Newswise — “They will be remembering that the President was elected on a mandate of change and a promise of bipartisanship,” says David Coates, professor of political science at Wake Forest University and the author of “A Liberal Tool Kit: Progressive Answers to Conservative Arguments.”
Says Coates: “They recognize that his administration was immediately hit by a tsunami of problems that demanded immediate attention, and by a Republican Party whose idea of bipartisanship was simply to fight change. But, in his first year, President Obama has been insufficiently radical for many of his own base, and they fear that compromising with an intransigent opposition will only alienate core Democratic voters in the crucial mid-term elections to come. So they want less Wall Street and more Main Street. Fewer bonuses for overpaid bankers, more jobs for underpaid Americans. They want effective and rigorous financial regulation. They want speedy action to get credit flowing and employment rising again. They want the threat of foreclosure lifted off the shoulders of the American middle class, and the threat of deportation lifted off the shoulders of the Latino poor. More than anything, they want strong assertive presidential leadership on all these key issues. The White House has to go into campaign mode – exposing Republican hypocrisy and rekindling the grass roots enthusiasm that took Obama to the presidency in the first place. For many liberals, the mid-term elections begin with the State of the Union address. The Republicans are already in campaign mode. The question is: is the President?”
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