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Dana Milbank: Obama endures as the lesser evil for liberals
Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank wrote in response to a small anti-war protest near the White House:
The anti-Obama left was out in force. All 22 of them.
As the president stood on the South Lawn to announce the bombing campaign in Syria, liberal demonstrators gathered on Pennsylvania Avenue on the other side of the White House to protest the man they thought was their ally.
As the president stood on the South Lawn to announce the bombing campaign in Syria, liberal demonstrators gathered on Pennsylvania Avenue on the other side of the White House to protest the man they thought was their ally.
The liberal activists’ list of grievances was long: drone warfare, insufficient action on climate change and wages, “failed economic policies,” bending to corporate interests. But the roll call of activists was short: Obama starts a war, multiple antiwar groups schedule a joint demonstration with plenty of advance warning — and only 22 people show up?
It was the latest display of how Obama has neutralized the left.
He has disappointed liberal constituencies on immigration, on climate change, on Guantanamo Bay and targeted killings, and now on Syria. Yet this month’s Washington Post-ABC News poll shows him with 69 percent support among liberals, 87 percent among African Americans and 75 percent among Democrats. Liberals supported airstrikes in Iraq and Syria (64 percent and 54 percent, respectively), as did Democrats (67 percent and 60 percent).
“If George W. Bush were launching wars with Congress out of town, oh, it would be flooded,” longtime liberal activist David Swanson said, looking across mostly empty Pennsylvania Avenue “They would be screaming.”
Swanson, who voted for Obama in 2008 before switching to the Green Party, said liberals who condemned Bush look the other way when Obama does the same thing because “he’s more eloquent, he’s more intelligent, he’s African American, he bills himself as a constitutional scholar.”
It was the latest display of how Obama has neutralized the left.
He has disappointed liberal constituencies on immigration, on climate change, on Guantanamo Bay and targeted killings, and now on Syria. Yet this month’s Washington Post-ABC News poll shows him with 69 percent support among liberals, 87 percent among African Americans and 75 percent among Democrats. Liberals supported airstrikes in Iraq and Syria (64 percent and 54 percent, respectively), as did Democrats (67 percent and 60 percent).
“If George W. Bush were launching wars with Congress out of town, oh, it would be flooded,” longtime liberal activist David Swanson said, looking across mostly empty Pennsylvania Avenue “They would be screaming.”
Swanson, who voted for Obama in 2008 before switching to the Green Party, said liberals who condemned Bush look the other way when Obama does the same thing because “he’s more eloquent, he’s more intelligent, he’s African American, he bills himself as a constitutional scholar.”
The most upvoted comment after this article:
Are Tuesdays Dana's anti-Obama days? He has appeared, over the past few years, to try to play the "false equivalence" game - trying to blame both sides for the political mess that Washington has become, even though it is clearly the GOPs obstruction that has caused the gridlock. This op-ed highlights just how difficult that game is to play.
"He has disappointed liberal constituencies on immigration, on climate change, on Guantanamo Bay and targeted killings". Targeted killings are the only issue on this list that Obama is responsible for. The senate passed a bipartisan Immigration Reform bill that the House refused to vote on (even though it was predicted to pass), Republicans don't believe in Climate Change, and Guantanamo Bay is still open because the House Republicans refuse to close it. How can Obama have let liberals down on these issues if he has no control over them?
"He has disappointed liberal constituencies on immigration, on climate change, on Guantanamo Bay and targeted killings". Targeted killings are the only issue on this list that Obama is responsible for. The senate passed a bipartisan Immigration Reform bill that the House refused to vote on (even though it was predicted to pass), Republicans don't believe in Climate Change, and Guantanamo Bay is still open because the House Republicans refuse to close it. How can Obama have let liberals down on these issues if he has no control over them?
Another comment:
When you take the Oath of Office as POTUS you stop listening to the political consultants and think tank experts who are all pitching theory and start to live in the real world. Unfortunately, the real world we live in requires you sometimes go against what you would like to do and do what you have to do. I am sure Barack Obama does not want to go down in the history books as the President who started a new war in the Middle East which his successor had to handle; but that is what he has done and I will bet he has seen hard evidence that was his only option. His personality is to avoid confrontation and seek approval and consensus; when you decide to unleash the dogs of war in spite of that he did it for a very good reason.
Milbank is no right winger - he wrote an anti-Glenn Beck book Tears of a Clown: Glenn Beck and the Tea Bagging of America. But how much truth is in his article?
9 replies
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longtime liberal activist David Swanson
And yeah, I'd love to hear a cogent answer on what Obama being black has to do with anything too. From him and Medea Benjamin:
“He’s totally defanged us,” she said, citing his party, his affability — and his race. “The black community is traditionally the most antiwar community in this country. He’s defanged that sentiment within the black community, or certainly voicing that sentiment.”
Some choice quotes from these liberals, huh?
And yeah, I'd love to hear a cogent answer on what Obama being black has to do with anything too. From him and Medea Benjamin:
“He’s totally defanged us,” she said, citing his party, his affability — and his race. “The black community is traditionally the most antiwar community in this country. He’s defanged that sentiment within the black community, or certainly voicing that sentiment.”
Some choice quotes from these liberals, huh?
Obama will be mailing the entire bill to you personally within the month, right after he unilaterally ends SS, Medicaid, Medicare, welfare, food stamps, shuts down all pubic schools, declares the 1% forever tax-exempt, puts dissenters in FEMA re-education camps, and finally declares himself a secret Muslim who was indeed born in Kenya.
Happy now? 
