June 19, 2011 04:58 PM UTC

Liberals Rip Obama Spokesman; Polis Defends Administration

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• by: Colorado Pols

Our friends at the Washington Post report from the liberal Netroots Nation convention in Minneapolis (once known as “YearlyKos”)–a place Obama administration communications director Dan Pfeiffer knew he had to go, and probably knew what he would get there:

Liberal activists gave White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer a chilly reception on Friday at an online political conference as he tried to defend the Obama administration’s policies on gay marriage, Afghanistan and tax cuts.

To heckling and some loud boos, Pfeiffer drove home two themes to activists attending the Netroots Nation conference: change is hard and installing a Republican in the White House would be much worse than reelecting President Obama.

Leading up to 2012, tensions have spiked considerably between Obama and liberal activists as the latter group slams the Administration’s alleged inaction on some issues, and criticize compromises made on others, such as health-care reform…

Pfeiffer contended that the administration had gotten an “historic amount of things done in the first two years” despite the “challenges” posed by a Congress that didn’t always cooperate. He pointed to the Lily Ledbetter Act, which extended the amount of time people could sue for alleged wage discrimination.

“Frankly we’re a little sick of hearing about that one,” replied moderator Kaili Joy Gray.

So, we’ve watched some of the video clips from this exchange between Pfeiffer and the Daily Kos blogger known as “Angry Mouse” that are playing widely on cable news this weekend. And there were indeed a couple of moments, like Pfeiffer’s awkward backpedaling of a 1996 questionnaire where Obama apparently indicated a broader support for marriage equality than he has acted on as President, when you can understand the interviewer’s frustration.

Other times, like the snippy response on the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act above, it seemed more like a self-gratifying gripe session–trying just as hard to ignore progress Obama has made since becoming President as Pfeiffer was trying to highlight it. Which is not to say that liberals aren’t perfectly entitled to such a gripe session if they choose, since as Pfeiffer himself noted, “I also know that…without a lot of the people in this room today, Barack Obama would not be president of the United States.”

Yesterday, Rep. Jared Polis of Colorado, well-qualified to opine as the first openly gay man ever elected to Congress and a regular attendee of the Netroots Nation conventions, spoke out strongly in defense of the Obama administration’s record on LGBT issues–Huffington Post:

After heated criticism of President Barack Obama on gay issues at Netroots Nation, openly gay Congressman Jared Polis defended Obama on Saturday, calling him “the best president this country has ever had on LGBT issues.”

“[Gay Americans] have never had anything close to this much of an advocate in the White House in the United States,” the Colorado Democrat told HuffPost…

Polis pointed out that the president made two major steps forward: Obama signed into law a repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy that barred gays from the military and announced that his administration would no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a law requiring marriage to be between a man and a woman.

“We were ultimately successful [at ending Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell], and the president’s steadfast support of ending the policy the whole way through was very helpful in that regard,” Polis said. “I think he also deserves strong accolades for his decision not to appeal the DOMA case. That’s really a landmark decision, it’s been very rare in the annals of history.”

On a bare political level, we don’t see how Obama drawing some fire from ideological liberals is a bad thing for his re-election campaign. A dispassionate look at the progress made by the administration against extremely fierce partisan opposition really does help Obama with most liberal Democrats, as polling shows pretty clearly–there’s little to indicate that Obama faces a true threat or rebellion from his left. On the other hand, Obama can point to liberal dissatisfaction as evidence that he is not the evil socialist dictator-in-waiting that ideological right-wingers breathlessly make him out to be. And frankly, the latter is what he needs more to win in 2012.

We don’t doubt the sincerity of “Angry Mouse,” but we do hope she understands this part as well.