Playing to the crowd

I can't discern -- because it's too nuanced, perhaps -- if Dana Milbank writes the following in impassioned disgust or in worldly resignation to political reality:

[L]iberals should by now know that a nuanced president cannot be a movement’s mouthpiece.

That sentence seems to reflect a rather sophisticated embrace, or at least a stoic acknowledgement, of American political history -- not to mention economics, political philosophy, sociology, psychology, and, when it comes to dealing with Congress, basic math. Excessively idealistic liberals have always been thwarted or frustrated by liberal presidents, since the two don't inhabit the same political universe; just as excessively idealistic social conservatives, throughout the presidential eras of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, were frustrated by those guys -- the second of whom, by the way, was prodigiously unknown for his "nuance."

So, there's that: a touch of weary reality in Milbank's observations on the Occupy Wall Street ... er, movement. A bit before that, though, he seems to derail:

[A]s liberal leaders already know, the young movement must be careful to avoid Obama’s embrace: He decimated the progressive cause once, and he would do it again if given the chance.

Oh my. Pretty nasty, although I'm not sure I know what Milbank is referencing. Obama's salvation of the American auto industry, perhaps? Maybe the end to idiotic sexual discrimination in the military? Or whatever re-regulation of a Wild West Wall Street that was achievable? (See: "basic math.") Or, his attainment of near-universal healthcare, denied to every Democratic president since FDR? If Milbank is referencing the humiliating, utterly unnecessary and wretchedly poor-precedent-setting debt debacle, then I'm with him. Sadly, he doesn't detail much. He does, however, vaguely continue:

Liberal activists who rallied behind Obama in 2008 watched as he defied their wishes and instead made unrequited concessions to the Republicans.

Again, except for the "debt-ceiling debacle" -- which is how even Obama now refers to it, and in largely the same terms as I just did -- there is enormously nuanced context for what liberal activists, among others, call "unrequited concessions."

Oh well. "The movement" is the "in" thing now, so I guess I shouldn't begrudge Milbank's playing to the crowd.

Comments

[John Haas]

"since the two don't inhabit the same political universe"

Why is it so hard for people to wrap their heads around that point? They seem to think all a leader needs to do is dig in his heels and jut out his jaw, and he can get all he wants. Do they have any grasp at all on how this system (un-)works?

[Marc McKenzie]

@John:

"Do they have any grasp at all on how this system (un-)works?"

Hmmm....probably not, I'm afraid.

[CK MacLeod]

You may not agree with them, but "that's now how the system works" doesn't work with people who are opposed to the system, or at any rate would be happy to contemplate its transformation, including assumptions about what kind of person could be president and what a persident could or should say or do.

[Alli]

"He decimated the progressive cause once, and he would do it again if given the chance."

PM, I've been seeing this lie since Obama took office. It has nothing to do with the debt deal. Some how Obama is responsible for them sitting on their asses after his election. Frankly, I don't believe they had one. How can you kill something that never was?

[Fbacon]

Milbank is trying to do to Obama was MoDo did to Gore. Unfortunately for him, Dowd is still in the business of destructive, self- serving snark passed as wit, so the race to the editorial bottom will continue.