Obama Slide Result of Liberal Disappointment

Obama's slide in the polls is likely the result of liberals thinking Obama was something that he wasn't. (Here is a story that says the Obama slide is because moderates misread Obama). Now liberals are applying pressure to get Obama to do what they want him to do because they feel as though they are the only ones who supported him. They feel owed because they got him elected. Like any group, people want what they want. They think they're right. Just like the conservatives.

The so-called Obama Slide could also be caused by the fact that Obama has accomplished much in such a short period of time, people are demanding a lot. They're tightening the screws, so to speak. When was it that a president held a town hall, let alone the number that Obama has held? Obama has been here, there and everywhere, explaining, explaining, explaining. The more Obama communicates, the more people demand. It doesn't help that the Bush administration left the country a shambles and that few understand the economics of the bank "bailout."

I think support could turn around if Obama comes out forcefully for a public option, something that liberals are demanding. But is that the right thing to do? I'm on the fence. David Brooks thinks it would be suicide. He says Obama's sliding because he's losing the center:

Amazingly, some liberals are now lashing out at Obama because the entire country doesn’t agree with The Huffington Post. Some now argue that the administration should just ignore the ignorant masses and ram health care through using reconciliation, the legislative maneuver that would reduce the need for moderate votes.

This would be suicidal. You can’t pass the most important domestic reform in a generation when the majority of voters think you are on the wrong path. To do so would be a sign of unmitigated arrogance. If Obama agrees to use reconciliation, he will permanently affix himself to the liberal wing of his party and permanently alienate independents. He will be president of 35 percent of the country — and good luck getting anything done after that.

The second liberal response has been to attack the budget director, Peter Orszag. It was a mistake to put cost control at the center of the health reform sales job, many now argue. The president shouldn’t worry about the deficit. Just pass the spending parts.

As Obama's presidency progresses into its third and fourth years, I predict he'll be in great standing. Obama likes to say he's slow to start and then picks up speed. He's a thinker and a weigher of options and a tryer of new things.

Another problem for Obama has been the rightwing, which is absolutely flailing around. The nation is changing underneath their feet, progressing. Obama is a reminder of that. But they don't know what to do with all the change. Brooks' remedy for the slide:

But fiscal restraint is now the animating issue for moderate Americans. To take the looming $9 trillion in debt and balloon it further would be to enrage a giant part of the electorate.

This is a country that has always been suspicious of centralized government. This is a country that has just lived through an economic trauma caused by excessive spending and debt. Most Americans still admire Obama and want him to succeed. But if he doesn’t proceed in a manner consistent with the spirit of the nation and the times, voters will find a way to stop him. Read the whole thing at NYT

Rachel Maddow says Obama picked a really hard issue to tackle in his first year and that it's time to end bipartisanship on health reform. But is it even possible for democrats to pass health reform through the controversial "reconciliation" process?:

Somehow, Obama has to put politics aside, cut through the noise, and figure out what's the best move for the country on a number of fronts.

Obama's Liberal Heart Practical Mind

It's always been. I agree with this story. Obama has contended that those who thought otherwise haven't been listening. 

I'm so tired of left and right politics. It's inane. When people see only through a particular lens it skews the truth.  

It's also why Karl Rove and other republicans advised republicans not to slap the liberal label on Obama. They knew it wasn't so. For the liberals out there, it's not a bad thing.
I believe Obama has a liberal heart but a practical mind. That's a very good thing for this country.

Politico: Throughout the left-wing blogosphere, the cry has come: Barack Obama is moving away from them, and to the center. “Moving to the middle is for losers,” cried the politically ambidextrous Arianna Huffington. He’s “betraying his claims of being a new kind of politician,” declared Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos.

But all this outrage ignores the obvious: Throughout his career, Obama has consistently framed himself as a post-partisan centrist. He’s been a bridge-builder all his life, first between black and white, and now between left and right.

It’s a formula for victory in a country that’s essentially center-right. Even after all the alienation from the Bush administration, a new Washington Post/ABC poll affirms that only 19 percent of Americans describe themselves as liberal, while 43 percent say moderate and 35 percent, conservative.

In his primetime introduction to the American people, giving the nominating speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention, Obama drew the loudest applause when he proclaimed, “there's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America.”

