"Does Obama camp see upside in pissing off the left?"

Greg Sargent:

The story exploding on the left right now is that the Obama campaign’s state director in New Mexico sent out an email containing a blog post mocking Paul Krugman and the “firebagger liberal blogosphere”for criticizing the debt ceiling deal negotiated by the White House. Liberal bloggers are asking whether this is the latest sign that the Obama team sees percentage in dumping on the left — or “hippie punching,” as the blogospheric parlance has it.

The Obama official, Ray Sandoval, circulated the email just after the debt ceiling deal passed Congress, hammering lefty critics for deriding the deal as a surrender. Sandoval’s email included a blog post that derided Krugman as a “political rookie” and decried critics for “pure, fanatic, indomitable hysteria.”

The term “firebagger” appears to be a reference to Firedoglake, whose bloggers frequently hammer the White House for giving too much ground to Republicans.

The Obama campaign is now going on the record distancing itself from the email. A campaign spokesman, Katie Hogan, emails: “The views expressed in this email do not represent the views of the campaign.”
(SNIP)
...this story does provide a window into what I think is a real problem —the nature of the Obama team’s frustration with liberal critics. The problem is that some on the Obama team don’t reckon with what it is lefty critics are actually saying. Obama advisers get angry when they think liberal critics are refusing to accept the limits placed on him by current political realities, and when lefties presume at the outset that Obama will inevitably sell out. That’s reflected in Sandoval’s angry email and in other periodic explosions of anger at the “professional left.”
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Greg Sargent on Harris/VandeHei on Obama " (Updated)

UPDATE: Sargent also writes, "Dems are winning the larger argument (very, very slowly):"

Public skepticism about government's efficacy in the face of our economic doldrums has made the public receptive to the Republican case that Dems are overreaching and overspending, with nothing to show for it. Dems may sustain large losses in the midterms, and perhaps their travails will continue beyond then.

But more broadly, it's fair to imagine that that the more accomplishments Dems rack up -- energy reform is next, though its prospects are in doubt -- the easier it will be for them to tell the larger story they're trying to tell. The picture of Dems succeeding at what they've set out to do will make it easier for Dems to argue: We're getting things done, and none of the worst case scenarios foreseen by critics are coming to pass.

Greg Sargent:

I'm no blog triumphalist, and some of the debate about Weigel was overblown, but the claim about blogospheric indifference to the midterms is just laughably false. The liberal blogs I read have spent months now engaged in deep debate about the midterm elections, the best ways to limit losses, and what the consequence for the progressive agenda will be if Dems don't figure out how to pull themselves out of their doldrums.

Indeed, amusingly enough, the very argument VandeHarris are criticizing liberal blogs for making -- that the White House has remained captive to a Beltway culture that fetishizes bipartisanship and has failed to seize this historical moment's potential to dramatically expand the boundaries of what's politically possible -- has been central to the liberal bloggers' debate about this fall's elections. MORE...