A poll released by the Washington Post and ABC News provided another opportunity to discuss how important civil liberties and national security issues are to liberals. The poll results showed majority support among liberals for President Barack Obama’s handling of “counterterrorism,” including his use of drone strikes and failure to close Guantanamo Bay prison.

Progressives need a fundamentally new approach to politics. They have been losing not just because conservatives have so much more money and power, but also because they have accepted the conservatives’ framing of political debates. They have accepted a framing where conservatives want market outcomes whereas liberals want the government to intervene to bring about outcomes that they consider fair.

I have been saying for a long time now that President Obama is the world’s worst negotiator and has absolutely no interest in fighting for progressive principles. I didn’t make this up out of the whole cloth. I voted for the guy and I desperately wanted him to succeed. But my job is to cover politics and when you cover Obama all you see is him running for cover.

When a Democratic President continues to shove Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid back onto the negotiating table after being offered a clean debt ceiling deal by the Senate GOP, CNN polling shows liberals are taken aback.

Provisions slated to expire include: the “roving wiretap provision,” which permits government to obtain intelligence surveillance orders without identifying the person or the facility being tapped (Section 206 of the Act); the “Lone Wolf” provision, which permits intelligence agencies to survey non-US persons not affiliated with a foreign organization (Section 6001 of the Act); and Section 215, which grants government authorization to obtain “any tangible thing” relevant to a terrorism investigation, even if there is no evidence the “thing” pertains to the terrorist or terrorist activity under investigation.

It’s the debate you’ve been hearing almost since that day 25 months ago when President Barack Obama first took the oath of office and became the 44th president. It rages in political clubs and in taprooms and coffee houses and most frequently in cyberspace – anywhere in America that liberal voices like to gather.

I guess it’s my week to write about polls, because this number in the new Gallup poll on President Obama really jumps out.

At a time when we should be reining in the capitalism that failed so badly, we are instead capitulating to it, using the event of the failure of our corporate masters to give them even more. How is that even happening? And to what degree does the blogosphere deserve some of the blame?

The era of liberalism as a philosophy of government is over. The Democratic Party endorses this message.

If, as Robert Kuttner says, Obama is negotiating a a “grand bargain” with the Republicans that includes cuts to Social Security benefits, the GOP is running a successful trap for him once again. White House strategist apparently believe that this will “give Obama ‘credit’ for getting serious about deficit reduction.’”