Arianna Huffington had people in me in mind when she wrote this post acknowledging that many progressives are sorely disappointed with Barack Obama. She suggests that the problem stems from his pragmatist temperament:

I get that the progressives, and the activists, and the young people who voted for the first time, and the disillusioned voters who returned to the polls in ’08, feel slighted by the president. You thought you had a special connection with him, but it turns out he’d rather hang out with Larry Summers, flirt with Olympia Snowe, or play war games late into the night with David Petraeus. Face it: he just isn’t that into you. But, in the end, it doesn’t matter where the president’s heart is — it matters what he does. LBJ wasn’t that into the National Voting Rights Act until Martin Luther King and the Selma march pushed him into it.

If Obama is going to do the right thing for America’s middle class by sticking to his promise to start winding down (for real) the war in Afghanistan in July 2011, and by prioritizing jobs over the long-term deficit, the passion is going to have to come from outside the White House.