Barack Obama Moves Center

Obama's lead is evaporating at precisely the same moment people perceive him to be less liberal and more centrist: he is undermining the very premise of his campaign.

If the barbs against the Obama keep up at a steady rate, McCain won't even need a strategy -- all he'll need to do is keep his mouth shut. Leave the swift-booting of Obama to the Repugs.

The DNC's 'Terry McAuliffe mind-set' ruined the campaigns of Gore, Kerry and Sen. Clinton and now the legions of McAuliffites who have surrounded Obama are doing their best to undermine the possibility of his presidency.

The movement that Obama created launched his campaign to a higher altitude than the conventional path. Now he needs to stay on message, keep making sense and let the center catch up with him.

Barack Obama should not be moving toward right-wing views on issues -- even with nuanced escape clauses. My reasons for thinking this have to do with the cognitive and brain sciences.

What if he meant it all along when he said he didn't see red states or blue states but the United States? What if he wasn't kidding when he blamed both the Republicans and Dems for partisan gridlock?

We should not give Obama an easy pass on his FISA turnaround, but progressives need to maintain a nuanced view of the relationship between electoral politics and movement building.

So by Obama's own admission, when he casts an anti-progressive vote on civil liberties, we shouldn't whip up wild fantasies about him supposedly doing it because he actually is progressive the issue.

But let none of us be naïve in our hearts. Barack knows what he's doing, his people know what they're doing -- this is all very carefully calibrated.

Some are disappointed with him because they had an inflated, starry-eyed hope that he was the man who would magically undue Bush's wreckage. This expectation was unfair to Obama.