From the Wall St Journal, well known for its ability to know what the Left thinks & wants ;)
President Barack Obama has disappointed liberals in his party on a range of issues, from union organizing to indefinite detention of terrorism suspects to gays in the military.
But relations between the president and his liberal base appear to have strengthened in recent weeks. The reason: As attacks on Mr. Obama grow stronger from the right, his left flank has circled the wagons round the White House.
Now, as the president nears critical decisions on health care, the war in Afghanistan and the fate of the Guantanamo detention camp, both the White House and its supporters on the left are wondering whether the alliance can hold. Robert Borosage, co-director of the liberal Campaign for America's Future, said "people are holding their breath."
"There are a number of things that are key policy initiatives for allies of the president, and he faces this incredibly crowded agenda, with everything being pushed back by health care," Mr. Borosage said. "You could just imagine the crackup that's coming."
The demands of the left on Mr. Obama are myriad: Go to the Copenhagen climate-change summit in December, do more to stop the killing in Darfur, end "don't ask, don't tell" as a policy for gays in the military, repeal the federal law banning same-sex marriage, move legislation that gives illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, end indefinite detention of terrorism suspects and repeal the Patriot Act, to name a few.
House Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter of New York, a member of the Democratic leadership, complained recently that the White House should have intervened to cut off bipartisan Senate Finance Committee negotiations over the health-care bill weeks ago. She said Mr. Obama still has not pushed forcefully for the element most sought by liberals, a government-run insurance plan. That "public option" was shot down by the finance panel Tuesday ...
Brush fires have erupted between the White House and the left several times in the past eight months. Some liberals still seethe over an agreement between the White House and pharmaceutical makers not to extract additional cost savings from the industry in the health-care bill. The American Civil Liberties Union continues to take Mr. Obama to task over indefinite detention and the use of Bush-era secrecy defenses to keep past events in the war on terror out of public view. Activists have been particularly angered by what they have seen as insufficient support for liberals in the administration who have come under attack from conservative activists and media personalities.
But those flash points have failed to create much sustained heat, liberal activists say, largely because conservatives have made supporting the president all the more urgent. Misgivings in the liberal blogs over Mr. Obama have given way to anger over attacks on the president: a poll on Facebook asking whether the president should be assassinated, a column on a conservative Web site suggesting a military coup is in the works and Rep. Trent Franks (R., Ariz.) calling Mr. Obama "an enemy of humanity."
"When the right is screaming that Obama is a left-wing communist trying to take over the world, it makes the difference between us seem very small," said Eddie Vale, a spokesman for the AFL-CIO.
That said, Jane Hamsher, publisher of the liberal blog Firedoglake, noted that comity between the White House and its base may depend on the outcome of the public-option debate.
"All these things are snowballing," she said. "The public option has more weight than one would think. If they don't deliver the public option, then all these other things will come to the fore."
David Corn, Washington bureau chief of the liberal magazine Mother Jones, foresees the president walking away from the health-care issue with a muddy win and a strong argument that he has fundamentally improved the health-care system, even if he has to abandon the public option. The breach will come if he sides with Gen. Stanley McChrystal and sends tens of thousands more troops to Afghanistan.
"Afghanistan is where it could come undone" between Mr. Obama and the liberal wing of his party, Mr. Corn said.
Recent Comments