Voters use party ID as a rough proxy for holding election officials accountable. The problem is that voting based on party ID isn’t usually enough to put the fear of God into politicians; it’s too rough a proxy for holding politicians accountable on specific issues. Americans want health care reform, yet they routinely vote for politicians who don’t provide it. As long as people vote based on general conditions, not specific legislative failures, the status quo remains a pretty safe option for politicians.