Obama and Iowa liberals: Candidate gets pounded from the Left, but semi-endorsed by Kucinich

Barack Obama has been criticized for much of the past two months for attacking his rivals from the right -- first on Social Security, then on health care. 48 hours from Iowa, Obama has just drawn a new round of criticism for his latest comments on past Democratic nominees and on union expenditures; but he also secured a potentially deal-making show of support: Dennis Kucinich urged his backers to join Obama's group in the precincts in which Kucinich is unviable (which is likely to be most of them).

This should not procure a big number of raw votes to Obama, but given the election mode of the caucuses it could help him get one extra delegate here and there with the help of Kucinich backers, and that extra-delegate in some precincts could go a long way towards boosting the percentage of Obama's delegate allocation -- the results that are reported at the end of the night. It is through deals like this that victories are secured in the Iowa caucuses.

In 2004, of course, John Edwards and Dennis Kucinich allied themselves on the day of the election and told their supporters to join together for the group with the most members in places where one (or both) of them was unviable. So Kucinich's endorsement of Obama (that he justifed saying they both embodied change) is going to be taken as a direct rebuke of Edwards -- which is especially strange given that Edwards has gone much further to the Left and towards Kucinich this time than in 2004. And it is also interesting that this does not appear to be the result of a concerted move between Obama and Kucinich. Will Biden, Dodd and Richardson make similar announcement or cut deals?

Meanwhile, Obama is having a growing problem with his party's left. The latest controversy has its roots in the Edwards-Obama controversy of two weeks ago during which Obama accused Edwards of benefiting from special interest aids because of 527 groups helping him. In response, Krugman blasted Obama for insinuating that unions and groups like Emily's List should not be involved in elections when they are such key constituencies of the party.

Now, Obama has picked up his anti-527 rhetoric denouncing the "Washington money" of special interests that are pouring in Iowa, and unions are fighting back, blasting away at the Illinois Senator. The president of AFT told the Politico, "I’m taken aback that somebody like Obama would think that Oprah Winfrey has a greater right to participate in the political process than the 4 million people I represent." And many other union heads have criticized Obama as well.

The second controversy has emerged out of Obama's following comments: "I don't want to go into the next election starting off with half the country already not wanting to vote for Democrats -- we've done that in 2004, 2000." Obama perhaps did not intend this as a specific indictement of Gore and Kerry's divisiveness, but that is how it is being interpreted, with many bloggers and Democrats already responding that not only Gore won in 2000 but Kerry can hardly be blamed for the negative onslaught that followed his nomination. Though this is very much part of Obama's standard campaign argument, that he is the only Democrat who can unify the country whereas others will divide it and polarize it further.

The Prospect's Ezra Klein summarizes his worries about Obama by explaining that Obama has drawn distinctions in the run-up to the caucuses by blasting his opponents from the right:

Obama's comfort attacking liberals from the right is unsettling, and if he does win Iowa, it will not be a victory that either supporters or the media ascribe to the more progressive elements of his candidacy. Instead, they will search for the distinctions he's drawn, and, sadly, a number of those distinctions point away from the heart-quickening progressivism of much of this race, and back towards the old politics of centrist caution and status quo bias.

And the fact that the DMR poll highlighted that Obama's win will come from a huge surge in turnout among independents and Republicans will likely not reassure those who hold such concerns.

Markos joined the Obama critics a week after saying he would probably cast his ballot for the Illinois Senator; he now pretty much retracted himself on the basis of Obama's latest comments: "You have to have your head stuck deep in the sand to deny that Obama is trying to close the deal by running to the Right of his opponents. And call me crazy, but that's not a trait I generally appreciate in Democrats, no matter how much it might set the punditocracy's hearts a flutter." Kos is obviously not representative of the Left and of progressives, but when such criticism starts being added up it becomes striking how the candidate that presents himself as the darling of anti-establishment progressives is being viewed by an increasing number as the most reactionary.