Obama Leaves House Dems Out in the Cold. Should He?

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


President Obama has to pull off a tricky balancing act in his 2012 re-election fight: wooing independents without alienating his liberal base. His strategy was on full display this week as he dove into the battle over the deficit. On the one hand, Obama embraced the Republican idea that cutting the deficit should be a top priority—falling into a trap that the House GOP set last week when it rolled out Rep. Paul Ryan’s drastic budget proposal. On the other hand, Obama tacked left in his speech on Wednesday by making a vigorous defense of government entitlements and insisting that savings must come from elsewhere.

There’s one group, though, that doesn’t seem to be playing a big part in Obama’s strategy: Congressional Democrats, particularly House Dems who’ve been sidelined in the minority. Obama is charging ahead with his deficit message this week without so much as giving a heads up to his allies in Congress. House Leader Nancy Pelosi—who’s been persona non grata since the beginning of the new Congress—expressed her frustration to White House adviser Gene Sperling in a private meeting on Thursday. “Maybe you could consult with us just once,” Pelosi told Sperling, according to Politico.

Other House Dems expressed similar sentiments after Obama surprised them with the news that he was planning a major speech on the deficit. “He sprung it on us,” Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) told Mother Jones on Monday night. “When you’re going into something like this, my view is that you want to have as many on your side as—I would have laid the groundwork a little.”

Politically speaking, Obama seems to believe it’s in his best interest to distance himself from Pelosi and House Democrats. They represent the more liberal wing of his party in Congress and made the final push to pass the still-unpopular Affordable Care Act. The president may believe that by keeping his distance, he can better control his image and gain the flexibility to shore up his liberal bona fides or tack to the center depending on the circumstances. 

But in bypassing Democratic leaders, Obama also runs the risk of ceding ground to Republicans in the few legislative deals that must be made before his re-election. House Democratic leaders have already been struggling to keep up with Obama’s rope-a-dope, paying lip service to the decidedly centrist Bowles-Simpson deficit plan while distancing themselves from its most controversial elements.

Now the White House is planning to go over the head of Congress yet again by convening a working group to issue recommendations on the deficit, whose work will happen in the midst of the upcoming fight over the debt limit. Pelosi warned that pushing out such concrete proposals right before the vote could embolden Republicans to ask for major concessions in exchange for raising the debt limit. Such a sequence of events may help Obama win over centrist voters in 2012. But it could hurt Hill Democrats who need to pass legislation in 2011.

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate