Obama's Painful Lesson in Power Sharing

Filed under: News, Politics, President Obama

When using his Congressional majority to push forward policies that angered Republicans like health care reform, President Barack Obama relished telling the GOP elections have consequences so grin and bear it.

But now Republicans are giving Obama a taste of his own medicine - a painful lesson in power sharing that threatens Obama's relationship with progressive members of his own party.

Forced to compromise with Republicans since the November elections handed the GOP control of the House, Obama was forced to extend tax cuts to the richest Americans as Republicans had sought.

Obama and Democrats had sought the tax cuts to cover only middle-class Americans and to let the rich pay their fair share in order to dig the economy out of the gully. Instead, Republicans were able to get their rich friends covered by the tax cut plan.

The people most angered by Obama's deal are liberal members of his own party.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an Independent and one of the most liberal lawmakers in Washington, summed up the anger of Obama supporters calling the tax cut for the rich plan "an absolute disaster." Sanders said he would work against the compromise.

Michigan Rep. John Conyers, a Congressional Black Caucus founder, called the compromise "legislative blackmail" and said he would also work against it.

It's easy for liberals to squawk, but President Obama has few choices.

Blocking the tax cuts for the rich would bring a swift and certain defeat in the House.

Unfortunately for the president, this tax cut fight is just the first example of power sharing he will have to engage in with Republicans. Just watch. Over the next two years, President Obama will get a few more bitter lessons where he will have to compromise with Republicans and face criticism from his progressive supporters.

Sanders, Conyers and other progressives would rather stand on principle and lose than get a partial victory in the tax cuts for the middle class.

President Obama isn't giving in, as his liberal critics suggest, he is simply learning the painful political lesson that elections have consequences.

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