Greenwald on the Left’s love affair with Obama

This being Valentine’s Day, I’m sending out some journalistic love to Salon.com’s Glenn Greenwald for his  analysis that the Left’s unqualified allegiance to President Obama is politically counterproductive for them both:

During the 2008 election, Obama co-opted huge portions of the Left and its infrastructure so that their allegiance became devoted to him and not to any ideas.  Many online political and “news” outlets — including some liberal political blogs — discovered that the most reliable way to massively increase traffic was to capitalize on the pro-Obama fervor by turning themselves into pro-Obama cheerleading squads. …

The major problem now is that these entities — the ones that ought to be applying pressure on Obama from the Left and opposing him when he moves too far Right — are now completely boxed in.  They’ve lost — or, more accurately, voluntarily relinquished — their independence.  They know that criticizing — let alone opposing — Obama will mean that all those new readers they won last year will leave …

The lack of any independent political pressure from the Left ensures that Obama will be either content to ignore their views or will be forced to do so even when he doesn’t want to.