Obama faces growing anger on the left

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By Matthew Mosk

By the time this year's tally for gay service members discharged under the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy had hit 250, Rep. Alcee L. Hastings said he could wait no longer.

The Florida Democrat decided in June to send a letter to President Obama demanding that the policy be repealed. Mr. Hastings said he was surprised when 76 other members - most of them fellow Democrats - agreed to add their signatures, and even more surprised when the letter went unanswered for the next two months.

"We're being ignored," he said.

The president won't be able to ignore the simmering discontent within his own party much longer, the congressman said, not on this military policy or on a range of other issues on which the president appears to be charting a course that veers away from his political base.

Evidence of this has been abundant in the health care debate, where a core group of Democrats reacted angrily to signs that the White House was getting ready to abandon a public insurance plan as part of its health care bill. But anxiety is growing in other areas, too. Environmentalists dislike the watering down of climate change legislation in the House. Anti-war activists are unhappy with the president's escalation in Afghanistan. This list goes on.

When the president told veterans gathered in Phoenix to help him brace the country for a military escalation in Afghanistan, Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin responded with a statement of his own, becoming the first congressional Democrat to call on Mr. Obama to set a timetable for an Afghanistan withdrawal.

"While I am pleased the president recognizes the importance of denying Al Qaeda a safe haven in Pakistan, I remain concerned that the continued expansion of our military operations in Afghanistan will push militants into Pakistan, further aggravating the extremism that has spread to more and more parts of that country," Mr. Feingold said.

As Mr. Obama has pursued efforts to advance environmental legislation that would use "cap-and-trade" incentives to try to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a muscular coalition of groups from the left has begun pushing for the bill to go further, rather than see it scaled back in the Senate. The coalition, which includes the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, wrote senators on Aug. 26 to say the House bill "falls far short."

"We are writing on behalf of the millions of members our organizations represent to urge you to draft a companion bill that provides the transformational change and greenhouse emissions reductions required to avert catastrophic climate impacts," the letter said.

Mr. Obama's approval rating remains above 50 percent in most major polls, but the trends have been pointing downward.