In the three weeks since Chris Daly left the Board of Supervisors, the bar he bought – Buck Tavern, to be renamed Daly’s Dive next month – has become a popular place for progressives to commiserate and conspire with one another. And many of them plan to gather there this evening for the State of the Union speech by President Obama, who has been a disappointment to many leftists.
“The good news is for this year’s State of the Union, we have a pub, we’ll be serving the hard stuff, and the faithful might need that,” said Daly, who will be behind the bar.
Daly and allies like Aaron Peskin were an early supporters of Obama’s presidential aspirations, back in the primaries when Gavin Newsom and most of San Francisco’s political moderates were backing Hillary Clinton. So how does Daly feel about Obama now that the president has capitulated to conservatives on tax cuts for the rich, requiring all Americans to sign up with health insurance companies, and maintaining his predecessor’s approach to “fighting terrorism”?
“I can’t say that I’m disappointed because I didn’t have the same expectations other people had,” Daly said. And he maintains that supporting Obama in 2008 was the right thing to do for the country, and a smart political move for San Francisco progressives.
“Barack Obama gave us two more years in San Francisco City Hall,” Daly said, arguing that his campaign maintained the ascendancy of progressives in San Francisco and helped Sups. John Avalos and Eric Mar (and probably Board President David Chiu, although Daly didn’t mention the man he has likened to Judas for betraying the progressive movement) win close races for the Board of Supervisors and for progressives to take over the DCCC. “Obama and the campaign around him helped us very much in San Francisco in 2008.”
But like most progressives, Daly does admit that Obama hasn’t realized his potential as president. While Daly thinks health reform was important, even without a public option, “he was too quick to compromise and the rest of his agenda is in the shitter.”
And that’s likely to be a fairly mild reaction for what could be a cantankerous crowd bellying up to the bar (1655 Market St.) for tonight’s speech, which starts at 6 p.m.