The argument on the left - Ben Smith - POLITICO.com

The argument on the left - Ben Smith - POLITICO.com

I asked a senior Democrat who's long defended Obama on this point about it, and he emails the condensed case for Obama:

We didn't lose this fight. Barack Obama was in law school when this fight was lost.

The role of Democrats should not be to convince people that government is great; it should be to help people reach their potential -- and government is a tool to do that. There has been a strain of skepticism about the government in the American character since the founding. Only the New Deal changed that significantly, but we have been returning to the norm ever since then.

This is the core of the left's critique -- the country doesn't agree with us, so take what political capital you have and use it to convince people to agree with us. But the presidency is not a Brookings lecture series; it's about governing the country and making a difference.