Liberal group threatens to pull Obama support

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution courtesy of Digg:

About a dozen people representing the Progressive Change Campaign Committee delivered what they said were 200,000 pledges from people who will refuse to donate or volunteer for Obama's re-election campaign if he cuts the entitlement programs.

"It's not a question of who they're going to support for president, they're going to vote for Barack Obama. It's a question of where their time and money is going to go," spokesman T. Neil Sroka said.

Obama has been taking heat from the left over the debt ceiling negotiations, in which he has been willing to target the long-standing programs. His approach is certain to sit better with independent voters, many of whom have told pollsters they want Washington politicians to work together to solve the big problems.

Sroka said the 200,000 people represent more than $17 million in donations to Obama's campaign in 2008 and about 2.6 million volunteer hours.

More here.

Okay, this is good news.

Actually, I've been waiting for something like this for years. I'm not really going to get my hopes up yet, though. What liberals desperately need to understand is that guys like Obama are not on their side. Indeed, most of the Democratic Party is not on their side, and it's high time to cut and run to see what we can do on our own. I mean, as you know, after feeling like a fool for allowing myself to be talked into voting for Kerry back in 2004, I vowed to never vote for the Democrats unless and until they start acting like a liberal party--since then they've only moved further to the right.

But like I said, one group does not a changing tide make. It's a start, yes, but I still get the sense that most American liberals continue to tribally identify with the Democrats, and it's going to take more than Obama's now characteristic throwing of the left under the bus to rile them enough to flex their muscles.

What will it take? Hell if I know. Extending the Patriot Act didn't do it. Continuing the Middle East wars didn't do it. Handing over hundreds of billions of tax payer dollars without strings to the banksters who nearly toppled the economy didn't do it. Mandating that citizens directly fork over hundreds of billions to private health insurance corporations didn't do it. Making sweet love to BP didn't do it. And offering the Republicans steep cuts in Democratic self-identifying cornerstone programs Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security doesn't seem to have done the trick, either.

Maybe liberals just like to be in abusive relationships. I don't know. It'll probably take news footage of Obama along these lines to turn it around:



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