Don't Feed The Blue Dogs

Yesterday, the Washington Post front page blared "Anger Over [AIG] Depletes Obama's Political Capital." And today, we see more vocal criticism from right-leaning "Blue Dogs" in the Senate about Obama's budget plans for health care reform and capping carbon emissions.

Of course, the offensiveness of the AIG bonuses has absolutely nothing to do with the urgent need to revamp our broken health care system and avert a climate crisis. And the notion that AIG made Obama magically lose "capital" to solve other problems is, as Oliver Willis noted, "made up news."

But perception can quickly become reality, if we let it. That's why is imperative for us progressives and liberals to be crystal clear with our criticisms.

Wasting our taxpayer dollars to support bonuses for AIG has nothing to do with whether we support investing our taxpayer dollars to fix our health care system, let alone support making polluters pay for spewing carbon in our public sky.

Understand that their are obstructionist forces itching to illogically conflate these matters, because right now, strong majorities support having our government solve our health care and energy problems, while the financial bailout has the softer support.

If we are careless with the targets of our criticisms, they will be misused.

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future