Obama’s Tax Reversal Stirs Liberal Uprising

President Obama may face “open revolt” within his party, and not just from liberal activists upset that he reversed himself this week to cut a deal on taxes with Republicans, the New York Times reports. Democrats in Congress are reportedly furious, too, that Obama bypassed them without consultation in order to extend the Bush tax cuts with GOP help.

For now the loudest cries still come from what an Obama spokesman once mocked as “the professional left,” where discontent with the president’s political compromises has been building for months. The head of one group, Progressive Democrats of America, said the president's cave-in - extending tax cuts for the wealthy - ensured Obama could face “a significant challenge to his renomination in 2012 from within the Democratic Party.”

The question is who would step up. To date there is no short list of credible alternatives for the nomination, which almost always goes to a party’s sitting president.