Have The "Spiritual Progressives" Just Declared War On Obama?

Rabbi Michael Lerner--editor of Tikkun Magazine and co-chair of The Network of Social Progressives--has written a letter taking aim at the appointment of Rahm Emanuel as White House Chief of Staff, and at Obama himself:

Emanuel will almost certainly be protecting Obama from all of us spiritual progressives and those of us who describe ourselves as the Religious Left-so that our commitment to single-payer universal health care, carbon taxes for environmental protection, a Homeland Security strategy based on generosity and implemented through a Global Marshall Plan [more here DA], will be unlikely to get a serious hearing in the White House.

When these issues were avoided by Obama during the campaign, most of us spiritual progressives told ourselves, "He's just being political, but once elected he'll reveal himself committed to the values that he whispered into our ears privately over the course of the past many years." The Rahm Emanuel selection is an early warning that the peace and justice agenda dropped by Obama after he won the Democratic nomination may be permanently on hold, and the progressives themselves may have to settle for "access" and flowery words at an inauguration address rather than the substance of change.

For many of us, just the fact of having a brilliant young black man in the White House will be such a healing experience that we won't care about this newly emerging reality: unless Obama creates some other path to access and to public input into his policies by those of us who helped build his electoral success, or unless we organize to do so outside the framework of his campaign organization, we may be in for lots of disappointments.

Apparently it has not taken long for those who helped Obama win the presidency to become concerned about getting what they think they are due.

And Obama probably thought that the economy was going to be a challenge...

Technorati Tag: Obama and Michael Lerner.