The Fix: Left Rises Up Against Obama.
It sure is good, schadenfreudeian fun to see Jane Hamsher and others gripe in disappointment (by the way, is Oliver Willis going to do anything about this or is he on vacation?), but I think saying they’re rising up against Obama is an exaggeration. There is no insurrection on the Left against the Pro-Torture Obama Administration and their will never be one (Does that make them pro-torture? Hmmm…). There is just a general sense of disappointment which will sure pass soon.
This should come as no surprise. Obama has been disappointing supporters since before he was even inaugurated. And he hasn’t stopped adopting Bushian policies – leaving supporters looking like rubes – in the barely 5 months he’s been in office. But they have no choice. Obama’s popularity must be maintained at all costs. So they’ll whine a little bit and then go back to worshipping The One and his pro-torture, pro-indefinite detention regime administration with the same fervent support they’ve always expressed before. The only difference is that the Left won’t be able to credibly demagogue civil libertarianism against the Right for a few years.
That aside, I don’t doubt all this griping and disappointment from the Left is sincere. After all, many of them really took the “Change and Hope” stuff during the campaign literally instead of as the political sloganeering that it was. The funny thing is that so many of those people make fun of their political opponents as unsophisticated, naive, and ignorant as a matter of course.
UPDATE: Related content: Obama Shocks the Elites (via Instapundit). I don’t understand why there would be any shock whatsoever. When the President made bi-partisan overtures in the days running up to his inauguration, I took them to mean that he would merely strike a bi-partisan tone and nothing more (especially with Democrats controlling Congress). I never fooled myself about him being anything other than a hard Leftist. I mean, how do you get tight with Reverend Wright and Bill Ayers as a centrist?