President Obama can easily satisfy and silence liberal critics

By Demo_Chris

Some folks have said that President Obama’s liberal critics are purists, and that we will accept nothing less than progressive perfection. That, like the Tea Party folks on the right, anything less than this leaves us frothing in self-righteous rage.

I disagree. In my opinion, silencing the critics is easy.

Your liberal critics are not fools. We understand that politics is the art of the possible, and that it requires compromise. We knew this when we voted. But the promise, the expectation, was that we were sending a champion of our beliefs to the negotiation table. Someone to fight for our principles.

We voted for someone to demand and fight for…

* Ending the wars.
* Drastic cuts in military spending.
* Closing Gitmo and all the secret prisons.
* Eliminating the Patriot act and all domestic spying.
* Removal of the cap on social security.
* Lowering the age of eligibility and increasing benefits.
* Increasing safety net spending.
* Massive and necessary infrastructure investment.
* Radically increasing the tax rate on affluent Americans.
* Taxing capital gains as income.
* Significant efforts to address wealth inequality.
* A champion of civil rights for ALL.
* Eliminating so-called Free Trade Agreements.
* Blanket amnesty for illegal immigrants.
* Serious action to address global warming.
* Single payer healthcare.

Obviously, being intelligent people, we knew we would not get everything we wanted; we might not get anything we wanted. We knew our champion might have to compromise, but our beliefs would be represented.

President Obama asked for that job. Now he is refusing to do it. He is positioning himself, not as the champion of liberal democratic voters (or even the majority of Americans), but as the voice of rational conservatism.

President Obama, silencing your liberal critics is easy. Stop representing the GOP, and start representing the people who voted for you. That’s the job you said you wanted, so do it.