Politico’s Dylan Byers reported on Sunday that some members of the progressive, or left-wing, media are making efforts to push Obama to complete the key parts of the unfinished liberal agenda that he first outlined in 2008.
Those parts include climate change, drone strikes, gun control and closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, among others.
Byers points out that one of the first to challenge Obama was none other than the editorial page of The New York Times, which launched a series titled, “Goals for a New Term.” The Times was sharply critical of the President, saying Obama lacked courage on gun control and had adopted the “Bush team’s extravagant claims of state secrets and executive power, blocking any accountability for the detention and brutalization of hundreds of men at Guantánamo and secret prisons, and denying torture victims their day in court.”
Others have chimed in as well. David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, criticized Obama for his lack of attention to climate change, and Ari Melber of The Nation hit the President on what he said was the lack of transparency in the use of drone strikes to target terrorists.
Rik Hertzberg, a veteran liberal journalist and chief political commentator for The New Yorker, told Politico that now that Obama has been re-elected, the media can be more critical:
Liberals in the media are going to be tougher on Obama and more respectful at the same time. He was the champion of our side, he vanquished the foe….. [but] now liberals don’t have to worry about hurting his chances for re-election, so they can be tougher in urging him to do what he should be doing.
How convenient. Rather than remind the public about Obama’s multitude of failures, the liberal media bit their collective tongues so as not to endanger his re-election chances. And now that he has won a second term they feel somewhat obligated to do their job and to actually criticize him for failing to live up to his promises. But that criticism will probably only go so far and for so long with another election coming up in two years, and with the Democrats within striking distance of regaining control of the House.
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