Restiveness on the left
Liberals to Obama: no more Mr. Nice Guy
Restiveness on the left
Dick Polman, Inquirer National Political Columnist
This is a greatly expanded, revised, and updated version of my latest print column:There are noteworthy rumblings of discontent on Barack Obama’s left flank. Liberals in his own party can’t understand why the guy who racked up more votes than any presidential candidate in history, the guy who posted the biggest Democratic victory in 44 years, nevertheless seems so eager to placate the Republicans whom he so recently – and deservedly – banished to the political wilderness.
Liberals – or, as they prefer to be called these days, progressives – can’t understand why Obama keeps chasing the “post-partisan” dream despite the reality that Washington remains a pit of vipers, and that every time he reaches out to opposition members, they treat it as a sign of weakness and use the opportunity to stiff him.
Obama may not be interested in playing hardball, but Republicans certainly are. That’s what they do, and two successive electoral thrashings will hardly change their nature. And when their de facto leader speaks, they fall into line. For instance: Rush Limbaugh, on his Jan. 28 show, coined the term porkulus as a synomym for stimulus; within hours, Republicans and their followers were dutifully invoking porkulus.
In other words, while Obama in his early weeks has seemed so focused on wooing the people he defeated, on somehow winning their approval of the economic recovery package (fat chance), he might be well advised to pay more attention to the people in the Democratic base who got him nominated and elected. They’re already restive.
Rachel Maddow, the left-leaning MSNBC host, wondered the other night: “Is it really that important to bend over backwards to try to make the Republicans in Congress happy right now?” That’s the polite way of putting it. After Obama excised family-planning money from the stimulus bill, to mollify Republicans who were railing about “contraceptives,” feminist Katha Pollitt said it was “bewildering that he sacrificed low-income women’s rights and health in a vain bid to woo antideluvian right-wing misogynist Republican ideologues who will never, ever vote his way.”
And after the Senate forged a compromise deal last Friday night on the recovery package – by (among other things) slashing the money for job-creating school construction, slashing proposed federal aid to the beleaguered states, and putting greater stress on tax cuts that won’t sufficiently stimulate the economy – liberal commentator John Nichols faulted Obama for being too passive. Nichols wrote in The Nation magazine:
“These (compromises) are the fruits of bipartisan fantasies…President Obama, who should have been on television addressing the nation and doing everything in his power to rally support for a sufficient stimulus plan, will be lucky if he gets anything by the President's Day deadline he set.”
Paul Krugman weighed in this morning, condemning the compromises in The New York Times: "I blame President Obama's belief that he can transcend the partisan divide - a belief that warped his economic strategy...He let conservatives define the debate, waiting until late last week before finally saying what needed to be said - that increasing (government) spending was the whole point of the plan" to boost the economy.
I heard some of these concerns the other day, when I lunched with Mike Lux, a Washington strategist who, in a previous life, worked in the Clinton White House as liasion to the liberal community. He has a new book, The Progressive Revolution, which argues that America typically changes for the better only when progressive reformers are bold enough to defeat conservatives in partisan battle. He sees the same opportunity today.
“There is no such thing as ‘post-partisanship,’” he insists. “Conservatives are going to oppose progressive policies, period. If that’s the way they want to play it, that’s OK…Our problems right now are so big that Obama is going to have to go with more progressive, bolder, unconventional thinking. At the end of the day, he won’t have a choice.”
Lux and his brethren, of course, are pleased with many of Obama’s early moves – particularly his executive orders on Guantanomo, labor, civil liberties, and abortion rights; and his signing of new laws that expand children’s health insurance and make it easier for working women to sue for sex discrimination. There were also murmurings of approval late last week, when Obama finally hit back at the Republicans, in a series of venues, by pointing out that a record number of Americans “went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change,” and that the surviving Republican lawmakers are trying to peddle “the very same failed theories that helped lead us into this crisis.”
