Liberals Begin to Disengage from Obama

In other words, there is now an elite liberal effort to disentangle Obama from liberalism itself, and to suggest that his sagging polls are not a reflection of Obama’s breakneck efforts to take the country leftward — but either his inability or unwillingness to do so!

Partly, the disappointment is understandably emotional. Just three years ago Obama was acclaimed as a once-in-a-lifetime prophet of liberalism, whose own personal history, charisma, teleprompted eloquence and iconic identity might move a clearly center-right country hard leftward where it otherwise rarely wished to go.

Partly, the anger is quite savvy:

if one suddenly blames Obama the man, rather than Obama the ideologue, then his unpopularity is his own, not liberalism’s. There is a clever effort to raise the dichotomy of the inept Carter and the politically savvy Clinton, but in the most improbable fashion:

Clinton supposedly was a success not because he was personable, sometimes compromising, and often centrist
Carter was a failure not because he was sanctimoniously and stubbornly ideological

but just the opposite:

Clinton is now reinvented as the true liberal who succeeded because of his principled leftwing politics;
Carter like Obama was a bumbling compromiser and waffler.