Well, I'm not picking out curtains just yet.
Having said that, as Ben Smith notes in the article, the President has made some good moves in the past week, and he should be lauded for it. Praising him doesn't mean we're naive. Hell, I've lauded Republicans when they've done the right thing, the least I can do is accord the same courtesy to our own. This is a good first step. And we'll be here to make sure there's a good second and third step as well.
President Barack Obama finally gave his liberal critics exactly what they wanted.
His tough opening bid on deficit reduction and his feisty, defiant speech from the White House Monday were greeted with almost incredulous joy by progressives who have urged Obama to take this kind of hard line with Republicans since the day he was elected.
After two years of disappointing compromises on health care, Wall Street reform, climate change and the Bush-era tax cuts — and nearly one year after Obama’s centrist tack in reaction to the 2010 midterm elections — Obama is now singing from the left’s playbook.
He called for $1.5 trillion in new taxes on the wealthy. He protected Social Security. And he declined to include a conciliatory offer to raise the Medicare eligibility age — a decision that thrilled “the professional left,” as his aides have long derided them, whose advice on policy and strategy was often ignored by a White House deeply committed to the legislative middle road.
