Good Cop, Bad Cop

Politico is smugly saying that Obama wants "left wing groups" to back off.

A White House official who was in the lunch tells POLITICO: "The President discussed how the current tone and culture in Washington made it more difficult than it has been in the past to work in a bipartisan fashion. In particular, he singled out Republican Senators who are trying to work in a bipartisan fashion even in the context of a vocal minority in their party who doubt that the President was born in the US. In this context about the less productive tone of the debate in Washington, he said he didn’t like to see 'left wing groups attack fellow Democrats.'"

I honestly think Politico is missing the context. I'm sure Obama said exactly that: he didn't like seeing them doing it. I think the context was however that these Democratic Senators should be backing the President in the first place so that they aren't having to be attacked. Obama's just playing good cop to MoveOn.org's bad cop.

Note that the attacks on the Senators are going on anyway. Politico doesn't get sarcasm, apparently. Steve Benen:

Instead, we're hearing that senators -- who'd prefer not to receive the pressure -- received supportive comments from a sympathetic president about those mean ol' activist groups leaning on members to do the right thing. As Ezra Klein noted in July, that makes sense as a strategy: "It looks like Obama is semi-publicly defending the congressional Democrats whose votes he'll eventually need. That, obviously, is what Obama needs to do. But that's different from seriously putting the screws on, say, the unions attacking restive centrists."

Right, and there's very little evidence to suggest the White House is doing anything to pressure those applying the pressure, beyond saying nice things to members of Congress about how awful it must be to feel so much pressure.

The larger issue is that Politico is determined to show this as Obama attacking progressive groups, "Obama Waves Off Liberals" is the tag line on the Politico article. He's clearly not, and hasn't been. Obama's playing chess, Politico is playing Mad Libs.

Then again, as long as progressives understand the strategy, perhaps Politico is actually doing a favor, reinforcing Obama's centrist credentials and backing up the good cop routine. Seems to me the White House expected this knee-jerk Village response to his "defense" of his ConservaDem friends in the Senate.

A few moves ahead, always.