Liberal Groups Starting to Believe in Obama, Dems

      Many liberals of course have been very skeptical of Obama and the Dems for the last 3 years. During the debt ceiling farce last Summer, Obama skepticism hit its nadir. And even since the election there is still an undercurrent of libs who think he's going to sell us out any day now.

     There's wide suspicion that he plans to gut Medicare. I never have gotten how they are so sure of this, mind you. About the only thing explicit even hinted at was considering raising the retirement age during the height if the impasse during the debt ceiling talks. I admit that I too find this very unacceptable. However, he never quite said he would do this, it was simply speculated about in the press and he didn't deny the speculation.

     I just never got how this one episode led to this sense of certainty that he was ready to gut Medicare. I mean the idea of "gutting Medicare" was drawn too broadly. What Ryan and Romney wanted to do was gut Medicare. At most no Democrat had ever spoken about doing any more than considering raising the retirement age and means testing it. No doubt, these ideas are far from unproblematic. Means testing also isn't as a major secret of the success of both Medicare and Social Security was not making them means tested as the GOP at the time had advocated.

    Still this is far from gutting it entirely. Even so, it's not hard to see why there has been worry about Obama's resolve if you look at how he operated in the first two years. Steve Kornacki has a good piece over at Salon about the education of the President "How to make a President Better."

     "Without question, the lowest moment of Barack Obama’s first term came at the end of the summer of 2011, when the public registered its disgust with a totally needless debt ceiling drama that produced a last-minute compromise that seemed to enrage everyone. The fallout crashed Obama’s approval rating to the low-40s, the lowest mark of his presidency and a level dangerously close to where George H.W. Bush – the last one-term president – was in his reelection year."

      "That nadir, as Steve Benen pointed out Tuesday, was the product of a serious strategic blunder by the White House. In the lame duck session at the end of 2010, Obama’s team had opted not to push for the inclusion of a debt ceiling extension in the tax cut/stimulus package that the president and congressional Republicans agreed to. That allowed the GOP to manufacture a crisis as the August 2 deadline approached, threatening to allow a default unless Obama caved to their demands. Obama was hardly alone in taking a P.R. hit – the Republican Party’s image tanked in the wake of the fiasco too – but he emerged from it with his presidency imperiled."

     "He learned two lessons from the experience. The first was that meaningful compromise with Republicans in the 112^th Congress was impossible. In the run-up to the August deadline, he had pursued a grand bargain with House Speaker John Boehner, an effort that grew out of Obama’s belief that voters had been signaling their desire for bipartisan compromise in the ’10 midterms. But the GOP’s staunch anti-tax absolutism left Boehner powerless to meet Obama halfway, with the Speaker walking away from talk just days before the deadline."

     "In the wake of this, Obama dedicated the rest of his first term to highlighting the basic philosophical differences that had kept him and Boehner apart and demonstrating how intent the GOP was on obstructing his economic agenda. For the first two-and-half-years of his term, Obama tried to play the role of compromiser-in-chief, straining to win over Republican support for his agenda. It was the debt ceiling showdown that convinced him once and for all that this was a dead end – that he’d have to take his case to the voters in 2012 and hope that they’d send a message that would jar Republicans from their obstinacy."

     "And there are some tentative signs that this month’s election is having that effect. It’s true that the headlines about Republicans suddenly breaking with Grover Norquist’s anti-tax pledge are overstated, but there is at least some recognition on the right that Obama has real leverage in the current “fiscal cliff” standoff. On Tuesday, for instance, one of the top Republicans in the House urged his colleagues to agree now to Obama’s call for an extension of the Bush rates for the bottom 98 percent of income-earners, and to fight the battle over the low rates on the rich after. Such talk of decoupling by a Republican would have been unthinkable before the election."

    http://www.salon.com/2012/11/28/how_to_make_a_better_president/

    I agree with most of this. However, I think that one point should be qualified. Why does the President now have so much leverage? I agree Obama messed up in 2010 by allowing the GOP to use the debt ceiling as a bargaining chip. However, I think that a large reason for his leverage is because he actually did a masterful job during the debt ceiling negotiations. I've never been as down on Obama as I tended to agree with Laurence O'Donnell-he actually played the GOP during those negotiations. If you want to understand this better read David Corn's "Showdown" sometime.

