The Daily News Editorial Page for June 17, 2014 is both an epiphenomenon and an epiphany

“What Obama wrought” —   “The Wages of his inaction”  —   “Look around Syria and Iraq” are headlines that clang out loudly like the old telegraph alarm bells giving a simultaneous  immediate signal at several firehouses of a three-alarm blaze needing an urgent response

The New York Daily News Editorial Page certainly isn’t the New York Times or the Washington Post  –  but it isn’t the New York Post or the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page, either

By whatever manner or means, people interested in the stakes of President Obama’s foreign policy in Iraq and Syria need to take a look at the Daily News Editorial “What Obama Wrought” and Richard Cohen’s column “The Wages of His Inaction” – both items appeared side by side in the print edition of the New York Daily News yesterday (See “What Obama wrought” NY Daily News Editorial Board, 6/17/14 [http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/obama-wrought-article-1.1832083]; and “The wages of his inaction” by Richard Cohen, 6/16-6/17/14, NY Daily News [http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/obama-wages-inaction-article-1.1831994]).

The Daily News has not been solidly behind Barack Obama for a while now.  Nonetheless, when it unloads on the President with both barrels in a drive-by, it isn’t a small deal.  This isn’t the pounding that Obama routinely gets from the Post and the WSJ.  More important, The News is read by lots of the working poor and lower middle class supporters of the President. When those folks are exposed to the kind of criticism doled out by the News yesterday, it doesn’t mean nothing . —  No, it means something; something that is happening right now.

The two items from yesterday’s News were also picked up and republished on many media blogs.  The strident pushback that appeared in many of the comments sections on those blogs indicates that this stuff hit a raw nerve to many who see themselves as on the left or otherwise emotionally committed to President Obama. .