HTML Mencken provides a reality check:
I’m feeling a replay of the 90’s in the sense that, then, many liberals made the mistake of claiming Bill Clinton was an awesome president because he was victim of constant, retarded right-wing attacks. This attitude soon morphed, in practice, to lumping all the attackers together, left and right, on the ultimately Stalinist grounds that leftwing critics of Clinton gave “ammo†or “cover†to the enemy. This is immoral and stupid from a liberal perspective in itself, but what’s more it completely ignores that strategery thing liberals (eleventy-dimensional chess!) like to think they are good at. It’s true that unlike Obama, Clinton lacked a mandate for serious reforms. Similarly, the only thing FDR lacked a mandate for, until Pearl Harbor, was involvement in WWII (he had a huge mandate for the New Deal and unlike Obama, proceeded to use it forcefully). Both Clinton and FDR told leaders to their left the same thing regarding policies they all wanted, but public opinion was against — “you have to force me to do this, even though I want to do it anywayâ€. Remember Clinton’s exasperated “where the hell were you?†comment to David Obey? Obama had and has a mandate for the public option; he didn’t need to be forced to combat public opinion because public opinion was with him all the way. Yet he still fucking dithered. So, correctly, he was attacked from the left in order to force him to do what the American people wanted and what liberal fans claim Obama personally wanted all along. But the left — FDL, Corrente, “Chomskyitesâ€, DFHs, pro-choicers, you know, the democratic base — are, somehow, the assholes in all this! So here’s Pelosi to save his bacon, Obama is rapidly accruing all the credit for HCR, and the Sensible Liberals are even more convinced they were right all along. I’m glad HCR passed but this center-left coalition can’t hold when it’s all center and no left.