AND HERE'S THE GOOD NEWS - AT 8:19 A.M. ET:  We are fair here, and look for opportunities to praise President Obama.  We never take the useless, unimaginative position that everything he does must be bad.

And we've found something to like.  The president, it seems, is starting to drive the left crazy.  Oh joy, oh joy:

It is as inevitable in Washington as sweltering summers and steamy sex scandals.

A president is going to be smacked around from the moment he takes office and the uplifting rhetoric of campaign rallies meets the gritty reality of governing.

But the criticism of Barack Obama has turned strikingly personal as some of his liberal media allies have gone wobbly on him. After playing a cheerleading role during the campaign, some are bluntly questioning whether he's up to the job.

If Obama is losing Paul Krugman, can the rest of the left be far behind?

Barack Obama?  Not left enough?  Yeah, that's what some of his supporters are saying. 

"I'm concerned as to whether, in trying to reach out to the middle, he is selling out his base," says Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page. "I find myself saying, 'Where's that well-oiled Obama machine we saw last year?' . . . Maybe he's being a little too cool at this point."

And a startling admission in this Washington Post story:

It was liberal commentators, of course, who formed the leading edge of the most favorable coverage that any White House contender has drawn in a generation. Having swooned as they did, some were probably more susceptible to having their hearts broken.

Well, I'm glad someone in a liberal paper admitted that the in-the-tank-for-Obama complaints were accurate.  "The most favorable coverage" indeed.

In today's hyperpartisan atmosphere, liberal pundits are likely to remain in Obama's corner. But for those who once felt a thrill up their leg, the sensation may be wearing off.

COMMENT:  If Obama actually did move toward the center, and I don't think he has done so, he'd be a more effective leader.  The left wing of the Democratic Party represents a small part of the electorate, and makes more noise than policy.  Its foreign policy stands are truly frightening, and sometimes remind us of Republican isolationism during the 1930s.

The liberals regularly turn on their own.  They turned on Hubert Humphrey, "Mr. Liberal," in 1968 and helped elect their nemesis, Richard Nixon.  They never looked back.  Eating your young is an old ultra-liberal tradition.  The complicating factor with Obama is, of course, race.  I doubt if liberals will, in the end, abandon him.

August 31, 2009