Whole chapters in his post-Senate-election book “The Audacity of Hope” extol the virtues of centrism — condemning inflexible activists on the far right and far left for stopping progress and alienating Americans from the political process.

From Newsweek: Obama doesn't divide the world into good and evil like Bush McCain.

Against that backdrop, Obama has been strikingly honest about his inclinations and inspirations. True, he begins by praising Harry Truman's administration, which in the foreign-policy world is a little like saying you admire George Washington. (Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and John McCain have all cited Truman as a model.) But then Obama takes an unusual step, for a Democrat, and praises the administration of George H.W. Bush, one that is often seen as the most hardheaded or coldblooded (depending on your point of view) in recent memory. Obama has done this more than once, most recently in a conversation with me last week on CNN. And he is explicit about what he means. "It's an argument between ideology and foreign-policy realism. I have enormous sympathy for the foreign policy of George H.W. Bush," he told The New York Times's David Brooks in May.

Obama rarely speaks in the moralistic tones of the current Bush administration. He doesn't divide the world into good and evil even when speaking about terrorism. He sees countries and even extremist groups as complex, motivated by power, greed and fear as much as by pure ideology. His interest in diplomacy seems motivated by the sense that one can probe, learn and possibly divide and influence countries and movements precisely because they are not monoliths. When speaking to me about Islamic extremism, for example, he repeatedly emphasized the diversity within the Islamic world, speaking of Arabs, Persians, Africans, Southeast Asians, Shiites and Sunnis, all of whom have their own interests and agendas.
Read the rest. Really good story

Obama Says Critics Haven't Been Listening

Obama has always shunned labels, especially the "liberal" label.
The problem with the media is one media outlet follows the other like dominoes. Every single media outlet has claimed Obama moved to the center. The left media outlets are trying to make sure they keep Obama within their clutches and the right outlets are trying to make sure Obama doesn't get elected. There just isn't much room for independent thinking anymore. The truth isn't necessarily in the middle either.

NYT: “I believe in a whole lot of things that make me progressive and put me squarely in the Democratic camp,” he said. But, he noted, he does not believe that the active hand of government is a replacement, say, for parental responsibility in education.

“I believe in personal responsibility; I also believe in faith,” he said. “That’s not something new; I’ve been talking about that for years. So the notion that this is me trying to look” — he waved his hands around his head — “centrist is not true.”

Regarding his position on Iraq, he said, “Don’t be confused: I will bring the Iraq war to a close when I am president of the United States of America.”

New York Times Attacks Obama

Frankly, I think it's a good sign the left among us is now pouncing because there is a middle ground, where I'd argue, most Americans are.

Obama said he would be the president of everyone, not just the liberals, who have claimed him.

The media and the right extreme have painted Obama with a liberal brush. But really, he's not a liberal and he's never claimed to be a liberal.

The media is childish in its manipulation, writing glowingly about Obama when they approve and then breaking out the poison pen when they disapprove.

In case you hadn't noticed, newspapers are going out of business. The NYT is just mad because Obama isn't a puppet of any media outlet. So is the Huffington Post and DailyKos. As if Obama should let bloggers and newspaper writers tell him how not to "blow it." These people are just asserting their perceived power.

The Obama camp has done a brilliant job of running its campaign.

Obama hasn't turned on his fundamental principles.

A president has to be willing to change his mind, when presented with new facts, otherwise you get George Bush. Obama doesn't think from the viewpoint of a liberal or whatever label you'd want to slap on him. He thinks independently while adhering to the fundamentals of a bottom up democracy, healthcare and education for all and world citizenship.

Everyone's so focused on their own little issues, their ideologies. You got to look at the bigger picture.

The New York Times looks naively at fundraising (it's no wonder the right gets annoyed at the "liberal media"). Of course, he has wealthy, elitist support. So does John McCain.

They then twist what Pritzker says. The way I read her quote is they haven't been able to get to the big money fundraisers because Obama's been busy.

Even his own chief money collector, Penny Pritzker, suggests that the magic of $20 donations from the Web was less a matter of principle than of scheduling. “We have not been able to have much of the senator’s time during the primaries, so we have had to rely more on the Internet,” she explained as she and her team busily scheduled more than a dozen big-ticket events over the next few weeks at which the target price for quality time with the candidate is more than $30,000 per person.