The Washington Left Asserts Itself

The left (apparently) is in a tizzy, if one defines tizzy by a few posts on a few blogs and a few cautious comments from the heads of left-wing interest groups who were shut out of the Obama campaign. Apparently, it has something to do with presidential appointments -- Obama couldn't find a qualified lefty economist to join his team, or, horrors, decided not to include the Secretary of Labor when he announced his economic team.  Facts, facts. First, chief economics adviser to the Vice President is one of the most highly regarded liberal economist in the land, Jared Bernstein. And the idea for that massive, public-works spending came from Larry Summers, mainly.... the guy's views have changed, and he has more credibility to argue for that sort of apocalyptic spending than, say, Robert Reich would.

What the left really objects to  -- if the left really objects to anything, and, really, there's no evidence that the "left" is upset -- ... actually, I'm going to interrupt this sentence and redefine "left" as that old Washington liberal interest group crowd; what they object to is Obama's decision to create an administration that does not give Washington-based liberal interest groups a privileged seat at the table, that does not use traditional political liberal means to achieve progressive ends, that does not, at least a priori, buy into the symbological, circularly stimulating priorities of liberal interest groups. (Case in point: Joe Lieberman.)

In Steve Hilderband's "trust us" caution today, I see a bit of a genius move: By all means, we must reject all the concerns of the die-hard leftists, and instead, move sharply toward the center of American politics, doing such reasonable, centrist bipartisan things as bringing the troops home from Iraq, making health care affordable, and embarking on a massive public works projects and using government policy to eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels.

If Team Obama were truly concerned about something, David Plouffe would probably send out an e-mail about it and try to activate the energy of Obama's massive e-mail list.  It's true that Obama-ites always envisioned the communication flowing unidirectionally; Obama would set a priority, his outside political team would propose a structure for organizing, and then they'd activate the list. What if, though, the grassroots refused? What if they were capable of bypassing Obama's own filter, of deriving their information from "independent sources," from using pre-existing crucibles of activism, and deciding, en masse, that they they either wanted to send a disapproving message to the president or to oppose his initiative?   As petty as the concerns of Washington liberals might sound, their manifestation is healthy. Since Obama violated every other law of political physics, why assume that the traditional extended honeymoon one is granted by his party's base will last, or even exist? To prevent Obama from ruling as a royalist, a little cross-pressure is probably a good thing.