Obama's Agenda Too Timid?

Is President Obama’s Agenda “Too Timid?”

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If Democrats suffer widespread losses next week, as expected, is President Obama to blame because his agenda wasn’t sufficiently liberal?

With just five days before the election, the party’s most liberal activists are increasingly pointing the finger at Mr. Obama and his legislative allies for giving up too much of the progressive agenda, and too quickly.

Jon Stewart, the host of Comedy Central’s “Daily Show,” confronted Mr. Obama with the charge directly in an interview Wednesday night, suggesting that the administration’s achievements had been more “timid” than they should have been.

The president pushed back hard, saying he had a “profound disagreement with you, this notion that health care was timid.” Mr. Obama argued that his legislation achieved 90 percent of what liberals wanted, but was never designed to change things overnight.

“When we promised during the campaign ‘change you can believe in,’ it wasn’t change you can believe in in 18 months,” Mr. Obama said.