TheLoop21.com

By: Devona Walker (Add to your loop)
Tue, 02/09/2010 - 01:00

People have now seen a glimpse of the man they voted for.

President Obama effectively mobilized the liberal base in 2008, but now in 2010, everyone wants to know, “Will their backlash go from grumpy dissent to full-on anger, enough to bite him in the preverbial behind? (also known as mid-terms?)"

The answer: I don't think so.

At present, President Obama is sticking to the center on fiscal issues and aggressively pursuing more progressive cultural policies, such as Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and the continued battle with Congress over health care reform. But he’s also taking the battle to the Republicans. There was a feisty State of the Union address, then an even feistier question and answer session with the GOP. In each case, he was fired up, giving many of his supporters a glimpse of the man they voted for.

As long as he stays left on issues they care about (which are largely cultural as opposed to fiscal), I don't think progressive "voters" will care. Liberals, unlike Republicans and Independents, don’t care a whole lot about the budget. They care about jobs. They care about things like the poverty rate and they aren't generally bean counters.

Restless progressives

Lefties have been swimming against the tide for decades: First, there was Richard Nixon, then Ronald Regan, then Newt Gingrish, then George Sr. and George W. Bush. In other words, the right has been running this country and halting just about every progressive issue. From union-busting and bashing to utterly hijacking every civil liberty department in the government by appointing conservatives, Republicans have so marginalized liberals that many scarcely believe in government at all.

Then Obama comes along, a man whose entire political existence is indirectly tied to their lifelong work of making the U.S. a more just society — progressives thought they'd finally put one of their own in office. Now that Obama's in the White House, he had to prioritize his agenda and make a series of deft political calculations in working with a divided Congress. Now it's obvious: he's not one of them. He is more of a pragmatist than an idealist, less progressive than realist. 

Obama’s fiscal conservativism angers who?

So when Obama announced during his State of the Union address that he planned to freeze domestic discretionary spending, the immediate reaction from the progressive base was, “Oh, here we go again.”

The parallels between he and President Clinton were clearly drawn, but they weren’t mentioned. Instead, they referenced Herbert Hoover. Perhaps that’s because Clinton is the only Democratic president in the last 40 years to see two terms in the White House. But what they really should have been thinking about was Jimmy Carter.

Former Labor secretary Robert Reich, one of the most progressive economic gurus around wrote in Politico of Obama’s spending freeze: "Wall Street is delighted. But it means Main Street is in worse trouble than ever. A spending freeze will make it even harder to get jobs back ... His three-year freeze on a large portion of discretionary spending will make it impossible for him to do much of anything for the middle class that's important." 

But Reich is also the guy who said we needed to spend more, much more on the stimulus. He said we needed to completely take over the banks. I can’t argue with Reich on economics. He’s much smarter than I. But I will say this, if Obama had done either of those things it would have fundamentally changed this country's identity. If Obama had followed Reich's advice and took ownership of the banks, there would be a legitimate socialism and nanny state argument to make.

"Obama is basically saying that the stimulus fixed the economy, that there will be no further government support measures and that he'll govern like a hybrid of John McCain and Herbert Hoover for the rest of his term to curry favor with the deficit maniacs," were the reports from firedoglake.com.

You cannot ignore the deficit. You cannot ignore the level of debt we owe to China. Even the most blatant and simple issues like China’s spying on American companies like Google, or the inferior products they import to us --- all of that becomes incredibly difficult if we don't have plans to lower that debt. 

Fortunately, there is a disconnect between the influence peddlers on the left and right and folks like us in the trenches and living and working in this country. As those folks formed the “liberal rebuke” narrative, most folks (the progressive ones) I speak with daily were talking about the president’s, the general's and even Colin Powell’s rebuke of the military's “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

As the pundits criticized the administration for its “prayer hour,” the headlines, once again, captured Obama rejecting “discrimination against gays” at home and abroad. Even with the budget freeze, the only headline average people paid attention to was the “jobs bill” and the plan to take money intended for the Wall Street banks and give it to Main Street's community banks to fund small-business loans.

So who exactly is angered by Obama’s fiscal conservative tendencies? The chattering class and the policy wonks. Does it bother most Americans? I doubt it. It likely works to his advantage, when you take moderate and independent voters, whose chief criticism of this administration is that it is “too liberal.” The president, if he wants to bring independents back to the Democratic tent, needs to make a clear distinction between himself and liberals— not rank and file liberals— but the unrealistic, influence-peddling ones whose ideology and class puts them at separate purposes with most Americans.

Devona Walker is TheLoop21.com's senior financial/political reporter and blogger. She can be reached at devona@theloop21.com.

Have you had enough of the health care reform debate?

Yes, it's not going to happen

Yes, move onto jobs

No, not until it passes

No, it's important

It doesn't affect me

I don't know