Wow! The media loves to overstate things. Check out how over the top the VSP are getting over disagreements between the President and Elizabeth Warren on the trade deal:
"This is remarkable stuff for Obama. All presidents are forged, in a sense, by the moments at which they come to public life. Obama entered politics during Bill Clinton’s presidency, when urban liberals were growing disgusted with the president’s strategy of “triangulation,” popularly interpreted as the idea that you can win broad support by picking fights with the ideologues in your own party. Obama has always been reflexively averse to anything that might be construed as him pushing back against his friends to score political points with everyone else."
"This is remarkable stuff for Obama. All presidents are forged, in a sense, by the moments at which they come to public life. Obama entered politics during Bill Clinton’s presidency, when urban liberals were growing disgusted with the president’s strategy of “triangulation,” popularly interpreted as the idea that you can win broad support by picking fights with the ideologues in your own party. Obama has always been reflexively averse to anything that might be construed as him pushing back against his friends to score political points with everyone else."
"Throughout his presidency, Obama has mostly avoided public feuds with what his first press secretary, Robert Gibbs, liked to call the “professional left” — even when it’s meant sidestepping important disagreements on policy. Democratic politicians and interest groups, in turn, have been cautious in their criticism, offering only muted resistance when Obama stepped up the war in Afghanistan, or when he nearly negotiated a deal that would have restructured entitlements."
"But like a marriage in which the spouses pretend to be happier than they really are, Obama’s polite alliance with the populist left appears to be suddenly crumbling under the weight of free trade. The more Warren and Senate colleagues like Bernie Sanders and Sherrod Brown attack the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, joined by big unions and environmental groups, the more liberated Obama seems to feel in portraying them as reckless and backward-looking, much as Clinton might have done. He evidences none of the self-doubt or conflicted loyalty that seemed plain when they criticized him for being too cautious on Wall Street reform or health care."
https://www.yahoo.com/politics/why-obama-is-happy-to-fight-elizabeth-warren-on-118537612596.html
UPDATE: Here was Elizabeth Warren's reaction to the President's comments.
UPDATE: Here was Elizabeth Warren's reaction to the President's comments.
Matt Bai needs to get a hold of himself. Just because the President disagrees with Warren on one issue doesn't mean that an alliance is 'crumbling'-there's simply a difference of opinion. I don't find finding the answer to who's right simple either. But there is so much hunger from the David Brooks media for there to be a fight where Democrats beat up on themselves rather than Republicans, it's just laughable.
As Obama said himself in the interview, he and Senator Warren agree on many things; that's not going to change because of this. Sorry to disappoint.
What's going on here, I think, is that the VSP in the media still can't accept that their personality driven politics is meaningless-it's the party you're in that matters not the individual. So when there is the slightest disagreement they pounce like hungry poodles.
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