The "pandering to the left" comment is in my opinion a bad political assumption. If you look at previous opinion polls on Manning (see: http://www.huffingtonpo

The "pandering to the left" comment is in my opinion a bad political assumption. If you look at previous opinion polls on Manning (see: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/24/manning-sentence-poll_n_3806025.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/24/manning-sentence-po...), the opinion seems less to fall on traditional "left / right" lines. If anything, there is some bias towards younger people being more approving of Chelsea Manning compared to older people. The demographics in the Manning polls actually are very similar to other tangentially related topics in United States polls, eg how people feel about Snowden and how people feel about (edit for clarity) massive government cyber surveillance. I personally think the decision is more than just pandering, but if Obama is pandering to someone, he is pandering to the youth.