Uh-oh. Some analysts are concerned that President Obama’s getting too off-the-rails liberal for mainstream America. They’re fretting about his forthcoming budget proposal leading to Democratic disaster in 2016,
reports Ben White of Politico.
“There are some real risks here, though we won’t be able to assess whether they have really gone too far left until we see the full budget,” said Matt Bennett, co-founder of the centrist Democratic group Third Way. “We are big believers in dealing with the long-term mandatory spending crisis and driving economic growth for the middle class, and we hope to see some of that when the whole budget comes out.”
You may recall Third Way as the group that declared in a 2013
Wall Street Journal op-ed, “Economic Populism is a Dead End for Democrats.” Right. If there’s one thing that Elizabeth Warren has proven, it’s that populism is not partisan and it can in fact resonate with voters on both sides of aisle.
But that isn't dissuading Third Way and others from charging that Obama is “tacking too hard left on the overall issue of spending and long-term debt.”
Data from the Pew Research center show that 55 percent of Democrats still view deficit reduction as a “top priority.”
First off, the deficit is one of those issues that tends to jump all over the place in polling depending on what’s in the news. If politicians are talking it up, it might be hot. In the recent Pew poll mentioned above, it ranked six as a priority among all voters, behind terrorism, jobs, economy, education, and social security. But among Democrats, it actually ranked 12 out of 23 issues, so not quite as hot as Politico's framing suggests.
Of course, the question on everyone’s mind is: how will Obama’s budget play for Hillary in 2016?
And some in the Democratic Party worry that when Clinton does finally announce her campaign — which sources told POLITICO may not come until July — she may take over as the head of a party celebrated by the activist left but without a clear purchase on the moderate voters who will help decide the outcome of the election in Florida, Ohio and other key swing states.
What those voters want to know is that someone cares about them. Frankly, Clinton always did better with moderate voters than Obama. It’s an easy fit for her. Clinton’s bigger hurdle is exciting the base, not moderates. And Elizabeth Warren is living proof that Clinton does not have to appeal to one group at the expense of the other.
Third Way should really just concentrate on seeing if it can erase any digital remnant of that Wall Street Journal op-ed instead of worrying about President Obama “lurching to the left.”