When McClatchy Newspapers recently canvassed a random selection of small-business owners to find out what was hurting them, not a single one complained about regulation of his or her industry, and few complained much about taxes. And did I mention that profits after taxes, as a share of national income, are at record levels?

So short-run deficits aren’t a problem; lack of demand is, and spending cuts are making things much worse. Maybe it’s time to change course?

Paul Krugman takes a look at political reality and asks what Obama might hope to achieve in his Thursday speech to the joint session of Congress.

What should we be doing to create jobs? What will Republicans in Congress agree to? And given that political reality, what should the president propose?

The answer to the first question is that we should have a lot of job-creating spending on the part of the federal government, largely in the form of much-needed spending to repair and upgrade the nation’s infrastructure. Oh, and we need more aid to state and local governments, so that they can stop laying off schoolteachers.

But what will Republicans agree to? That’s easy: nothing. They will oppose anything Mr. Obama proposes, even if it would clearly help the economy — or maybe I should say, especially if it would help the economy, since high unemployment helps them politically.

This reality makes the third question — what the president should propose — hard to answer, since nothing he proposes will actually happen anytime soon. So I’m personally prepared to cut Mr. Obama a lot of slack on the specifics of his proposal, as long as it’s big and bold. For what he mostly needs to do now is to change the conversation — to get Washington talking again about jobs and how the government can help create them.

For the sake of the nation, and especially for millions of unemployed Americans who see little prospect of finding another job, I hope he pulls it off.

The “conversation” that needs changing takes place, for the most part, in the media. What Obama needs to do, and what Krugman doesn’t mention, is to place the responsibility — the actual blame for putting America on the edge of a “double-dip” on Republicans — firmly and clearly.

He won’t name names (or any specifics of deliberate Republican obstruction), but he should. It’s about the only to “change the conversation.”

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The loss of support for Obama on the left is serious and has good cause. It is stated clearly by “Joe Mason,” the only Democratic candidate allegedly running against the president in 2012. Obama and his aides have been responsible for insulting his supporters fairly frequently and sometimes specifically. The terrible courtesy with which he’s treated his opposition is in great contrast the open nastiness shown to those who voted for him.

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Heads up: Jonathan Chait wrote both a criticism and defense of President Obama for the New York Times yesterday which is well worth the read, particularly for liberals.

For a start, this home truth:

The most common hallmark of the left’s magical thinking is a failure to recognize that Congress is a separate, coequal branch of government consisting of members whose goals may differ from the president’s. Congressional Republicans pursued a strategy of denying Obama support for any major element of his agenda, on the correct assumption that this would make it less popular and help the party win the 2010 elections.

If Democrats weren’t as effective in opposition to Bush during their hold on Congress, that’s their lookout. (9/11 was, of course, amazingly handy for Bush…!)

Liberal critics of Obama, just like conservative critics of Republican presidents, generally want both maximal partisan conflict and maximal legislative achievement. In the real world, those two things are often at odds. Hence the allure of magical thinking…

And a reminder of what Bush faced when he wanted action on one of the conservatives’ dearest causes.

Bush did have one episode where he tried to force through a major domestic reform against a Senate filibuster: his crusade to privatize Social Security. Just as liberals urge Obama to do today, Bush barnstormed the country, pounding his message and pressuring Democrats, whom he cast as obstructionists. The result? Nada, beyond the collapse of Bush’s popularity.

A frustrating reminder to the frustrated: There never are any real answers. Just more questions.

Cross posted from the blog Prairie Weather.