Is Brown Becoming Obama?

That's the argument that California author Peter Schrag makes in the Sacramento Bee. He sees parallels between President Obama's and Gov. Brown's handling of Republicans. From the piece:

"Still, there are eerie similarities between Brown '11 and Obama '09: the unreasoning faith in the conciliatory, collaborative approach; the expectation that the appeal to reason, compromise and bipartisanship would be reciprocated; the unabashed exercise of disproportionate power by a rigid political minority against a newly elected chief executive; the unembarrassed willingness to use supermajority requirements – by way of the filibuster in the U.S. Senate; the two-thirds constitutional tax-vote provision in California – to block the majority."

The result? Brown has given more than he's gotten, Schrag says.

"So far Brown and the Democrats have slashed billions in vital programs, many of them serving the neediest among us, and so far they've gotten nothing."

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