(Indeed, now that budget-busting George W. Bush is gone, GOP lawmakers have suddenly dusted off their old small-government rhetoric – even though their rhetoric doesn’t fit the current crisis. Yesterday, for instance, GOP Sen. John Ensign of Nevada insisted on NBC that the states don’t need federal help because their budgets are “bloated.” Classic denial. In the real world, the recession has precipitated deep budget deficits in 43 of the 50 states; 34 states have responded with deep cuts in education. Nineteen governors, including the Republican governors who run Florida and California, have signed a letter pleading for the federal aid that Ensign and his Senate GOP colleagues deem to be wasteful.)
While liberals are rooting for Obama to hammer the GOP over the stimulus package, they remain wary of Obama’s priorities on other fronts. The president has wobbled on his campaign pledge to speedily revoke the Bush upper-income tax cuts. His foreign policy team is comprised of people who voted for the Iraq war. He has decided to postpone lifting the ban on gays serving openly in the military until the military fully assesses the policy’s likely impact on discipline – thus prompting at least one prominent blogger, John Aravosis, to suspect that Obama might renege on his campaign vow and instead perform “a major and devastating flip-flop.”
Indeed, even before Obama took office, he named so many centrists and Republicans to the Cabinet that another noted liberal blogger, Chris Bowers, lamented: “Isn’t there ever a point when we can get an actual Democratic administration?”
The big liberal concern today is that Obama may again decide to indulge the GOP partisans who think it’s just fine for the federal government to spend upwards of $1 trillion on a war in Iraq that was predicated on nonexistent WMD evidence, but who consider it a scandal to spend the same amount to confront an economic crisis at home (and who have a vested interest in thwarting Obama’s priorities, because a successful recovery plan tailored to those priorities would doom them indefinitely to minority status).
It’s not unusual, of course, for Democratic presidents to get heat from their left. It happened to Clinton, as Mike Lux well remembers. It happened to Jimmy Carter. It happened to Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was frequently tagged by the left as overly timid. But liberals today are hungry after long years in exile, and their technological reach is certainly stronger than before.
Lux said: “With all the online capability, with the blogs, progressives can push much harder than they did during the Clinton years. They can push Obama with the speed of light. This president won’t have as much rope as Clinton did. It’s also because of the desperation of the times, because people are so scared (economically) about what might happen. He’s going to have to respond” to that pressure – on a broad range of issues, from universal health care to goodbye, Iraq.
And what’s the point of Obama sweet-talking the Republicans when they clearly prefer to fight? Consider Texas congressman Pete Sessions, who chairs the GOP 2010 election operation. Last Wednesday, he publicly shared his party’s credo for good governance in these perilous times: “Insurgency, we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban. And that is that they went about systematically understanding how to disrupt and change a person's entire processes.”
He said it, folks. The Taliban.
With Republicans likening themselves to the Taliban, it’s no wonder that liberals have little faith in Obama’s “post-partisan” ideal. Author/commentator Robert Kuttner argued the other day that the ideal is dead, and “good riddance...Obama’s real challenge is to mobilize public opinion – not just to win general approval ratings, but to make it very hard politically for anyone in either party to oppose his recovery program…That’s what leadership is all about.”
Indeed, Obama may soon decide, however reluctantly, that there’s no point in extending a hand to a foe who won’t unclench his fist.
These kind of articles really stoke the partisan divide. Were it not for a few Republican votes in the Senate the stimulus bill would not have passed. I am not quite sure what all the crying is about on this bill. It will pass and it looks like Obama will it by the 16th. To Obama's credit he understands ( Polman does not) that 59 million Americans did not vote for him. He ran on tax cuts not on trippling discretionary spending inside of 3 weeks. And Republicans are out of power over big spending and the fact that the econonomy was bad so the party in power had to pay the price at the ballot box. But this over-reaching on the part of Polman as if there is some liberal movement is delusional.
