Obama attacks the public option

No statement better illustrates the problem the president has with the Democratic
base than his attack on liberals, when he called them “sanctimonious”
and then proceeded to criticize their support for the public option.

Ultimately I decided to support the tax deal after looking at the details and
realizing how much it does for jobless workers and working-class voters, though
I would like to see some help added for workers who have been jobless for more
than 99 weeks.

However, the way it was done, and the way the president tried to sell it, only
dramatizes the problem he has because of the long-term pattern of insults
and condescension by the Democratic president toward the liberal base.

I have never seen any president speak this way to the base of his party.

Can anyone imagine Ronald Reagan speaking this way toward the conservative
base, even when he was negotiating with Gorbachev, and being attacked
for doing so by some very prominent conservative Republicans?

President Obama attacking the highly popular public option that he abandoned
without a fight on a widely unpopular healthcare bill?

These profoundly unwise comments add insult to injury, after much insult being
added to much injury, against the president’s most enthusiastic supporters
in 2008.

I predict the public option comes back in the next Congress from liberals who
believe it would be a splendid way to cut the deficit, which it would.

In the last election, if all registered voters had voted the Democrats would
have been virtually even, but with the depression of voters who had supported
the president the Republicans won a big victory.

The president may be happy with the way the healthcare debate affected the
elections and lost Democrats many seats, after the popular public option
was removed from a widely unpopular bill. Bringing this issue up now only
dramatizes how far the president is from the mood of the Democratic Party and
the electoral political reality of 2012.

As for the Republicans, they remain delusional if they believe the election
signified any major move by voters to the right, which it certainly did
not. If all registered voters had voted, the Republican landslide would have
disappeared.

Neither the president nor the Republicans have heard the message of the voters.

I sure thought that Wednesday’s speech by New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg was
very interesting. The sound you hear is the distant wind of a potential
third party that might well gather steam as the new Congress comes to town
in January.