D.C.'s angry at budget deal - and President Obama

Ever since President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans reached an 11th hour agreement to keep from shutting down the federal government, interim Democratic National Committee chair and staunch White House defender Donna Brazile has been on the attack, using her Twitter account to blast what she calls a “shameful” deal.

Unlike other liberals, however, it wasn’t only the $33 billion in spending cuts that set off Brazile. She’s furious about an agreement in the deal allowing Republicans to stop the District of Columbia’s funding of abortions for poor women and forcing it to revive a private-school voucher program that city officials had ended. She and other “tax paying residents of the District of Columbia have every right to be upset at this new deal,” Brazile wrote.

Yet while her anger was carefully directed at the GOP for imposing its social agenda on a majority-black city – her city, she tweeted – other African Americans blame someone else: Obama.

“We have really found a great disappointment in President Obama,” said Anise Jenkins, president of Stand Up for Democracy, which advocates for the District’s long-time goal — statehood. “That he would use us as a bargaining chip to resolve this issue with the budget and the Republican threats, we find very disappointing – I’m extremely disappointed. I hope he got the message that we don’t want to be used again.”

“The discontent out there is pretty widespread,” said Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District’s non-voting House delegate, describing the anger among Washington residents. Having voted for Obama in record numbers, she added, “They expected better of him.”

But like Brazile, who did not respond to requests for an interview, Norton is a steadfast Obama backer, and was tactful in her criticism of the president. Even Washington Mayor Vincent Gray — who got himself arrested protesting the budget deal but considers himself a White House ally — also stopped well short of blaming the president outright.

“I want him to stand up for the rights of all Americans, and that includes the 600,000 people who live in the District of Columbia,” Gray said in a radio interview on Friday.

The measured reactions of black elected officials to Obama’s role in sacrificing the District isn’t surprising, given that Washington is a majority black city and African Americans overall strongly support the president. After the deal was announced, the White House emphasized the president believes in D.C. self-governance and doesn’t like the policy riders; nevertheless, the move was among the “hard choices” involved in tough, high-stakes negotiations.

Obama himself reportedly told House Speaker John Boehner that he’d “give” the District-related riders to the GOP, “but I’m not happy about it.”

But his decision to sacrifice Washington — considered the political heart of black America — to close the deal with Republicans revived the ugly slam-dance of politics, power and race that has dominated the city’s modern history.

Originally set up as a constitutionally chartered, independent seat of national government under congressional control, the District has always been subject to interference from Capitol Hill – including oversight by House committees dominated at times by heavy-handed white Southern Democrats. As the black population grew and its politics tilted to the left, clashes with the segregationist-minded “Dixie-crats” established the deep racial overtones still present in the city’s relationship with the federal government.