I realize liberal bloggers are always furious and overwrought and beside themselves with anger and fuming over the latest betrayal. But let’s take a look at how they’re reacting to the spending-freeze proposal:

The Reality-Based Community:

Perhaps the worst thing about this is how it cedes the ideological ground to the Republicans. At some point someone must make an argument for government
. . . Why exactly did I give money and make calls for this guy in 2008?

Nate Silver:

There’s more bark here than bite, in other words: “freeze on discretionary spending” means something different on K Street than it does on Main Street. But that’s precisely what will make the White House (or at least the Democrats collectively) look flip-floppy. Every time the Democrats propose a jobs bill, or a big investment in alternative energy, you’re going to have Krauthammer and Kristol chomping at the bit to go on Fox News and proclaim Obama to be a hypocrite. Pity Robert Gibbs trying to parse his way out of that. This is not how one wins news cycles — or elections.

Steve Benen:

If the proposal isn’t really going to change much, why is this disappointing? Because it fully embraces the conservative narrative, instead of using the power of the bully pulpit to explain why conservatives have it wrong. It may be even worse as a policy matter — we just don’t have enough details to say — but that’s distressing enough.

Joe Sudbay:

The Obama administration is sacrificing sound fiscal policy for a short-term political gain. But, the question is whether there will be any short-term political gain. I don’t see it. This feels like the White House brain trust is grasping and it’s just not authentic. People figure that out pretty quickly — and that’s not good for a President.

Over at FireDogLake:

instead of showing some courage, and proposing what needs to be done, and explaining it to the American people, this pathetic, cowardly Administration sends an embarrassed Jared Bernstein onto our screens to talk nonsense about a freeze that isn’t a freeze and a modest middle class agenda that will do nothing to prevent America’s middle class from shrinking and falling further into the ditch. Shameless. Stupid. Unforgiveable.

If Obama can be forced into becoming a rhetorical deficit hawk, and if the fundamental message of his second year in office is “less spending good, more spending bad,” we may see the spirit of modern liberalism broken. They’ve already seen that even with 60 votes in the Senate and about 257 in the House, the public option isn’t going to happen and now it’s not clear that health reform will happen at all. Now Barack Obama – their messiah, their ideal, their embodiment of hope and change – is sending more troops to Afghanistan and calling for a spending freeze.

Liberals will never get a better opportunity to enact their agenda than they are getting in 2009 and 2010, and so far they’ve gotten the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and a reduction to a mere 107,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

If liberals come to November 2010 and realize that very little has changed, and that all of their efforts in the past few years have been for naught, then a not-insignificant number may decide that all of this is a waste of time, that the American political system is unfixable, and they’ll find some other way to occupy their time.