ACTUALLY, WE DO NEED A PROFESSOR OF LAW

Really, what good is it having a president who used to teach constitutional law if he can't, or won't, explain to the American people, carefully and clearly, why these results from a new Quinnipiac poll are absolutely crazy?

...67 percent of voters blame both Democrats and Republicans equally for the gridlock in Washington, with 17 percent blaming the GOP and 12 percent the Democrats. On another question, 46 percent say Democrats are not considering Republican views when pushing legislation while 37 percent say the GOP is misusing the filibuster to block legislation.

When only a quarter of the American public knows that it takes 60 votes to break a filibuster, and when nobody in the Democratic Party ever even says anything that appeals to most people's sense that majority rule is a fair way to decide disputes, and when GOP messaging is vastly superior, this is what you get from the public -- near-parity in assessing blame for gridlock and a sense that Democrats are less inclined to bipartisanship than Republicans.

The president talks about GOP obstructionism, but he doesn't explain how it works. Americans don't know. Americans have gotten an explanation from the GOP of how Democrats supposedly don't work well with their opponents -- "backroom deals" -- and that's the bullet-point phrase that may well have elected Scott Brown. It could elect a lot more Republicans, if the Prof-in-Chief doesn't provides a little Civics 101.