The President had it exactly right yesterday when he tore into his liberal critics. These critics, including a ton of people writing on this site, insist, as the President accurately observed, on "having a purist position and no victories for the American people." What the critics really want, as the President again so rightly pointed out, is to "feel good about ourselves and sanctimonious about how pure our intentions are and how tough we are." Here's the plain fact - we lost the election and when you lose elections, you lose control of the agenda. No amount of angry posturing or taking misguided potshots at President Obama is going to change that.
I'm tired of all the people here who constantly lay into the President every time he doesn't deliver a pure 100% liberal victory. You act as though the President's fights on healthcare and the stimulus don't matter. And you act as though the election last month didn't happen. The plain fact is that the President isn't going to cater to you because he knows with absolute certainty that you'll be voting for him in 2012. Absolute certainty. The voters he needs to win, and the ones he going to cater to, are the ones who abandoned the party last month because they felt the President and the Democratic leadership were focusing too much on side issues like cap-and-trade and were not doing enough to fix the economy. The President rightly has contempt for the purer-than-pure left who always say they're going to abandon him when he compromises on this or that policy. It's all bull and he knows it.
Let me ask a question. If not Obama in 2012, then who? Howard Dean has said he's not going to challenge the President. Mrs. Clinton won't be challenging him. So who? Former liberal hero Russ Feingold who voted with the Republicans on the cloture bill? Bernie Sanders? The ghost of Ted Kennedy? The answer is that there isn't any progressive hero ready to ride to the rescue. It's the President or it's Palin/Romney/Huckabee, etc. Take your choice.
And those of you who think the President is betraying some great liberal principle by compromising on the tax bill or is somehow out of touch with what the American people want, check out this Gallup poll:
Two major elements included in the tax agreement reached Monday between President Barack Obama and Republican leaders in Congress meet with broad public support. Two-thirds of Americans (66%) favor extending the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for all Americans for two years, and an identical number support extending unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed.
Interestingly, the poll shows that 64% of conservative/moderate Democrats support the tax compromise and even 39% of liberal Democrats support the President on this. So if you're wondering who's out of touch, I'd suggest that Obama's critics might take a peek in the mirror.
I'm proud to support Barack Obama. If you can't bring yourself to support this good honorable decent man, then you have no place in the Democratic Party. You might as well join the other side because the President's going forward with what he thinks is right for this country whether you like it or not. And, unlike his critics, the President lives in the real world not in some fantasy make-believe liberal paradise.