Battleground Watch

After doing nearly nothing for Hispanics beyond setting records for the most deportations of any President in history, President Obama is upset that Hispanic activists and others use his own tactics against him.  In a 5,000 word article on Hispanic and Gay Rights protestors battling with Obama, the Washington Post was unable to find any space to cover the fact that a major campaign headquarters for the President in a key battleground state is shut down by the very protestors in the article.  That seems like something a newspaper would write about. But maybe that’s just me. As for Obama and his relationship with liberal activists, the Post writes of the uneasy coexistence:

[The President displays] competing impulses of sympathy and frustration that have characterized Obama’s relationship with liberal activist groups since he entered the White House. Their uneasy alliance has gone through three distinct phases, moving from great expectations to tense confrontations to pragmatic coexistence as the next election approaches. With Hispanics and gays — key liberal constituencies that moved early in Obama’s tenure to openly challenge the Democratic president — the tension has mostly been about means more than ends, when more than what. The president’s history, his temperament and style, his idealism vs. his ambition — all have come into play as he has responded to pressure from these two essential segments of his base.

Obama is a former activist who once mentored the poor and disenfranchised on Chicago’s South Side in the tradition of Saul Alinsky, a community organizer known for his willingness to challenge authority. Yet even as a young organizer, Obama was not always comfortable staging direct actions against politicians and soon chose instead to become a politician himself. Now, as president, he often expresses resentment at being challenged by would-be supporters, occasionally lashing out at advocates when they employ the old organizing methods against him.

The entire piece can be summed up neatly:  Hispanics advocates complain and Obama responds, “I’ve done absolutely nothing, and I’m all out of ideas.  Why are you upset?”