Liberals to keep pressure on Obama for results
By BEN FELLER
Associated Press
December 1, 2008
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Barack Obama promises to steer the nation straight again. He better be ready for a strong force pulling left.
The president-elect drew plenty of support from moderates, but the liberal side of the Democratic Party followed him most resoundingly: labor unions, influential Internet blogs and legions of grassroots volunteers. He won almost 90 percent of the liberal vote, more than the previous two Democratic presidential nominees, John Kerry or Al Gore.
Now the same millions of left-leaning voters who worked relentlessly to get Obama elected want results. That means ending the war in Iraq, ushering in universal health care, halting harsh interrogation tactics against suspected terrorists, making it easier to form unions and aggressively tackling global warming.
"We'll see," said Eli Pariser, executive director of the liberal powerhouse Moveon.org, about what Obama will deliver. "If they turn out to be all disappointments, we'll have a good three years to storm the gates at the White House."
Already, the liberal blogosphere is showing its influence.
John Brennan, Obama's top pick to head the CIA, suddenly withdrew his name from consideration under pressure this past week. His potential appointment had raised a firestorm among liberal blogs that associate him with the Bush administration's interrogation, detention and rendition policies. Within hours, blogs that raised concerns about Brennan's career claimed victory about their successful exercise in free speech.
The debt is starting to come due on Obama's promise of "change we can believe in." Except he meant "we" in a broader sense.
He promised to lead with a bipartisan spirit, the kind that could unify a country and allow him to get deals through Congress. From the moment he won, he implored people: "Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship."
And then he set out to take his own advice.
Obama's courting of Republicans -- for ideas, legislative support, and potential roles in his Cabinet -- is drawing cautious attention from the liberal base of his Democratic Party. The concern, to the degree that it exists this soon, is that Obama's emphasis on governing from the center may undermine the left.
He still pledges to wind down the war in Iraq, but everything comes second to fixing the staggering economy right now. He has stood up in defense for Sen. Joe Lieberman, a virtual Democratic outcast these days, and sought help from his Republican presidential foe, Sen. John McCain.
Obama is building a government with several Clinton administration faces, a move that has underwhelmed some liberal voices who are eager for a more dramatic sense of change.
In one posting that seemed to echo in the Internet community, liberal blogger Chris Bowers wrote, "I feel incredibly frustrated. ... Isn't there ever a point when we can get an actual Democratic administration? Why isn't there a single member of Obama's Cabinet who will be advising him from the left?"
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