Will Obama anger the left again by hiring Bill Daley?

When word leaked yesterday that President Obama might be considering former Commerce Secretary Bill Daley as his next chief of staff, the reaction was immediate: Obama was about to start another war with his most liberal supporters.

After all, Daley, a hard-charging pro-business centrist, has a long history of clashing with those on the left. As President Clinton's Commerce secretary, Daley earned the wrath of the labor movement by pushing for the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as well as trade with China. In 1999, AFL-CIO president John Sweeney declared Daley to be "squarely on the opposite side of working families."

More recently, Daley alienated the left by being one of the few Democrats to publicly urge Obama and Democrats to move back toward the center. "Either we plot a more moderate, centrist course or risk electoral disaster not just in the upcoming midterms but in many elections to come," Daley argued in a Dec. 2009 Washington Post op-ed.

Add to that Daley's most recent employment history as a top Wall Street executive with JPMorgan, and it would seem that Obama was virtually asking for a fight with his most liberal supporters, who have already charged the president with selling out to Wall Street on issues like bank reform and last year's financial bailout.

"If the party's liberal base didn't like Rahm Emanuel, it will hate Daley," Politico's Ben Smith opined Monday. "A Daley appointment would be an early signal of Obama's confidence that the party's left ultimately will have no choice to show up and vote for him in 2012."

The unusual thing is: The left isn't exactly hopping mad about Daley--at least not yet.

The potential appointment, which seems to have been leaked out as a trial balloon by the White House to gauge public reaction, hasn't generated much ire on the left so far.

Many lefty blogs, including Daily Kos and Firedoglake, posted items bemoaning the idea of a Daley appointment, but most messages lacked the outrage generated by previous perceived Obama slights, including his negotiations with the GOP over the Bush tax cuts and health care reform. Meanwhile, labor officials and other liberal activists didn't respond to requests for comment from The Ticket.

Progressive writer and radio host David Sirota tells The Ticket that one reason for the lack of outrage is that the appointment is "not surprising."

"This administration has shown itself to be a corporate stooge," Sirota says. "So putting a JPMorgan executive who engineered NAFTA into a top position isn't surprising, especially coming from a president who took the most amount of Wall Street money in presidential campaign history."

Not surprisingly, the White House has a different view.

Daley, officials seem believe, would bring to the table several different strengths, including his background as a longtime Washington hand who has previously run a presidential campaign (Al Gore's in 2000) and served in a presidential cabinet. Perhaps most importantly, Daley is viewed as someone who might help the White House improve its less than friendly relationship with the business community, as Republicans prepare to take control of Congress. He could also help Obama to chart a more centrist-looking path ahead of the 2012 presidential campaign, when the president will need to appeal not just to Democrats, but also independents and moderate Republicans, to win.

(Photo of Obama and Daley by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)