McCain calls the stimulus "generational theft". If that's not the pot calling the kettle black I don't know what is.— potus
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- I'm a Conservative and understand the GOP lost the election and doesn't have the votes in Congress to stop legislation if the Democrats push hard enough... there will always be a couple of Senate GOP politicians that will vote w/ the D's. The notion that any elected official 'has to' reach across the aisle or they're not being 'bipartisan' is childish. I fully supported Newt Gingrich and the GOP when they first won the majority in the House of Representatives. I don't think Newt was asking how the Democrats felt... nor should he have. However, like the GOP, when a party has the House, Senate and Executive Branches of our government, you need to "own" anything that happens during your term. Obama, Pelosi and Reid, et. al., will be given a 'grace period' by the public, but eventually have to stop blaming Republicans because everyone understands the GOP can't stop most bills. Good or bad, the economy will soon be the "Obama econonmy"... same thing with Afghanastan ("Obama's War"). Sadly, the 'good news' for Conservatives and the GOP is that Obama's stimulus plan will fail. Tax Revenues will seriously decline due to unemployment and the slowing economy and Obama will need to explain how "his" plan didn't work. Politically this is lining up quite nicely for the GOP... as an American, I'm sick to my stomach because I know this plan will not stimulate the economy and cause additional pain to millions in our country.— JGD84
- I'm glad Republicans finally found fiscal responsibility. Better late than never. I was a little perplexed at Obama last night remarking that Republicans outrage over spending is a little dis-ingenius considering how recklessly they spend for the last 8 years. Is he saying that spending was bad and I am going to continue the spending by adding a 1.1 trillion dollars to the national debt inside of one month? If it was bad to be deficit spending under Bush, why is it good for Obama?
- Can we please remember that B HUSSEIN Obama burst onto the national scene (4.5 years ago) by wowing the country with a speech that called for uniting over dividing?? •SNIP• Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America. The pundits, the pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue States: red states for Republicans, blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states. We coach little league in the blue states and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq, and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America. •SNIP• It has been his signature call, and, IMO, his modus operandi that appealed to so many Americans - the ability to find common ground and work together even if there are disagreements. Sure, Dems don't NEED Repubs to get this country back on track, but I think it would be better for both parties if we all grabbed the rope and pulled in ONE direction. ••• http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19751-2004Jul27.html— Phrossty
- swedesboromike - There you go again. To repeat, deficit spending is bad. Sooner or later someone (your & my descendants?) has to pay the piper. There are times when deficit spending is a necessary evil. This is one of them. Now focus! It's where and on what the money is being spent that makes ALL the difference. GWB spent the money on Iraq. BHO wants to spend the money on the US. Iraq has a surplus. The US has a deficit. Maybe we can all work together to turn that around! Whaddya say?— Phrossty
- all the gop defenders sound so pitiful trying defend the mess your party has made.Just be quiet and let the dems clean up your mess.lmao wahhhhhhh we lost,wahhhhhh!,lol— FedupDem
- Dear little Dick Polman, Obama is clearly a smarter man than you. he seems to have an understanding that he won the mushy middle of the country this time, but the mushy middle does not support the radical liberal agenda. It is the way the founding fathers in their genius created a system that forces the extremes to operate closer to the middle. And why are you citing Krugman who was a major advisor to and architect of ENRON.— dutchman
- s/mike--Based on the track record, republicans don't mind big government and deficit spending if the money is spent on the military. That's the difference between the parties. The Founding dads must be spinning in their graves, since they didn't like big government in any event. And, since they were classically educated, they believed that a military big-government state was the worst threat to the people's liberties, far worse than a "bread and circuses" handout-style government.— liberal
- Liberal, Please update "bread and circuses" to "full fridge and NASCAR." The Conse' Pubs understand and support that. Besides, no one remembers the Roman Empire, except maybe Benedict XVI.— Phrossty
- On another subject, can anyone tell me what happened yesterday? No posts were showing up, and obviously no one could post anything, either. Glad everything is working again. And SMike, my take on Obama's statement is merely that he is pointing out the hypocrisy in spending so much during the Bush years, then screaming foul in a new, Democratic administration.— NigeltheMastiff
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- I believe it is working out well myself. President Obama reaches out for by partisianship, the radical Republicans have expose themselves in very black and white terms that they don't want any part of it. The high road is still the path to take.
Cited by the Columbia Journalism Review as one of the nation's top political reporters, and lauded by the ABC News political website as "one of the finest political journalists of his generation," Dick Polman is a national political columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer. He is on the full-time faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, as "writer in residence." Dick has been a frequent guest on C-Span, MSNBC, CNN, NPR and the BBC. He covered the 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004 presidential campaigns.
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