On yesterday’s Chris Matthews show on NBC, the assembled journalists all seem to agree that Barack Obama’s decision to cut a tax deal with Republicans and come out swinging against the left was great news. Time‘s Mike Duffy: “These liberals may scream, but they’ve been screaming about Barack Obama since the beginning. This isn’t anything new.”
Chris Matthews and NBC‘s Andrea Mitchell went back and forth about whether this was an actual “Sister Souljah moment” or a “mini moment.” But Helene Cooper of the New York Times summed up the conventional wisdom best:
I think President Obama just had a really good week. If you just look at the trajectory of how this week started, on Monday and Tuesday everybody is writing, everybody’s talking about he caved in to Republicans. By Wednesday he’s out there, he’s gone and done this press conference and he’s looking very much as if he’s standing up to his own party. He’s moved towards the independents. He’s being, you know, he’s very much appealing to the independents that he’s going to need in 2012. And now he sees he–we’re writing about him standing up to Democrats. And for him that’s exactly the place that he wants to be right now at this stage in his presidency.
Yeah, Obama needs to alienate the Democrats…. THAT’S ‘exactly the place that he wants to be right now’ — IF he’s DEFINITELY interested in losing the presidency in 2012 and disabling the Dems for 8 or 12 more years (which often appears to be his actual strategy).
Thanks for reminding me why I never watch these pundit shows. That sort of discussion is just painfully embarrassing, even from this far away! I’ll read comic books or watch ‘The Simpsons’ and get MORE real-world understanding than listening to these sycophantic demagogues.
Really? I’ve found the entire saga to be a portrait of the ineptitude of our dear president. Not only that, but I for one feel that this is a base betrayal, a complete reversal in rhetoric. Remember all those speeches denouncing the “Bush-Era” tax-cuts? What happened to them Barack? Why the sudden change of heart? Did you lose your spine, or were you weak to begin with?
“And for [Obama] that’s exactly the place that he wants to be right now at this stage in his presidency.”
In what alternate reality would any Democratic president want to be in a place where the Republicans play him and the base rejects him?
I still don’t understand why the comments here often start with a plug for Fox News.
“In what alternate reality would any Democratic president want to be in a place where the Republicans play him and the base rejects him?”
Why in BroderWorld, of course….
This is exactly where he wants to be? This is where he’s always been, he just did it quicker this time. He made a deal with Insurance there’d be no public option and didn’t bother to tell his supporters until it was printed in the NY Times about 4 months afterward, letting us knock ourselves out over something he was working behind the scenes to make sure never happened. He played his base and gutted the bill trying to get Olympia Snowe’s vote. So is anybody surprised at anything he does now? This is like some big departure for him? He’s always been more concerned with what the Republicans think than liberals. It’s why his percentage of lib votes is going to be about the same as he gets from Stonewall Jackson County, Georgia.