Chill Out, Liberals: Remember Last August?

Angry opponents are spewing spittle at the Obama administration over health care and climate change, but progressives should chill out: After all, this has happened before, Ed Kilgore writes in the New Republic. Last August, liberals withered in despair when John McCain tied President Obama at the polls. Just like today, "The diagnosis of the problem was typically that Obama was too passive, and wasn’t articulating a clear enough message."

But Obama won by doing what he's doing now: keeping calm, sticking to his strategy, expertly persuading the public, and delegating like a master. "The administration's demure approach should thus not be terribly surprising, nor a sign that it has lost its heart or its mind," writes Kilgore. "Obama has not, presumably, lost the qualities he showed in the tougher moments of the 2008 campaign."
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