Circular Firebagger Squad

Today's Joy Reid piece on anti-Obama liberals is especially prescient in the wake of the President's speech yesterday, but the greater point is that the firebaggers are not Obama's base, which is what the more pernicious elements of the media want you to think.  Kudos to Reid for pointing out the truth:  the firebaggers are fringe.

Polls show that more than 80 percent of self-described liberals and more than two-thirds of Democrats consistently approve of President Barack Obama’s job performance. But ask the Beltway media, and you’ll find that Obama is losing his base.

Perhaps that depends on what the meaning of “base” is.

If it’s African Americans or Hispanics or young voters, Obama still polls quite well. It’s unlikely that those groups will flock in 2012 to a Republican nominee invariably saddled with the birther, “throw grandma (and her Medicare) from the train, sate the rich, bust the unions and make the women have babies” madness that has overtaken the GOP.

But when cable news outlets or political writers go looking for “Obamacans,” they invariably turn to a rather elite group of liberals and progressive libertarians who, to put it mildly, are not high on the president.

To be honest, some of them never have been.

The argument over what and who is the "base" of the Democratic Party is largely irrelevant if your meaning of "base" is "I think the Democrats should do what I want them to do and I won't accept anything else."  Yes, I get frustrated on Obama's record on civil liberties and failure to do much of anything about the financial crisis...and then I gain a measure of perspective by seeing what the Republicans want to do to the country if they are placed back in charge and given a one-party rule scenario.  Obama's screw-ups frustrate me.  The Republicans in charge frighten me to the core of my being.  I will support Obama, thank you.

And that brings me to Reid's salient point:  Americans down in the trenches, who are not on TV, who are not making big bank, who are not writing magazine and major newspaper op-eds, understand this.  Do we wish things were better?  Hell yes.  Do we say "Well the guy's not perfect, so let's not bother to care or to vote?"  Well you know some of us did in 2010, and look where that got us.  If we repeat that same pattern will we hand the Senate and White House to the GOP as well?

Exactly how does that help the progressive cause, or the middle class?  How does pretending that Obama has near mystical power over the political reality of Washington and the Village help?  It doesn't...but that was never the point, was it?

If your "valid criticism" of the President leads to a long-term campaign of finding common cause with the Republican fringe, then ladies and gentlemen, you are the problem.