President Barack Obama is facing challenges not only from Congressional Republicans but also from factions within the Democratic Party and among the liberal media.
“Members of his own party in the Congress seem to be going their own way,” Sean Wilentz, a history professor at Princeton University,”
told The Wall Street Journal, saying that the emerging strains are causing “a political headache” for the president.
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Liberals have openly criticized Obama’s proposed use of force in Syria, his willingness to reduce entitlement benefits and his support for awarding the Fed chairmanship to Larry Summers,
who was forced to withdraw from the running because of the Democratic uproar.
“What the American people want now is a Fed chairman prepared to stand up to the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street, not a Wall Street insider whose deregulation efforts helped pave the way for a horrendous financial crisis and the worst economic downturn in the country since the Great Depression,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who caucuses with the Democrats, in a written statement Sunday.
But the move was seen as a blow for the president, signaling his inability to keep the party unified behind him.
“To me the lesson is lame duck-ism. Whenever a president projects weakness, it affects both parties,” Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics,
told the Journal, adding, “His own troops are more likely to say ‘every man for himself’...and the other party, which is opposed anyway, sees this as a sign they will pay no price for opposing the president.”
The President also has been enduring some of the toughest and widespread media criticism of his presidency, not just from the right but, increasingly, from the center and left as well,
reports Politico.
Time magazine political columnist and moderate Joe Klein, for example, told Politico's Dylan Byers that the president’s public pronouncements on Syria are "inexplicable and perplexing and stunning."
"Obama has lost some serious altitude: In the world, with the Congress, and most importantly with the American people," he said.
Byers noted in his column Monday that the tone of both the news coverage and editorial analysis from reporters and pundits from across the political spectrum has been tougher on the president of late.
Even Media Matters for America, the liberal watchdog group that monitors conservatives, pointed out that there has been a new level of hostility directed towards Obama from previously sympathetic quarters.
"It is now almost universally hostile," Eric Boehlert, a senior writer at the organization, told Politico. "It’s become consistently critical."
The discord within the Democratic Party comes as Obama has to try to rally lawmakers to pass a plan to continue funding the government after the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30 and raise the nation’s debt limit by mid-October.
He suggested in an
interview with ABC News that aired Sunday that he would be willing to make adjustments to Social Security and Medicare, but liberal Democrats would likely reject that plan unless there were also measures such as a tax increase on the wealthiest taxpayers.
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The shift in coverage started with revelations of the National Security Agency’s secret surveillance programs, according to a number of senior reporters, and gained momentum with the Justice Department’s monitoring of journalists. The administration’s use of drones, the IRS’ targeting of conservative organizations, and ongoing questions about the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist raid on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, has added fuel to the fire of criticism.
Conservative observers say Obama's handling of these events show that he has brought the negative portrayals upon himself.
"Many in the media made an investment in Barack Obama in 2008, and they want ROI (return on investment)," S.E. Cupp, the conservative co-host of CNN’s Crossfire, told Politico.
"When he proved to disappoint in many areas — transparency and civil liberties, most notably — I think they understandably took on a more skeptical posture," she added.
In a column responding to Politico’s take on the media’s new anti-Obama stance,
Tom Blumer of NewsBusters, which monitors liberal media bias, wrote, "Thanks, Dylan Byers. You’ve done those who recognize liberal establishment press bias as an irrefutable reality a big favor."
The big takeaway from the Byers column, Blumer noted, "is that Politico's media reporter has admitted that the establishment press, by virtue of its having recently 'turned' on President Obama, has been in the tank for him up until now."
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House Speaker John Boehner, meanwhile, has not been able to marshal his own troops before the coming budget talks. Boehner and other party leaders want to pass one resolution to fund the government past Oct. 1 and another to defund or delay implementation of Obamacare, but conservatives want the two resolutions to be combined.
“Clearly, both wings are in near-open revolt, and you have a government shutdown and debt ceiling, and the launch of the [health care] exchanges coming, and you’ve lost a week and a half debating Syria,” Chris Krueger, Washington analyst for Guggenheim Securities,” told the Journal.
“Time is a real enemy in this process,” he said.