Sometimes I wonder if the dwindling band of Obama's remaining supporters ever find it difficult to reconcile their image of him as a brilliant, Harvard-educated professor with his dumber-than-a-box-of-Palins negotiating strategies - i.e. "You want $30 billion in cuts? Here's $40 billion."
But as Glennzilla demonstrates at length, and with merciless clarity, no reconciliation is necessary once you accept the obvious truth that the President's negotiating aims are not the same as ours.
Conventional D.C. wisdom -- that which Obama vowed to subvert but has done as much as any President to bolster -- has held for decades that Democratic Presidents succeed politically by being as "centrist" or even as conservative as possible. That attracts independents, diffuses GOP enthusiasm, casts the President as a triangulating conciliator, and generates raves from the DC press corps -- all while keeping more than enough Democrats and progressives in line through a combination of anti-GOP fear-mongering and partisan loyalty.
http://www.salon.com/...
[Emphasis added. Note how many valid criticisms of the administration will be met with nothing more substantial than "Enjoy President Trump/Palin/Bachmann!".]
Just consider the polling data on last week's budget cuts, which most liberal commentators scorned. Americans support the "compromise" by a margin of 58-38%; that support includes a majority of independents, substantial GOP factions, and 2/3 of Democrats. Why would Democrats overwhelmingly support domestic budget cuts that burden the poor? Because, as Yglesias correctly observed, "just about anything Barack Obama does will be met with approval by most Democrats." In other words, once Obama lends his support to a policy -- no matter how much of a departure it is from ostensible Democratic beliefs -- then most self-identified Democrats will support it because Obama supports it, because it then becomes the "Democratic policy," by definition. Adopting "centrist" or even right-wing policies will always produce the same combination -- approval of independents, dilution of GOP anger, media raves, and continued Democratic voter loyalty -- that is ideal for the President's re-election prospects.
How simple it all is, finally. Just another politician scrambling for another term.
Of course, the President's defenders insist on blaming the legislature for their idol's failures. But Greenwald puts the lie to that as well:
That claim is being made now by pointing to a GOP Congress, but the same claim was made when there was a Democratic Congress as well... Such excuse-making stands in very sharp contrast to what we heard in 2008 and what we will hear again in 2012: that the only thing that matters is that Obama win the Presidency because of how powerful and influential an office it is, how disaster will befall us all if this vast power falls into Republican hands. It also contradicts the central promise of the Obama candidacy: that he would change, rather than bolster, the standard power dynamic in Washington. ... Gaudy claims of Fundamental Change and Transformation and Yes, We Can! have given way to an endless parade of excuse-making that he's powerless, weak and there's nothing he can do.
Later today, The Man From Hope will announce his support for "selected" suggestions from the Catfood Commission that he single-handedly created by executive order and stocked with notorious opponents of Social Security. You'll hear the word "balanced" - probably more than once. What you won't hear is the word that people used to describe it before Paul Ryan so helpfully shifted the Overton Window: "draconian".
Don't be fooled. Again.
We're in an all-out class war. And Barack Obama is fighting on their side.