The new meme being pushed by a lot of political commentators and anti-Obama posters is that he is showing his true centrist colors. Obama has 'lurched' to the center. The only trouble with it is that it's not really true. He's never been the flaming, far left liberal that many have tried to paint him.
In the last few days, there have been a bunch of diaries on this site and others either ranting about his 'lurch to the center' or serving as 'I told you fools he was no progressive' rants.
There are four issues that are supposedly acts of betrayal by Obama - FISA (the big one), gun control, the death penalty, and public financing for his campaign. While there is some small nugget of truth in a couple of these, they are mostly twisted to show him in the worst light possible. No big surprise there given who's doing most of the complaining about these issues.
Two of these aren't even changes of position by Obama. He's said the same things about the death penalty and gun control recently that he's said before. Only someone who has been paying no attention to his stances on the issues would think he's changed his positions on these two issues.
The same holds true for FISA, even though many on the left and right want to paint that as a change of position. He has never said he was against the FISA bill as a piece of legislation. He was against a 'bad' FISA bill that contained telco immunity. Surprise, surprise, he's still against immunity.
I can hear the comeback now. "But, but, but... (deep breath) he said he'd filibuster it". I've got news for you, that's not possible. 80 Senators voted for cloture. He can't filibuster even if you beat him over the head with the Bill of Rights from now until the end of the year. What do you want? Do you think he should suddenly seize control of the country and singlehandedly dictate the details of FISA?
The one issue where there is some small nugget of truth in the complaints is on public financing. Obama did say he would try to work with his opponent to find a way to have a clean, publicly financed campaign. Unfortunately for his critics, his current stance isn't as offensive as they would have you believe.
His acceptance of public financing was always contingent on an agreement to limit the effect of outside groups on the campaign. He convinced moveon.org to agree to not running a 527 against McCain. The response from McCain? "I can't control them". Obama's response was that if McCain had no influence with his supporters then he, Obama, would not go into the campaign with one hand tied behind his back.
There is something a lot of critics are ignoring. Obama has changed the face of campaign financing. He has minimized the impact of lobbyists on his campaign and expanded the participation of ordinary citizens to an astonishing level. No campaign has ever been run like this before. This is change you can bank.
Some time ago, the meme going around was that Obama was a flaming liberal who was lying about trying to bring people together around common interests. One refrain went, "He's the most liberal Senator! He'll turn the country into a Euro-style socialist hell". Another was that he would not try to work with all sides to find solutions, because he was really a far-left radical. There were even accusations on right-wing sites of being a Marxist. Now, the same people who were pushing that meme are pushing the new one.
Obama was never a far-left liberal anymore than he is a right-of-center moderate. What he is, is a moderate progressive. That's what he's always been. Anyone who has researched his voting record and his stances on the issue could have told you this. His writings, which are available for anyone to study, have made this abundantly clear. His most common operating method is to seek consensus. You can't reach consensus if you are a rigid ideologue.
The biggest problem with this whole right v. left, progressive v. conservative controversy is that no one really agrees on the position of the center. Ideology isn't a fixed scale. It is more like a sliding scale. Where most people think the center is on that scale is where they are standing and even if they are on the far right or far left, they think everyone else should be there with them.
There was a diary on this site a few days ago asking people what progressive meant to them. There was any number of answers. There are probably as many answers as there are progressives. A lot of people that call themselves progressives aren't even progressives. They are liberals with the mistaken belief that progressive and liberal are interchangeable terms. They aren't.
The point I'm trying to make is that people seem to expect Obama to please them every moment of every day. He's never supposed to take a stance on an issue that conflicts with theirs. Well, that's just plain impossible. There is so much difference of opinion on the issues even within the Democratic party that it would be impossible to get everyone to agree on any issue.
To paraphrase a great American (yes, another Republican) It is true that you may please all of the people some of the time; you can even please some of the people all of the time; but you can't please all of the people all of the time.
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