It is not disloyal to the president or the party to want him to keep his campaign promises. [View All]

[highplainsdem]

This is such an obvious point you wouldn't think it would have to be made here, but maybe it should be explained again.

I would like this presidency to be a successful one, and Obama to be re-elected (preferably by a landslide) in 2012. I'd like the Democratic base to be so energized by proof this administration is working toward the party's core liberal/progressive goals that we have record turnout.

But I don't believe Obama can have a successful presidency, or win re-election, or energize the base for 2012 (let alone the midterms), if what his administration does is too different from what he told us he wanted to do.

People concerned about that don't need reminders that "politics is the art of the possible" or that "sometimes compromise is necessary." We're well aware of that.

What concerns us are the reports of the administration compromising without putting up much of a fight. Or, worse, sometimes actively working against goals Obama campaigned on.

At the moment, I'm very concerned that the administration is risking kneecapping the Democratic Party in this year's midterm elections by planning to tax the so-called "Cadillac" health plans that so many union workers accepted instead of pay raises. I read last night that union leaders would find this more acceptable if the administration would consider raising the level at which the tax kicks in to a point where it would affect 1 in 14 union workers, instead of 1 in 4, but the administration wasn't willing to do that since it would mean less revenue from the tax.

It's going to be hard for the Democratic Party to keep union support if union workers' health plans are seen as a cash cow for a bill that many already view as helping the insurance companies more than anyone else.

So I'm hoping the unions can finally get this administration to realize that breaking campaign promises and puncturing the hopes and dreams that Obama raised so effectively will have electoral consequences.

There's still time to turn things around. But the president isn't going to feel it's important to fulfill those campaign promises and live up to those hopes and dreams if Democrats keep quiet when they think he's going in the wrong direction. (And President Obama can't go far enough in the wrong direction to have any hope of winning over his critics on the right, as Keith Olbermann pointed out so well in a special comment pleading with the president to remember that.)

I want the Obama administration not only to have a successful 8 years, but a great legacy. But you can't have a great legacy if it's a hollow one. Passing a health care reform bill, any health care reform bill, just to be able to say you passed health care reform, is not a great legacy, no matter how much you praise that badly flawed, unbelievably compromised bill as great legislation. You can't paper over the reality. Reality has this annoying habit of breaking through no matter how much you praise a facade. I don't want this HCR bill to be Obama's equivalent of Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech. And I'm afraid that's what it will be if the administration simply feels it's important to pass a health care reform bill, any health care reform bill no matter how compromised and contrary to campaign promises and previous goals, so the president can tout it in his State of the Union speech.

So I will not stop noticing when this administration seems to be going in the wrong direction, rather than the one we were told it would take. We aren't doing the administration or the party any favors if we decide that we should keep quiet for fear of helping the irrational criticisms of him from the right if we point out that compromising too much with politicians on the right, and corporations who usually back those on the right, is not likely to get him one step closer to the hope and change he campaigned on so eloquently.