The Problem With Liberals

I just finished reading "Dean's Blind Spot" by Ronald Brownstein on The Daily Dish. Brownstein writes about what has been driving me crazy about health care reform, Afghanistan, Copenhagen, and Obama's falling approval ratings.

Let's talk about approval ratings before getting back to Brownstein. Obama's approval rating hovering around fifty percent (according to Karl Rove, the lowest of any new president at the end of the first year)is deceptive. Eight years ago the people who disapproved of Bush II's performance were united in their disdain, or disgust. United also were the fifty percent of the population who disapproved of Ronald Reagan's performance at the end of his first year. (Rove, not surprisingly, was wrong. Reagan's ratings were equal to if not worse than Obama's. Of course that fact would not be convenient to Rove's argument.)

In Obama's case, the disapproval is coming from totally different camps. Bill Maher, Howard Dean, Ed Schulz, and the like are screaming (You would think Dean would have learned about screaming!)because the bill will not include EVERYTHING they demand. Obama should get tough with Joe Leiberman they say. Bully the holdouts. Threaten the republicans. Stop trying to be bi-partisan. What they actually want is for Obama to be, well, Rovian. The conservative shouters, on the other hand, are screaming because the bill seems to be getting ANYTHING Obama wants. Even though THE HUFFINGTON POST disagrees, I suspect those approval numbers will jump dramatically once health care passes in some form because the necessity for posturing will be over.

As a liberal, I'm angry and frustrated that recalcitrance has become the republican default position. But I am more flabbergasted at the liberal reaction. After all, getting mad at republicans for wanting to cut services as they cut taxes is like getting mad at sharks for nibbling on swimmers. Is it possible that Bill Maher, Arianna Huffington, Howard Dean, et. al. really believed Obama and his non-majority majority would accomplish everything the campaign promised? Has there ever been such a campaign? Is it possible that all these liberals would be willing to cut off their nose to spite their face because the health care bill, while the biggest social program since The New Deal, is not perfect?

Back to Brownstein who says the biggest reason why so many liberals are abandoning the Obama bandwagon is because college educated white voters tend to be the demographic using the internet as its main information source and the internet "makes more noise" politically than just about anything you can think of. This is the demographic that Howard Dean mined in his ill-fated presidential bid. That demographic also provided the energy behind Obama's campaign, but it didn't stop there. It spread because of the nature of Obama and his promise.

According to Brownstein, the problem is that "college educated white voters . . . tend to see politics less as a means of tangibly improving their own lives than as an opportunity to make a statement about the kind of society they want America to be."

These statement makers don't have to really worry about health care. Approximately 97% of this group has great coverage. So the health care debate for them really is an intellectual exercise, a parliamentary battle like the kind they used to have in junior high when they first learned ROBERTS RULES OF ORDER.

They tend to forget that for millions of americans this is no parliamentary game; this is literally about life and death. They have neither the wherewithal nor the time to cruise the net every day to see what the pundits are saying. They don't have the time to wait for perfection.

Who does?