CAF In The News

congress.org — Many audience members crowded to the front of the stage, standing and cheering loudly to support Pelosi and counter the fervent protests. The Speaker continued through her speech, touting several Democratic policy issues.

washingtontimes.com — Liberal activists and Democrats on Wednesday prodded supporters to push for changing the Senate's filibuster rule, saying it's the only way to ensure President Obama can move their agenda through a broken Congress.

Speaking at the final day of the America's Future Now conference, AFL-CIO lawyer Laurence E. Gold urged the activists to take that message back to their groups: The Senate, until it is changed, is standing in the way of progress on gay rights, Wall Street reform and protecting the environment.

washingtonpost.com — Progressive movement activists gathered in Washington on Monday declared themselves dismayed, even angry, at President Obama and Democrats in Congress for being too timid and compromising in pursuing change on issues from health care to the environment to the economy.
The speakers at the America's Future Now conference that began Monday called for a political uprising independent of the Democratic Party.

google.com — Progressive activists who helped elect Barack Obama president complained on Monday that the administration and congressional Democrats have been too timid and too willing to compromise.

Even though Obama's major first-term achievement — an overhaul of the nation's health care system — passed without a single Republican vote, progressive leaders who gathered in Washington criticized the president for failing to create a government-run insurance option to compete with private industry.

reuters.com — Nineteen months after celebrating U.S. President Barack Obama's historic election win, disappointed liberal activists promised on Monday to turn up the political heat on a White House they said is too quick to compromise.

At an annual conference of grassroots progressives, they said the euphoria and high expectations after Obama's victory had lulled them into a false sense of security, and hopes for his success had sometimes limited their criticism.

politico.com — When President Barack Obama launched his fiscal deficit commission Feb. 18, he acknowledged that there are “some on the left who believe that this issue can be deferred.”

What he didn’t say was that there are some on the left who wish the entire deficit commission itself would be deferred.

washingtonpost.com — Obama's domestic policy agenda, which defined him as a president seeking to restore faith in government, is imperiled by his call for a "freeze" on spending, many advocates said Tuesday, as federal agencies scrambled to determine the proposal's impact.

The freeze would hold steady for the next three years the government's discretionary budget -- the portion of spending that Congress decides every year -- except for spending on the military, homeland security, the State Department and Veterans Affairs.

augustafreepress.com — You talk to one Democrat, and the party definitely, no question, needs to restrategize toward the middle. The blowback from voters in Massachusetts is an obvious clear signal. The nation isn’t comfortable with the direction things had been headed on health care and the stimulus. Time to pull things back in for a while.

Talk to another Democrat, and that first Democrat is either an idiot or worse, a sellout. Exit polls in Massachusetts indicate that a strong majority of voters there like their state-level version of universal health care. The blowback was local, aimed at a poorly-run campaign on the part of the Democratic nominee, Martha Coakley.

blogs.abcnews.com — ABC News’ Rick Klein reports: The results from last week’s Senate election in Massachusetts have set off a raging debate inside the Democratic Party over what should come next.

Should President Obama adjust his priorities to reflect the nation’s polarized politics? Or should he use the setback as a call to arms for the liberal base that helped propel him to office?

huffingtonpost.com — What a week. Call it the Shock Doctrine in reverse: The Massachusetts election and yesterday's Supreme Court ruling may force the Democrats to move to the left to ensure their political survival. They're now faced with a choice they clearly didn't want: forcefully reject the corporate agenda, or risk losing to opponents who can attract an unlimited flow of corporate dollars.

Many of us who supported the Democrats last year knew they'd disappoint us at times, but Barack Obama's mid-course corrections during the campaign showed that he had an innate teachability in the face of events that challenged his tactics or his beliefs. We need that teachability now, and it must extend to the rest of his party. Without it we may find ourselves in a nation where democracy is a commodity and real reform is an unreachable goal.