The crack up on the left

Matt Welch:

Boy, this “Obama Derangement Syndrome” really has gotten out of hand. Why, just this past week the decreasingly popular president has been called a “bald-faced liar,” “an executive who can’t bring himself to lead,” and even an “Uncle Tom.”

And that’s just by liberals.

The progressive crack-up, before Obama even reaches the end of his first year, has been an awesome and occasionally humorous sight to see. Undead ’60s warhorse Tom Hayden got the ball rolling in early December with his dramatic announcement in The Nation that, with the president’s decision to increase troop levels, “It’s time to strip the Obama sticker off my car.”

Liberal historian Garry Wills joined the anguished chorus. “My wife and I had maxed out in donations for him. Our children had been ardent for his cause,” Wills wrote. “And now he betrays us.”

Obama’s intention to double down in Central Asia was no secret in 2008 — it’s right there on his campaign Web site: “Barack Obama will refocus our efforts on Afghanistan. He has a comprehensive strategy to succeed in Afghanistan with at least two more US combat brigades.”

But the Democrat’s strongest supporters had their eyes glued on the twin prize of repudiating George W. Bush and electing the nation’s first black president. Intra-party policy disagreements just weren’t a part of the conversation.

That began to change with the steady drip of minor disappointments early in the new administration: delaying closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison, writing a brief in support of the odious Defense of Marriage Act, ridiculing questions about legalizing marijuana, promiscuously invoking state secrets privileges, breaking campaign promises about transparency, and so on.

Meanwhile, with the economy continuing to spit blood, liberals became increasingly aware of — and irritated by — what libertarians could have told them all along: You can’t credibly claim to be cracking down on Wall Street “fat cats” in one breath while in the other shoveling hundreds of billions into their pockets and letting industry insiders write financial policy.

...

They have their disappointments, but the real loss of support for Obama is in the middle and the health care and energy policy bills have angered the center as much as the right. Bills that leftest thought were not liberal enough were too liberal for the rest of the US. The stimulus bill was a fiasco, and the health care bill looks like a political and economic disaster. The cap and trade bill is an economy killer. There is plenty not to like about this administration from all sides.