June 10, 2010
They may not have won, but discontented Democrats sent an important message to the Obama administration on Tuesday by mounting an unexpectedly strong primary challenge to Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas. For the White House to minimize the efforts of unions and others who helped support that challenge suggests a tone-deafness to the growing restlessness in the Democratic Party.
After Mrs. Lincoln narrowly defeated Lt. Gov. Bill Halter in the primary runoff, a senior White House official told Politico.com that organized labor had just wasted $10 million in its “pointless” support of Mr. Halter, money that could have been better spent against Republicans in the November general election. David Axelrod, the president’s senior adviser, told The Washington Post that “good progressive candidates around the country” could have benefited from that money.
Within the cocoon of the White House, that sort of pragmatism may make sense, but the unions had every right to spend their money as they saw fit, and the White House should be paying attention to the signals that were sent, not to the ones they wish they had heard.
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Clearly, many of the voters who complained that Democratic officials had lost their phone number after being elected were also referring to President Obama. Many Democrats don’t understand why the administration and Congressional leaders are giving in to trumped-up Republican fears about the deficit and not doing more to revive the economy. Rather than dismissing such concerns and ridiculing efforts at change, the White House should consider just how powerful they have become. There are virtues to pragmatism, but it should be in the service of an underlying principle.
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/opinion/index.html
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