Democratic strategist James Carville said Friday that he doesn’t think President Barack Obama is sweating the criticisim he’s taken from his liberal base over a budget proposal that includes cuts to Social Security.
Appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Carville said he thinks Obama relishes the commendation he’s received from deficit hawks like New York Times columnist David Brooks and host Joe Scarborough. Asked by co-host Mike Barnicle how the President will respond to the outrage from the left-wing of the Democratic Party, Carville was blunt.
“I think he likes that,” Carville said. “I don’t think he’s upset. He got a very favorable Washington Post editorial. ‘Morning Joe,’ very favorable commentary right here. I guarantee you if he’s up watching this right now. Got a good David Brooks column. He’s kind of excited this morning. This is kind of important to him.”
But Carville added that the White House is not “totally out of bounds” with its budget, arguing that the proposal will “throw the Republicans off” and that Obama is desperate to strike a grand bargain with the GOP.
Obama’s proposal sparked an uproar among progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and the liberal advocacy group MoveOn, but it was met with praise from other sources, as Carville noted. In his column on Friday, Brooks wrote that Obama has “the guts to take on special interests in his own party.” The Washington Post’s editorial board, meanwhile, contended that Obama’s proposal represented a “big step toward acknowledging reality.”
