The story du jour is going to be Robert Gibbs’s interview with The Hill. The White House is frustrated with the relentless negativity they’re getting from their left flank, which is the same exact thing that I’ve been fulminating against ever since a good part of the progressive blogosphere decided to fight against the passage of the health care bill. Much of what Gibbs said needed to be said, albeit probably in a less dismissive tone. For example, Gibbs goes too far here:
The press secretary dismissed the “professional left” in terms very similar to those used by their opponents on the ideological right, saying, “They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.”
This is an exaggeration. While we won’t be “satisfied” until we have a Canadian-style health care system, we would have been content with a public option that got the ball rolling down that road. And we don’t want to eliminate the Pentagon. We want to get the peace dividend we were denied when terrorism replaced communism as the raison d’etre for our astronomical military budget. We know it’s nearly impossible to eliminate military programs, but we feel that the military budget is so bloated and our missions are so over-ambitious that we should trim the Pentagon before we touch Social Security, Medicare, or other valuable social programs. Gibbs knows we’re right on these issues, so he should be a little more respectful despite our detachment from reality.
On this part, I agree with Gibbs completely:
“There’s 101 things we’ve done,” said Gibbs, who then mentioned both Iraq and healthcare.
Gibbs said the professional left is not representative of the progressives who organized, campaigned, raised money and ultimately voted for Obama.
Progressives, Gibbs said, are the liberals outside of Washington “in America,” and they are grateful for what Obama has accomplished in a shattered economy with uniform Republican opposition and a short amount of time.
As I’ve been saying for about a year, the progressive commentariat is not representative of “the progressives who organized, campaigned, raised money and ultimately voted for Obama.” That doesn’t make “the professional left” wrong on the issues. For the most part, they’re right on the issues. Where they tend to err is their understanding of Washington DC, the Congress, and the political realities facing elected Democrats all over this country. They err when they assign blame in the wrong places for the results we’ve seen so far.
If Gibbs thinks his comments are going to win over the progressive elite, he’s the one who needs to be drug-tested. But I feel his pain.
