If I can over-simplify ABL’s post about the chained CPI as “chill out, Obama’s got this”, then my position is something like “chill out and trust Obama to hear you”. The fact that Obama was a community organizer has been repeated so frequently that it’s cliche, but it still doesn’t change the fact that he’s looking for engagement from the people he represents. So when I wrote my Member of Congress to tell her not to support chained CPI, it wasn’t because I think that Obama and his surrogates are sellouts or phonies or frauds, it’s to encourage them to make a deal that doesn’t involve Social Security. My feelings about the Obama Administration–it’s fairly centrist, willing to compromise to get things done, too militaristic, a bit over-cautious, saddled with a terrible Congress, and probably the best Democrats can do at this point in history–didn’t change much.
What’s so irritating about a lot of the professional Progressives isn’t the policy content of what they’re saying, it’s the implicit or explicit notion that every compromise or too-conservative policy decision made by the Obama White House reflects some kind of betrayal. There’s got to be a way to criticize the Obama Administration, or to try to push it in a different directions, without all the sweet emotion we’ve been hearing for the last 4 years.