Whaddaya know, liberals are back! (We're the PROBLEM, of course, but I guess it's better than being ignored)

Yesterday this seemed like a pretty trenchant cartoon from the great Monte Wolverton. Now it turns out he's got it all wrong, the problem is us liberals -- for not doing a fervent enough selling job on the Obama administration's great accomplishments.

by Ken

As some readers will recall, I tend not so much to read as to osmose (I don't suppose there is such a word, but that's not my fault) stuff like the major newsletters' e-newsletter digests of their current Web content. So this afternoon my eyes like to popped out when I eyeballed washingtonpost.com's "Afternoon Edition" and saw the first two items were . . . well, look for yourself:

Well, no, I didn't actually read either story; I'm not that much of a masochist. (If you'd like to, here's a link to the real page with real links.) I kind of got the idea here, and while it seems clear that in both cases we're being treated as spoiled, crack-brained, troublemaking children, the amazing thing to me is that we normally invisible liberals are being talked about at all in such hotbeds of political "respectabity" as WaPo's PostPolitics. We're back, baby!

And not as preemptively euphemized "progressives" either. (Though it may be that the political geeks at the Post share that odd notion that slipped out the other day in an otherwise quite sensible column of Gene Robinson's, where it turned out that "progressives" = "Democrats.") No, suddenly PostPolitics has liberals on its mind.

AND IT TURNS OUT THAT IT REALLY IS OUR FAULT,
AND THE WHITE HOUSE IS HERE TO TELL US

Really good, important column by our colleague John Arivosis at AmericaBlog, "White House blames lib groups for deficit deal debacle at secret meeting." John begins by quoting from a report by Politico's Ben Smith, usually to be trusted when it comes to enforcing political orthodoxy, "that at last night's "Common Purpose" meeting, a regular (supposed to be secret) get together between the White House and progressive advocacy groups (where the White House routinely yells at them, I hear), the groups got an earful about the President's new deficit deal."

Progressive consultant Mike Lux, the sources said, summed up the liberal concern, producing what a participant described as an "extremely defensive" response from Sperling.

Sperling, a person involved said, pointed his finger backed at liberal groups, which he said hadn't done enough to highlight what he saw as the positive side of the debt package -- a message that didn't go over well with participants.

Which, John says, "sounds oddly familiar," since he was on the receiving end of just such an admonishment as part of a group of liberal bloggers granted an audience in February 2010 with then vice presidential economic adviser Jared Bernstein, who berated liberal media for failing to persuade the nation of the wonders of the president's stimulus program.

I remember Bernstein specifically asking the Nation's Chris Hayes whether he and his paper had done enough to help promote the benefits of the stimulus over the proceeding year. Chris said that they had just done a podcast about it that day, but yes he probably could have done more. I recall jumping in and noting that Chris was the last person Berstein should criticize, as he's on Rachel Maddow every night defending the administration quite diligently.

In any case, this isn't a coincidence. They actually believe, inside the White House, that we're to blame for their problems. That they're doing a chipper job and the public would know it, but for the Netroots and the liberal advocacy groups doing such a lousy job selling the President's magnificent handiwork.

Things aren't getting better because the administration doesn't even recognize that they are -- that their boss is -- the problem.

IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING WHAT THE NO. 3
STORY WAS THIS AFTERNOON IN POSTPOLITICSWORLD . . .


And it suddenly occurred to me, what about Bob? Ever since he was inaugurated as governor of Virginia last year -- as a leading indicator of the political ineptitude of the Obama administration, clueless about the effect offering "GOP lite" candidates would have on the new and liberal-base voters who had put him in the White House the year before -- he's probably been thinking of himself as the Leading Far-Right Crackpot Governor in the Land. And now here he is eclipsed by thugs and sociopaths like Scott Walker, Rick Scott, and John Kasich, with such attention as is paid to Virginia winguttery going to AG "Cuckoo" Cuccinelli, who can effortlessly deliver on the promise that nobody on the planet will be caught saying crazier stuff than him.

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