I am (or, I used to be, as you'll see in a bit) a lurker at Daily Kos. There was one member who posted positive Obama diaries on a regular basis, because she felt that the site was becoming overtly hostile to the President. Recently, she was so fed up with the nasty atmosphere of the site, that she quit posting to it altogether to start her own blog, in which she intends to post more such positive diaries about the President. A friend of hers on Daily Kos posted a diary announcing the creation of the blog, and its intended purpose. The comments section of that diary made me so disgusted, I could spit. Many of the members made derisive and scornful comments against the diarist, the member who left the site, all former members who left the site out due to increasing hostility toward the President, etc.

People like her--who share her mindset--are being shut out of the conversation, in DK and in other sites like it, because they dare to focus on the President's accomplishments rather than his failures. Obama's critics on the left love to screech about how he failed to include a public option in the healthcare bill, how he hasn't yet repealed DADT and DOMA, how the financial regulation legislation is a joke, how he's going to cave to the Republicans on the Bush tax cuts, extending the deadline for ceasing combat in Afghanistan, etc. Someone mentions all the promises he has kept, and the immediate positive impact of his first two most significant achievements, and that person is called an "Obamabot", or worse. The critics righteously proclaim that Obama ought to be primaried in 2012, or that he should resign, a la Nixon; those of us who recognize that the loss of the White House in 2012 would be an unmitigated disaster for the country, can hardly make an argument for keeping him without confronting a barrage of spiteful comments.

The critics have made it clear that no healthcare bill would have been better than the one that got passed...I'm sure that the people who benefited from it would argue that they wouldn't have been able to wait another 10 or 20 years for another attempt at passing better healthcare legislation.

These people so drawn in by his promises of change, that they failed to realize that history has proven that systemic changes almost never happen overnight, nevermind without any flaws? Why did they raise their hopes so high, even while knowing that those same hopes would come crashing down upon hitting the ceiling known as "reality"?

Us pragmatic (when did this get a bad connotation?) progressives, who have the same ideals as other progressives but believe in a different approach to achieving them, don't get any respect. We're "spineless", "cowards", "sellouts", "centrists", etc. Since when did trying to get things done a step at a time become the tactic of cowards? In that same logic, babies ought to be born able to solve Fermat's Last Theorem and run marathons in four hours. An analogy I like to use is that Obama was expected to erect a 120-story skyscraper in six months, and the progressive purity police (PPP) were so disappointed when he was only able to finish the six-story basement carpark, that they want to fire him and hire another contractor--because, y'know, if it's possible, then...why can't you do it NOW? AND with no mistakes?

This demand for ideological purity from elected officials is what's causing an enormous rift among the Republican Party right now. Teabaggers demand that their candidates run on a platform of anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, anti-gun control, anti-"taxation without representation", anti-separation-of-church-and-state, anti-immigration, anti-government-on-their-backs, anti-everything-Obama, etc. Many moderate Republican candidates lost in primaries because the teabaggers were on a mission of purification. And the critics of Obama on the left want to primary him, supposedly on principle...the Republicans are licking their chops at the prospect of a civil war on the left, just as we have been watching with glee as the GOP fights the Tea Party.