"As Ben Smith reports today, there's a lot of anxiety in Obamaland about giving the Clintons such a key role in his administration. "These guys didn't put together a campaign in order to turn the government over to the Clintons," a Democrat close to the Obama campaign tells him. If Obama brought Hillary aboard, then turned around and picked Summers, he could face a small-scale insurrection." -- Noam ScheiberScheiber is one of the savviest guys around, but this is just nonsense, and it reflects the eternal MSM tendency to try to mine Obama-Clinton tensions that simply no longer exist. So far, Obama has named several Clinton administration veterans to the White House staff. There has not yet been a netroots outrage. Picking HRC as SecState might well precipitate some unease among some Obama supporters who backed the Illinois Senator for enemy-of-my-enemy type reasons and just don't want the Clintons anywhere near power. Unfortunately, such thinking is just unrealistic: the Clintons are players, like it or not. Honestly, I'm not sure Secretary of State is the best role for Hillary, but I hardly think that a Clinton in the Cabinet amounts to "turning over the government," and shutting off all Clinton staffers from the White House severely depletes the talent pool one has to work with. So, I hardly think that Larry Summers is going to result in a netroots revolt. I would expect a muted but positive diary entry at DailyKos with generally respectful comments (e.g. "I'd prefer Paul Krugman, but Summers has been saying good things recently and he knows what he's doing").
Under different circumstances what Scheiber insinuates might be happening, but Obama won the nomination by appealing to the best in Democrats, and he did not shift radically to the center during the general election--he actually moved a bit left rhetorically on regulation and such once the financial crisis hit. The netroots is elated at having won and sincerely wants to give Obama a chance to enact his change. After eight demoralizing years, the left is tired of angrily fighting the power structure. And, honestly, Summers isn't that bad--his public statements and editorials in recent months have been pretty good from a progressive viewpoint, he knows what he's doing, and he's clearly aching to get back to Treasury. I say we let him.