     Ignore Bob Woodward's recent tome accusing Obama of "failing to shape things to his will." The Democrats have leverage today because of the final shape of the debt ceiling deal: that's all due to the sequestered military cuts and the Bush tax cuts being up for expiration now. Anyways, other liberals more skeptical than me-even at the worst point in that 2011 farce I defended the President. It just seemed so wrong that the GOP was going to get to leave him holding the bad when they had deliberately sandbagged him and, again, like Laurence I did think he did better in that debt ceiling deal than was realized at the time; as it should be, if it were obvious the GOP wouldn't have gone along-are finally beginning to believe again, albeit guardedly.

    Which is fine. The big liberal groups should be watching to make sure this goes right. However, they're increasingly liking what they see:

     "Progressive activists afraid that President Obama would sell them out in budget negotiations with the GOP are breathing a little easier this week after some reassuring words from top Democrats.
An array of liberal and labor groups are currently running pressure campaigns out of longstanding concerns that the White House will cede too much ground in a deficit deal. And while they aren’t planning on disarming anytime soon, several activists told TPM that they’re cautiously optimistic that Democrats are heading into battle with the right goals and the leverage to obtain them."

     “I think most people are buoyed by the fact the president seems intent on sticking with his demand that taxes go up on the top 2 percent even if it means going over the cliff,” Bob Borosage, president of the Institute for America’s Future, told TPM. “He’s been stronger than I might have anticipated.”
Meanwhile, Democrats in Congress haven’t gone wobbly either.

       "Liberals were surprised to find themselves cheering on Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) this week as he argued before the Center for American Progress that Democrats should resist benefit cuts to Medicare and Medicaid and keep Social Security out of the negotiations entirely. Durbin, the majority whip, is a leading Democratic supporter of the Simpson-Bowles debt commission, which liberal groups denounced as a nightmare solution to the long-term deficit, so his words carry special weight."

      “It’s a weird thing that Democratic leaders like Dick Durbin and Chris Van Hollen appear to be embracing the ideas that progressives are pushing,” Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, told TPM. “I read Dick Durbin’s speech and it’s actually beautiful.”
Borosage also took note of Durbin’s rhetoric, calling him a “stalking horse for the president” that could signal good news.

     "Labor and progressive leaders came away from a private meeting with White House officials Tuesday encouraged as well, according to an attendee who spoke with the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent. In particular, hopes are rising that the president is willing to go over the so-called fiscal cliff on Jan. 1 in order to force Republicans to pass a bill that preserves the Bush tax cuts for the bottom 98 percent of income earners. Combine that with loud grumbling among some Republicans about the right’s resistance to tax increases and the outlook is looking even better on the revenue side.:

     http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/11/liberals-back-away-from-ledge-as-democrats-approach-fiscal-cliff.php?ref=fpa

     The one thing the progressive groups do worry about is that the Dems could panic if no deal is reached and the market tanks on the news. So they will continue to apply pressure but are also increasingly optimistic.

      P.S. As far as entitlements go, the Dems are right to say that this should not be part of this deal. The GOP may cry foul-that they deserve some compromises, but for one thing, we already had lots of budget cuts in both the 2011 debt ceiling deal-$1.5 trillion-and the 2011 budget deal-$61 billion in cuts.

     As far as entitlements are concerned, as Obama, Durbin, and other Democrats have pointed out, Social Security doesn't contribute to the deficit. After ObamaCare there is less appetite to cut into Medicaid either-as cuts would discourage states from paying into Medicaid for ObamaCare.

    With Medicare the GOP also creates the wrong impression that Medicare is a drive of rising costs when in fact the trouble is rising healthcare costs more generally which Medicare can do a good job of restraining.

     In fact, ObamaCare will cut into costs considerably-perhaps a great deal-so as Jonathan Cohn is concerned we should wait first to see how much these cuts are once the program goes into effect-by 2014 it will be fully operational.

     http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/110503/patience-just-what-the-doctor-ordered-deficit-reduction

      If anything else is wanted sooner then one big help would be to allow Medicare to negotiate with drug companies.