Good for us

Liberal groups blast Obama for considering tax compromise

By Perry Bacon Jr., Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, December 2, 2010; 10:50 AM

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a liberal group that has repeatedly attacked President Obama on the left, is airing an ad demanding that he not agree to any compromise with the GOP that would extend tax cuts for household incomes above $250,000 a year.

The spot is called “Obama Promised,” and the group says it will air on CNN and MSNBC and on Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central over the next few days. It shows Obama in 2007 declaring that “we will also allow the temporary Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans to expire.”

Meanwhile, Moveon.Org has its own new ad, titled “Obama Back,” which in cludes a video montage from Americans all over the country urging the president not to compromise.

“MoveOn members worked countless hours to help elect President Obama so we would have a leader who would go to the mat for regular Americans,” said Justin Ruben, Executive Director of MoveOn.org. “…We need the Obama of 2008 back to lead the fight and make the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share.”

Lefty group running ad slamming Obama — in Iowa

By Greg Sargent, The Washington Post

Posted at 11:01 AM ET, 12/ 2/2010

This means actual voters will see the spot, the first hitting Obama from the left of the new cycle. Iowa has special significance, because it’s there that Obama made his 2007 campaign promise to let the tax cuts for the wealthy expire, which is the centerpiece of the ad. The spot demands that Obama stick to his promise and not “cave” to Republicans by extending the tax cuts for the rich.

“We’re bringing our ad to the place President Obama made his core campaign promise of letting the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire,” Green tells me. “There is no room for compromise on an issue where the promise is so clear and where the Republicans are standing with the wealthiest 2% of Americans against the entirety of the American people.”

Between this spot and the new one unveiled this morning by MoveOn, it’s clear that the left has settled on a strategy of actively trying to damage Obama politically with the base and with left-leaning independents by painting him as weak, to force him to draw a harder line against Republicans. The left, clearly, has no intention of stopping with these efforts.

Surely some will insist that it only helps Obama to be attacked from the left. But efforts to encourage the perception that Obama is weak and refuses to fight — which is gaining some traction with the mainstream media, whether fair or not — could very well damage Obama politically over the long term. And the White House will probably have to deal with it sooner or later.