Though Obama supports a single-payer health system, he appears to understand getting there will take a long time. Should we work to get insurance for the poor now or must that wait until we have the ideal medical system?
In the same way, government agencies at all levels simply can't deal with homeless, AIDS patients, elderly, troubled youth, and released felons. There is no substitute for faith-based groups. These are primarily urban problems and urban progressives will look at Obama's proposals differently than academic progressives who tend to worry about irrational religion.
This urban/academic divide also appears in such issues as school vouchers where urban progressives will take a chance on anything that might work to fix horrible schools. So far, Obama has laid out a plan that doesn't use vouchers, but he insists on not dismissing them.
Another issue is Affirmative Action in which academics want to preserve it by expanding it to consider class. In this (and other) urban/academic splits conservatives are looking for ways to jam a wedge into the crack.
On these and other issues Obama refuses to toe the progressive line if he can pragmatically get some of his solution now.
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