Four Ways Obama Can Win Back Liberals - Democratic Underground

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Mon Jan-25-10 02:54 PM
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Four Ways Obama Can Win Back Liberals

Instead of reaching out to Republicans in his State of the Union, President Obama needs to reassure his base. Here are four ways he can do that.

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Here is what liberals are looking for from Obama to herald in what they hope will be a very different second year:

More populist policies. Obama has finally begun taking on the banks like a modern-day Teddy Roosevelt. Liberals would cheer if Obama dumped his economic team of Wall Street insiders and installed Elizabeth Warren, the truth-telling Harvard professor who chairs the congressional oversight panel investing the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Obama can steal the thunder back from the tea party movement with an economic populism that reflects liberal principles.

The vision thing. We thought this was Obama's strong suit, reaching the rhetorical highs and drawing everybody together in the service of American ideals. He's lost sight of that in the press of business, and the State of the Union is his opportunity to recast his first year in big-picture terms and explain how that vision translates into combating unemployment, bashing bankers, and extending health-care coverage. This is an opportunity to address his domestic agenda with the same passion and intellect he brought to discussing the just war, reaching out to the Muslim world, and addressing the race issue when the fate of his campaign was at stake.

Reestablish what makes him different. Voters are beyond angry; they are in a white fury over the business-as-usual way of operating in Washington. Senator-elect Scott Brown summed it up in his morning-after press conference, referring to the special deals made to win Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson's vote for health-care reform and court support from union leaders, at the expense of Americans who don't live in Nebraska or belong to a union. Obama's appeal during the campaign transcended left-right politics, with voters believing that as president he would pursue an approach that would be very different from politics as usual. "The most important thing for the president is to vindicate that he is still that same person," says Democratic pollster Geoffrey Garin. Obama should acknowledge that transformational change is not easy, and he should enlist voters in the effort, the way he did during the campaign. This was supposed to be an administration that was more engaged with the voters. What happened with that?

Play "guts ball." Defining the differences between Republicans and Democrats is not Obama's comfort zone. He's trying to be a post-partisan president, but it's gotten him nothing but a year of heartache, while Republicans pay no price for blocking him at every turn. With 59 Democratic votes in the Senate, Obama ought to be able to govern. "Let them filibuster," says Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, who thinks Republicans should be held to the rules and made to talk continuously around the clock. "If we roll up our sleeves and play guts ball, we can win," says Rendell, who believes Americans would side with Obama. He likens it to the government shutdown of 1995 that grew out of a budget dispute between President Clinton and Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich. Clinton stood firm and the public backed him, forcing Gingrich to capitulate. It was a clash worthy of Avatar, and a reminder of how far a little backbone can go, with voters raging at spineless bureaucrats and elected officials.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/232096