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By PETER WALLSTEN
WASHINGTON—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.
Some observers say Rahm Emanuel is losing favor with liberal Democrats. Could his job be on the line? Kelsey Hubbard talks with WSJ's Peter Wallsten about the future of President Obama's chief of staff.
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 antipathy reflects deep dissatisfaction on the Democratic left with Mr. Obama's first year in office, and represents a fracturing of the relationship between the president and the political base that mobilized to elect him. A little more than one year ago, Mr. Obama's victory led some to predict an era of Democratic dominance.
The anger on the left shows that Mr. Obama is caught in an internal battle over both the course of his administration and the Democratic Party.
Many in the party, particularly in the wake of the loss last week of a Massachusetts Senate seat, contend that the White House should chart a centrist approach focusing on the economy. They point to polls showing Mr. Obama's approval rating among independent voters has dropped by nearly 20 percentage points since early last year.
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.
Cenk Uygur, a liberal talk-radio host, calls Mr. Emanuel "Barack Obama's ****** Cheney." One group has run ads against Mr. Emanuel in his hometown of Chicago. And Jane Hamsher, a prominent liberal blogger, is going after Mr. Emanuel's service—10 years ago—on the board of housing-finance giant Freddie Mac.
By the spring, civil libertarians and others were pushing the White House to roll back Bush-era antiterrorism policies on matters ranging from Guantanamo Bay to torture. In meetings of senior advisers, Mr. Emanuel was often the loudest voice questioning the wisdom of such changes, according to a participant in the discussions. His concern wasn't so much the substance of the policy, but the political consequences, this person says.
On May 19, civil-liberties advocates joined Mr. Obama, Mr. Emanuel and other aides for a meeting at the White House. They aired their frustrations with the president's policies. The president listened and asked questions.
Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, who attended the meeting, says he had grown suspicious of Mr. Emanuel, who as a congressman had a largely pro-ACLU voting record. Mr. Romero says he noticed a shift when Mr. Emanuel became "consigliere at the White House," where he focuses "less on the policy outcomes and more on maintaining a Democratic agenda that will keep the party in power."
wsj
