NP: Girls, Album

Speaking of criticism of the increasing criticism of the President from the left, Andrew Sullivan has been highlighting some stories of folks going so far as to consider "leaving the left" as a result.

On the one hand, I'm not surprised by the backlash. Given the enthusiasm of a certain age group for this President, it's as if Obama got signed to a major label, and his new stuff doesn't have that same indie vibe as his early records. Seeing him in big arenas with corporate sponsors just doesn't feel the same, you know?

On the other hand, I'm a little bit miffed that this notion of people "defecting" from the hard left obscures the fact that some of us have been in the place they've ended up all along. Extending the metaphor, we know what goes into making a big, major label record, and are willing to evaluate the performance in that context, instead of some idealized version of how things used to be before the band went mainstream.

So, yeah, I think I just described Obama's presidency as "The Black Album" from Metallica, or something like that.