The good news: The “socialist mop” line made me laugh. The bad news: He’ll be telling us it’s our mess that he’s cleaning up until, oh, 2015 or so at the earliest. How he’s planning to blame the stimulus waste or inevitable cost overruns on health care on the right isn’t yet clear to me, but have faith. He’ll find a way. It’s … what he does.
Question: Given the electoral realities in Congress these days, is it really the right that’s his biggest pain in the ass?
“Can I speak freely about the liberal whiners?” asks a well-connected Democratic strategist. “These are the same people who have never participated in, much less won, a campaign, who have no idea what it takes to maintain a majority and keep a speaker of our party, who want Obama to kowtow to the loony Left, and then they’re going to be the ones who say, ‘What happened?’ in November 2010, when we lose the House and possibly the Senate and maybe a lot of governorships.”…
What to do? “Triangulate, baby, triangulate,” the Democratic strategist says. The netroots fringes are not only the loudest but also the least liked segment of the Democratic Party. If Obama, as well as Reid and Pelosi, are seen as standing up to the extremes on their side, that can’t hurt with moderate and conservative Democrats, as well as with the independents who have been abandoning the president in droves.
“Some disappointment and carping on the Left is good for Obama politically,” the strategist explains. “He needs to manage the Left well enough that he gets a [health care] bill passed, but not well enough that they shut up completely.”
Meanwhile, a good catch here by David Boze’s producer Jake. Weren’t we told just two months ago that when it comes to cleaning up messes, the best thing we can do is to shut up and get out of the way?
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