Obama’s left flank slides away as the White House dissembles

Reporters spent 10 minutes Monday pressing White House spokesman Jay Carney for specifics on President Barack Obama’s plan to deal with the escalating debt-limit crisis. So far, the White House has not issued any specific proposals.

After hedging and equivocating, Carney eventually signaled the administration’s worry that negotiated concessions will disappoint and alienate Obama’s core left-wing supporters. (RELATED: Conservatives divided over debt deal)

“Our interest in this has been to get a compromise, to get a deal,” Carney said. “It has not been to politically position ourselves, say, with things that appeal to our base, maybe pieces of legislation that we know can’t pass but it would be greeted warmly by certain constituencies.”

Obama has tried to broker a “big” debt-ceiling deal that would keep government spending high, and also boost his sagging support among swing-voting independents whose support he will need in 2012.

Ultimately, though, any deal will require that he make concessions to the GOP’s invigorated cadre of small-government legislators.

By keeping his proposals vague and the negotiations behind closed doors, Obama can minimize his public association with proposals, concessions and deals that might be supported by independents but disliked by progressives.

The president has acknowledged his willingness to require higher payments from Medicare recipients, and also to set lower payouts to Social Security recipients. But both offers were made behind closed doors and later disputed by unnamed White House spokesmen, minimizing political pain following strong blowback from liberal groups including the Strengthen Social Security Campaign and the National Disability Leadership Alliance.

Similarly, while Obama is using his many public appearances to demand tax increases, behind closed doors he has already — albeit reluctantly — abandoned progressives’ demands for tax increases.

The White House’s worries about the solidity of its liberal base is explained by a growing collection of recent polls.

A mid-July ABC/Washington Post poll showed that liberal Democrats’ support for Obama’s job record has fallen to 31 percent, down 22 points from 53 percent last year. Among African-Americans, another core constituency, his jobs rating has dropped from 77 percent to barely 50 percent.

In May, Obama attracted an 81-percent approval rating among liberals, and 90 percent among liberal democrats, according to Gallup’s weekly tracking poll. By late July, scores had dropped to 70 percent and 81 percent, respectively, in these two critical groups.

Those scores are far higher than Obama’s current rating of 41 percent among independents. But those two groups provide a large slice of campaign volunteers, outspoken supporters and small donors. Losses among them will reverberate through his 2012 campaign.

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