Not A Moment Too Soon

Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

TPM Reader MS, on the Obama press conference:

Just a quick ground-level view. This morning Diane Rehm had on a couple of DC pundits, including the Cook Political Report guy, and all of them were lamenting the failure to get a deal through because of elements on the extreme left and extreme right that opposed a compromise. At no point did it seem to occur to any of these savvy political brains that only one of the two negotiating parties was refusing to sign on the dotted line — for a deal much larger than anything they were demanding only a couple of years ago.

At one point, one guest even mentioned Americans For Tax Reform as a group with extreme views on the far right — while failing to mention that 99% of the GOP caucus had signed an ATR anti-tax pledge. No such phenomenon exists on the left, but to hear the radio show you would never know it. It just sounds like one more he-said-she-said from Capitol Hill.

The failure so far here has not just been in communicating to the center that it is the Democrats alone who are trying to compromise. Even among educated liberals this message isn’t getting through. Numerous conversations with friends and family, all of them lifelong Democrats, reveal a huge knowledge gap on this issue. The debate has entered into bizarro territory where mainstays like NPR can’t, or won’t, tread, and the result is a liberal base that is utterly clueless about the stakes and mechanics of the argument.

This speech came not a moment too soon and very possibly it’s too late, but this is exactly what Obama has needed to do for awhile now.

Latest Editors' Blog
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Associate Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: