What fuels the grass-roots rage

By E.J. Dionne Jr.
WashPost
Thursday, February 11, 2010

So what exactly is the Tea Party movement and why has it risen up?

The ferocity of its opposition to President Obama is mystifying to political progressives. Most of the left simply doesn't see him as especially liberal, let alone "socialist."

Obama, after all, is the man who saved the banks and the capital markets. Now the bankers are secure and most of them are still rich.

His health-care proposals stopped far short of the single-payer system that so many liberals have long sought, and his plan is the kind of thing moderate Republicans offered back when they were a significant force. Obama put absolutely no political muscle behind the progressives' backup idea: a public option that could have served as a beachhead for a single-payer system.

(More here.)