John Aravosis with a real doozy of a story:
From Ben Smith, who confirmed it from two sources, we learn 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 he reached with Republican Speaker John Boehner:
Yesterday, [White House National Economic Council Director Gene] Sperling faced a series of questions about the White House’s concessions on the debt ceiling fight, and its inability to move in the directions of new taxes or revenues. 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.
That sounds oddly familiar. In fact, it’s the same admonishment a group of liberal bloggers received from then- vice presidential economic adviser Jared Bernstein on the one-year anniversary of the stimulus. I attended that meeting and wrote at the time, back in February of 2010:
I guess what struck me as most interesting about the meeting were two things. First, when Bernstein noted that, in trying to solve the country’s economic problems, the administration faces “budget constraints and political constraints.” By that, I took Bernstein to mean that the stimulus could only be so large last time, and we can only spend so much more money this time, because we’re facing a huge deficit, so there’s not much money to spend, and because the Hill and public opinion won’t let us spend more.
That struck me as GOP talking points winning the day, and I said so (Professor Kyle wrote about this very notion the other day on the blog). The only reason we’re facing a budget constraint is because we gave in on the political constraint. We permitted Republicans to spin the first stimulus as an abysmal failure, when in fact it created or saved up to 2m jobs. Since Democrats didn’t adequately defend the stimulus, and didn’t sufficiently paint the deficit as the Republicans’ doing, we now are not “politically” permitted to have a larger stimulus because the fiscal constraint has become more important than economic recovery.
And whose fault is that?
Apparently ours.
Bernstein said that the progressive blogs (perhaps he said progressive media in general) haven’t done enough over the past year to tell the positive side of the stimulus.
[…] 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.
That is correct, and nothing, nothing, nothing will ever make them change their puny little minds – even real unemployment at 50%.
Yeah. Sickening to think they reason that way because of self-dealing and corruption, but truly frightening to realize they are just really that stupid.
I’m a regular visitor to The Howler where Bob Somerby takes the liberal media in general to task for ineffective messaging – so I see a point here, although blaing the left blogosphere is a stretch. We’ve let the right-wing noise machine crush liberal ideology in this country. BUT-
The disconnect with the WH is that they seem to think they’re doing things progressives can cheer about. In what universe would that be? I’d be interested to know if Sperling itemized any for the group.
oops! …blaming the left blogosphere…
Think about it this way. Boehner negotiated a deal in which he got 98% of what he wanted and 0% of what he did not want. And yet he still did not have the votes in the House and Senate to pass the thing.
The Democrats had the decisive votes in their hands, but they got NOTHING out of the deal. NINETY FIVE DEMOCRATS in the House and FORTY FIVE DEMOCRATS in the Senate voted for it for NOTHING.
According to Speaker Pelosi, Boehner never talked to her, and she never asked the members to vote for the bill. According to an article in Mother Jones “Pelosi didn’t have to send any signal. Her Democrats, she says, are a “sophisticated” group, and they could see that without Democratic support the bill would fail.”
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/pelosi-boehner-debt-ceiling-deal
They don’t talk about whether their actions are right or wrong or good for the country, they want to prove that they did the right thing by the polls that result. Its about nothing but Obama’s re-election, which I guess is understandable since that is their job, to get him re-elected. To them, its a game, and people are just objects to be manipulated into casting a vote.