"Robert Gibbs was right to criticize the 'professional left'..I'm with Gibbs"

[Cha]

<snip>

"At times I've found White House press secretary Robert Gibbs to be unnecessarily irascible, and maybe his lashing out at the constant grumbling of the "professional left" wasn't the best tactic. You want the base worked up -- but for you, not about you.

Nonetheless, his basic point was spot on: The complainers from the left are, in some combination, myopic, forgetful and deranged.

Gibbs is far from the only White House official with these frustrations, but he's the first to share them on the record and, therefore, the first to walk them back. He issued a statement longer than the original offending words acknowledging that he may have spoken "inartfully" -- which is Washington-speak for honestly -- and confessing to watching "too much cable."

That last part may be true. As to the rest of it -- Gibbs was right the first time.


"I hear these people saying he's like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested," Gibbs told The Hill's Sam Youngman, in an interview published Tuesday. "I mean, it's crazy."

This "professional left," he added, "will be satisfied when we have Canadian health care and we've eliminated the Pentagon. That's not reality."

Indeed, for all the derision from the left about the Bush administration not being "reality-based," many lefty bloggers and talking heads have failed to be reality-based in assessing the Obama administration.

Health-care reform, in this glass-half-empty world, is a disappointment because it lacks a public option. The president's failure to close Guantanamo or end the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy is a betrayal. If only President Obama was willing to bang heads, name names, stand tough, he would have been able to get -- fill in the blank -- a bigger stimulus, tougher financial reform, new legislation to help unions organize.

Excuse me, but can these people not count to 60? Have they somehow failed to notice that Mitch McConnell and John Boehner have not exactly been playing nice? That while the left laments Obama's minor deviations from party orthodoxy, the right has been portraying him, with some success, as an out-of-control socialist?

<more>
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/08/robert_gibbs_was_right_to_crit.html

The thing is..these professionals lefts aren't doing any service at all, in my best cheerleading voice..and proud to be a cheerleader for Democracy. RAH RAH

They claim to be the base but I know many people in Pres Obama's base and they aren't interested in what these professionals have to whine about.

[flamingdem]

1. The common enemy is out there drooling over the Democratic infighting

and readying their troops for November.

Of course the midterms ARE ALL OBAMA'S FAULT!

(Did I see Karl Rove snickering in the corner?)

[yowzayowzayowza]

2. "Carping cavilers of cyberspace"

Good one!!! Thx.

:thumbsup:

[Hekate]

3. "Inartfully" joins "gaffe" as Washington-speak for "Told the truth."

Now I'm on a bunch of DUers' hate lists because I vigorously defended the guy. -->Just put me on Ignore, okay?

[Sheepshank]

4. hate list?

seems a little ironic, doesn't it?

Yup, I'm with Gibbs on this one. I've been trying to say the same thing on the GD for some time, but it always got diluted and of course had a much narrower readership lol.

[Lindsey]

5. I totally agree. I think DU has a lot of Greens posting. n/t