| President Barack Obama's liberal backers have a long list of
grievances. The Guantanamo Bay prison is still open. Health care hasn't
been transformed. And Wall Street banks are still paying huge bonuses.
But they are directing their anger less at Mr. Obama than at the man
who works down the hall from him. Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, they
say, is the prime obstacle to the changes they thought Mr. Obama's
election would bring.
The friction was laid bare in August when Mr. Emanuel showed up at a
weekly strategy session featuring liberal groups and White House aides.
Some attendees said they were planning to air ads attacking
conservative Democrats who were balking at Mr. Obama's health-care
overhaul.
"F—ing retarded," Mr. Emanuel scolded the group, according to
several participants. He warned them not to alienate lawmakers whose
votes would be needed on health care and other top legislative items.
The left has gotten some of what it wanted: a ban on torture, an
expansion of children's health insurance and an equal-pay law for
women. But liberal activists say those and other measures add up to far
less than what they expected.
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A White House official tells Playbook: "Rahm
is not an ideologue; he is a pragmatist. And he has led this
administration in accomplishing a series of important progressive
achievements that languished for years before President Obama was
elected: expanding SCHIP, tobacco regulation, credit card reforms, the
Ledbetter Equal Pay Act.”
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