Angry left to Obama: Stop caving on agenda Liberals furious with a White House they view as constantly telegraphing compromise with Republicans are pressuring President Obama to get tougher, arguing that is the only way he will win both progressives and independents in 2012.
Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) and an outspoken critic of the White House, said liberal anger has less to do with fears of a Clintonian move to the middle by Obama and more with a misreading of the election results by the administration.
"It's less 'Oh no, they're triangulating,' and more 'Boy, their political instincts are really stupid,' " said Green, who along with other liberals has blasted the White House for suggesting it would compromise with Republicans on expiring tax cuts.
The White House "fundamentally" doesn't get that "the only way to get Republicans to deal in good faith is to fight them, crush them and teach a lesson that if Republicans are on the wrong side of an issue there will be consequences ... so it makes sense to negotiate," Green said.
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I'm getting sick and tired of Obama's cave-ins to RepubliCONS and am about ready to strip my Obama/Biden sticker off of my car.
"It's not liberals that Obama is having a clash with, it's reality," Hamsher said. "And anyone who thinks his problems are just with the base is not paying attention.
"No reasonable person could look at the data and say that the center has support for Obama's priorities right now: cutting Social Security, passing Korea free trade and ballooning the deficit by $700 billion with tax breaks for millionaires.
"So can we please stop with this fiction that Obama is attempting to woo independents?" Hamsher said. "The things he is doing are not any more popular with independents than they are with the base. Just because something annoys the base does not axiomatically mean it is popular with independents."
If Obama follows through on his stacked Debt Commission's recommendation to gut Social Security and penalize the Middle Class to fix the deficit, I won't be voting for Obama in 2012. He will have effectively proved Ralph Nader right about the Democratic Party.
It's amazing that a guy as smart as Obama, just doesn't GET IT about what the problems facing most Americans is --- lack of good paying JOBS. He was tone-deaf in India to those of us who lost jobs or see our jobs being outsourced to India and elsewhere.
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