So says a report from The Politico:
Liberals are growing increasingly nervous – and some just flat-out angry – that President-elect Barack Obama seems to be stiffing them on Cabinet jobs and policy choices.
Obama has reversed pledges to immediately repeal tax cuts for the wealthy and take on Big Oil. He’s hedged his call for a quick drawdown in Iraq. And he’s stocking his White House with anything but stalwarts of the left.
Now some are shedding a reluctance to puncture the liberal euphoria at being rid of President George W. Bush to say, in effect, that the new boss looks like the old boss.
I’ve blogged about this before, Obama; once the inevitable was about to happen and he was about to be elected, choose to run a more moderate campaign. Now that he is elected, is choosing to run his campaign as a centrist or a pragmatist. Well, this has some on the far left, a bit upset.
Which prompted an former Obama staffer to fire off a article about it:
This is not a time for the left wing of our Party to draw conclusions about the Cabinet and White House appointments that President-Elect Obama is making. Some believe the appointments generally aren’t progressive enough. Having worked with former Senator Obama for the last two years, I can tell you, that isn’t the way he thinks and it’s not likely the way he will lead. The problems I mentioned above and the many I didn’t, suggest that our president surround himself with the most qualified people to address these challenges. After all, he was elected to be the president of all the people – not just those on the left.
Well, the far left is having none of that:
People on the left are not looking at Obama’s appointments with a jaundiced eye because they think he needs to apply some liberal orthodoxy litmus test. They have legitimate concerns that people like Geitner, Summers and other Rubin acolytes created this mess, and it’s reasonable to ask why they’re being appointed to get us out of it. While some of us want to give Obama a chance to fulfill the promises he campaigned on and work with the staff of his choice in order to do so, we’d have to be a bunch of intellectually dishonest kool-aid swilling freaks to pretend his economics team didn’t have some troublesome baggage.
[…]
And after the past eight years, it’s a bit much to stomach someone saying “just shut up and trust me, because I know better.”
There is a lot of speculation right now about what will happen with the 13 million member email list the Obama campaign built, and there is some talk of Hildebrand running an organization that manages it.
I wonder how long those membership numbers will hold up when any criticism of Obama is greeted with patronizing lectures and sneering condescension for its liberals?
I think the biggest problem is that the far left thought that Obama was going to serve their purposes. The problem with that is, The President of the United States serves everyone, not just the far Liberal left. He also serves the people that did not vote for him.
The problem with this issue is this. The Democratic Party, lead by those of the far left attempted to make Barack Obama into a Messianic figure, who would be perfect, who would serve their proposes and further the progressive agenda. Turns out, they were quite frightfully wrong. It is nothing new, the Democrats have been overreaching and dong this sort of stuff for years. It is, quite frankly, nothing new at all.
(Hat Tip to Q&O for guidance and Memeorandum for Lead)