WASHINGTON & SANTA FE, NM (By Glenn Thrush and Carrie Budoff Brown, Politico) August 1, 2011 ― President Barack Obama's road to debt ceiling compromise runs right through the left wing of the Democratic Party.

Much of the focus Sunday centered on House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who must wrestle conservatives into line to pass the deal before Tuesday's default deadline. Yet team Obama quickly found out it is confronting an equally daunting sales jobs with a Democratic base embittered by compromise, ditched policy priorities and what many liberals view as an endless series of Obama capitulations.

"If I were a Republican, this is a night to party," Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Missouri Democrat who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus, told MSNBC Sunday night.

If Obama thought he had problems with liberals before this, he'll have even more now, no matter how hard the White House spins it as a "victory for bipartisan compromise, for the economy and for the American people," as the administration's official talking points claimed.

Obama himself, appearing Sunday night in the White House briefing room, seemed more disgusted than delighted.

"Is this the deal I would have preferred?" No," Obama said. "We could have made the tough choices required on entitlement reform and tax reform right now rather than through a special congressional committee process. But this compromise does make a serious down payment on the deficit reduction we need . and ensures also that will we not face this same kind of crisis in six months or eight months or twelve months."

Democratic leaders, in general, seem willing to back their leader. But it's not clear whether House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will be able to rally her divided caucus to deliver the hundred or more votes necessary to compensate for the loss of GOP backing.

"I look forward to reviewing the legislation with my caucus to see what level of support we can provide," a noncommittal Pelosi said Sunday after details of the deal were released.

Even if the measure passes, senior administration officials said the president will hit the road to make his case for the compromise. Unlike his previous jobs-centered events, he'll have to court the base that delivered him to the Oval Office in 2008, not just the independents he covets for 2012, many fellow Democrats say.

Still, West Wing officials tried to downplay the tension, saying many liberals were trashing the compromise because they didn't know its actual contents.

"I don't think Democrats do think [he] gave away the store," a senior White House official said.

"This was a balanced package. . There are some Democrats who simply don't believe in the necessity of deficit reduction. Most do. I think it is important for us as a party to show the American people that we are serious about deficit reduction, but we're going to try to do it based on principles and values," the official added.

But progressives aren't so sure.

"This is a very tough deal . we're not even focusing on what matters most - jobs," Jared Bernstein, former economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, told POLITICO. "Washington is now focused exclusively on austerity, which we know doesn't create jobs. It's unbelievable."

An angry Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said, "This deal trades people's livelihoods for the votes of a few unappeasable right-wing radicals, and I will not support it," lamenting what it said about the state of the party under Obama's stewardship.

"The Democratic Party, no less than the Republican Party, is at a very serious crossroads at this moment. . This deal weakens the Democratic Party as badly as it weakens the country," he added. "We have given much and received nothing in return. The lesson today is that Republicans can hold their breath long enough to get what they want."

MoveOn.org came out in opposition, and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee said 200,000 Obama 2008 supporters might withhold their support this time in protest.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) spent much of Sunday negotiating behind the scenes, lobbying against entitlement cuts and ensuring that raising taxes on the rich or closing corporate loopholes weren't explicitly excluded from the deal, according to congressional sources.

But senior Democratic aides say their bosses have little option but to support the deal given Tuesday's doomsday deadline, even if it adds to their bitterness over previous deals on the extension of Bush-era tax cuts to the wealthy and this spring's budget deal.

"This can only be described as a cave by the White House, even if they view it as a necessary one," said a top congressional Democrat who requested anonymity because he deals directly with the West Wing. "The only way they sell it to the base is by telling them they aren't as bad as the Republicans. This is another example of the White House hamstringing Democrats in Congress because everyone knows they will cave in the end."

Another Democratic staffer said the deal allows Obama to look like a problem-solver outside Washington, which benefits him, although at the expense of his party.

As the outlines of a bipartisan deal to raise the debt ceiling were becoming public, senior Obama aides fanned out across the Sunday shows to pre-empt their critics and assert that they are making a down payment on their core principles, namely that the rich pick up more of the burden for deficit reduction.

"Any long-term deficit reduction - and I think the American people have spoken clearly about this, too - if you're a middle-class family, if you're a senior citizen, you're furious that the answer to the deficit reduction by some here in Washington, mainly Republicans in the House, is to ask you to do everything," said Obama senior adviser David Plouffe on ABC's "This Week."

The framework announced Sunday includes no revenue increases; a vote on a balanced-budget amendment; $900 billion in cuts immediately, many to domestic spending programs; and a "trigger" mechanism that would impose $1.2 trillion in cuts, divided between domestic and defense spending, if a bipartisan committee and Congress can't agree on reductions.

Revenue raising, a bedrock Democratic demand, wasn't explicitly included in the trigger options.

But one senior White House official said the president has a "revenue backstop." The Bush tax cuts expire in January 2013, which is also when the $1.2 trillion in cuts would kick in automatically if Congress can't reach agreement on the second wave of deficit reduction in late 2011. In the White House's view, the convergence of these dates will compel Congress to do tax reform and "force balanced deficit reduction."

"Absent a balanced deal, it would enable the president to use his veto pen to ensure nearly $1 trillion in additional deficit reduction by not extending the high-income tax cuts," the White House said in a release.

In terms of the trigger, administration officials believe the threatened Pentagon cuts will also serve as a sufficient hammer for conservatives, who were already balking at the prospect Sunday. A similar provision forced former President George H.W. Bush to raise some taxes, a violation of his "read my lips" pledge, White House officials said.

Some Democrats were incensed that Medicare was part of the trigger, although the opposition faded a bit as it became clear that the potential cuts would come from health care providers, not cuts in services to patients. There was also relief that Medicaid and Social Security were not included in the trigger.

But to progressives, the emerging deal still felt lopsided.

"The absence of revenues and the spending-cuts-only trigger is a gun [pointed at] middle- and working-class people," Bernstein said, adding that he didn't "blame the president" but recalcitrant House Republicans.

Administration officials tried to ease the sting of possible Medicare cuts by specifying that reductions would be taken in savings from providers.

For the moment, that seemed to assuage at least one pro-entitlements group. "If the trigger deal is only touching the provider side on Medicare and not beneficiaries, while not hitting Medicaid or Social Security, then Obama, [Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid and Pelosi will have succeeded in almost entirely protecting these critical programs from the draconian Republican budget," said Eddie Vale, spokesman for Protect Your Care, a pro-entitlement group.

Moreover, the White House suggests it will only gain more leverage on the GOP in future talks by securing an extension of the ceiling until after the 2012 election.

Some conservatives opposed to the deal make a similar case, with RedState.com's Erick Erickson arguing that the trigger might be one big political trap for the GOP that will result in politically devastating defense and Social Security cuts.

"The defense-funding cuts will be much more massive than the Medicare cuts," he predicted. "And the GOP, in addition to seeing defense cut, would be hacking off seniors right before an election," giving Democrats an electoral answer.

But Bernstein, now with a liberal policy think tank , the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, thinks the opposite has happened. Obama, he said, has already lost the larger policy argument by embracing a flawed premise: Budget cuts will create jobs.

The anemic 1.3 percent GDP gain last quarter was caused by a drop in government spending, he said, and more cuts "will sink an economy that's already gone from fragile to frail."