A funny thing happened on the way to Mau-mauing Barack Obama

So, Senator Elizabeth Warren and presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders have been on the warpath over the Trans-Pacific Partnership and its attendant fast track trade authority. In doing so, they have engendered much support among the usual—and some not-so-usual—sectors. Namely, the people who always thought Barack Obama was a sell-out to corporate special interests, evidenced by him not frog-marching Jamie Dimon and other banksters to stand for federal indictments over the 2008 meltdown.

A funny thing happened, though, which should have been predictable to anyone who has seen Pres. Obama operate for the past 7 years: he fought back.

“She’s absolutely wrong,” Barack Obama said, before I could even get the question out of my mouth.

Matt Bai of Yahoo has an illuminating interview with the President over TPP and the opposition to it from members of his own party, led by Sen. Warren.

As many of us on the “Obot” side have been saying:

“Think about the logic of that, right?” he went on. “The notion that I had this massive fight with Wall Street to make sure that we don’t repeat what happened in 2007, 2008. And then I sign a provision that would unravel it?

“I’d have to be pretty stupid,” Obama said, laughing. “This is pure speculation. She and I both taught law school, and you know, one of the things you do as a law professor is you spin out hypotheticals. And this is all hypothetical, speculative.”

It’s the idea that Pres. Obama would cavalierly undo one of his signature achievements—setting up rules so that 2008 didn’t happen again, rules which he plucked an obscure academic named Elizabeth Warren to help implement—to coddle the same Wall Street is ludicrous on its face.

Of course, it’s not ludicrous if one thinks that “Obama was always going to betray us.” The sense of perpetual disappointment—both on the Left and the Right—drives much of the country’s political culture. This is due, in large part, because of the apparent lack of legitimacy of many government institutions, stoked by a right-wing drive to paint all government as useless, and a concomitant view on the left that the government is a subsidiary of corporate America.

But people who should know better are now feeding the fires of disillusion.

Sen. Warren’s main gripe is that “the public isn’t seeing the bill”. Oddly, as this interview with Greg Sargent illustrates, she keeps moving the goal posts. She, of course, can see the negotiating text in full. It then becomes: “Fast track won’t allow Congress to make changes to the deal”. The problem is that fast track can be revoked if the deal doesn’t meet its stated aims in Congress’ opinion. Then she goes through some more of Pres. Obama’s “hypotheticals”—all hypotheticals that require GOP control of the White House and Congress after 2016. Which would be a good reason to focus energy on winning 2016, rather than shivving the party’s sitting President in the back.

Another quote from Matt Bai’s piece:

But like a marriage in which the spouses pretend to be happier than they really are, Obama’s polite alliance with the populist left appears to be suddenly crumbling under the weight of free trade. The more Warren and Senate colleagues like Bernie Sanders and Sherrod Brown attack the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, joined by big unions and environmental groups, the more liberated Obama seems to feel in portraying them as reckless and backward-looking, much as Clinton might have done. He evidences none of the self-doubt or conflicted loyalty that seemed plain when they criticized him for being too cautious on Wall Street reform or health care.

There comes a point, seemingly, in every Democratic president’s life when the alliance with the populist left crumbles, as the left fights old battles rather than focusing on the situation at hand. Remember, Pres. Roosevelt was excoriated by the left for not being liberal enough. There can be no doubt that Pres. Obama feels a great disillusion from allies who cavil but never bring numbers to the table. Every deal he’s had to make with Republicans have come about because of liberals’ consistent failure to vote in midterm elections, handing control of Congress to the GOP. Then these same liberals who stayed home complain when Pres. Obama isn’t “liberal enough”. (Tell me where there was a filibuster-proof vote for the public option, or raising taxes past the Bush tax-cut expiration. I’ll wait.)

As Pres. Obama hits the home stretch of his Administration, he’s using executive authority partly because of GOP control of the legislature, and partly because Democrats have been so woeful at winning off year elections. If the party could actually manage to win Congress and state houses and governorships, then Pres. Obama could govern in an even more liberal fashion than he has been. That GOP-controlled state houses are gerrymandering the House into a permanent GOP majority lies, in part, to the failure of local Democrats to run like Democrats, sniping at Pres. Obama’s heels to win votes. And, it seems, he’s done with it.

So Pres. Obama has no more reticence at calling out his detractors on both ends of the aisle. And that’s what’s called a healthy democracy. Senator Warren speaks for her constituency; Pres. Obama has to have a broader view. Don’t whine because mean Obama said mean things.

Senators Warren and Sanders should have learned from watching Pres. Obama rhetorically slice away at the GOP: If you’re going to come with foolishness, expect to be treated as such.