What If Obama Never Left the Center?

What if Obama isn't tacking to the center just for the general election as all us good progressives would like to think, but instead he genuinely believes his positions? 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 old guard Republicans and the old school Dems for the gridlock that has paralyzed the past decade of so? What if he really is very Christian and not just pretending, as you lefty atheists not-so-secretly wish? I can't tell you how many times I've heard friends say, "He's just like us. He can't really believe that mumbo-jumbo." (For the record I'm more of a Zen Buddhist but I think it takes a nuanced mind for a man of intellect to also be a man of faith.)

I was a little late to jump on the Obama bandwagon for many of these very reasons. I didn't find his positions, especially on universal health care, as progressive as I would have wished. Both he and Hillary seemed very much of the DLC centrist mold despite calling themselves progressives.

Paul Krugman has been writing about this for months but you Obama fans to the left of him just didn't want to listen. The same thing happened with Howard Dean. He was an openly centrist, pro-business governor, but because he was anti-war, progressives ignored his record and just assumed he was to the left of Ralph Nader.

I came around to Obama 100% only after his transcendent Philadelphia race speech. I decided I didn't have to agree with him on all the issues. And his relative hawkishness for a "liberal" I couldn't agree with more. I shudder to think of Dennis Kucinich as Commander-in-Chief. There really are bad guys out there hellbent on our annihilation and we really do have to defend ourselves. Of course that doesn't mean the use of dumb sticks as the Bush administration has done, but it doesn't mean just traipsing around with a bag full of carrots either.

Obama's strength isn't his slavish adherence to party line but his ability, issue by issue, to decide the right medicine at the right moment.

If that makes you call him a centrist then so be it. Get over it already. He's nobody's man but his own.

--Trey Ellis

Comments

[alieninvader]

I'm an Obama supporter, but I don't see how he got to be the progressive hero. If you listen to his rhetoric all along, he's always hovered pretty close to the center. In fact, I lived in Chicago when he ran for the senate, and I was supporting another candidate because Obama wasn't progressive enough, but when he got the nomination, I got behind him 100%. In my ideal world we would have a President Kucinich, but that will never happen. Instead, we have a phenomenal candidate with a great chance to win. He might not make all the right decisions, but he will definitely not make all the wrong decisions like McBush. You have to be pragmatic if you truly want change in this country.

[Weltshmertz]

The use of terms like "left", "liberal", "right", "reactionary", "center" are not helpful because we don't know where a candidate actually stands on specific issues. For example if some candidate is pro bomb Iran and pro reproductive rights to me he might be fascist reactionary, to you he might be too far to the left, and the MSM would say he in the center. So, using these terms make for a lot of confusion. I would rather you use a politician's specific stands on specific issues when categorizing candidates rather than making us guess what it is that you seem to understand so well. A lot of public relations people are claiming the center for their clients these days and thus are claiming that they enjoy our overwhelming support. I don't think so.

[naluca]

Anyone who thinks these carefully worded shifts and carefully worded denials of shifts are anything but political, vote-grabbing maneuvering, is dreaming. The only thing that is consistent with this guy is the shiftiness, disguised as idealism To prey on idealism is the height of cynicism, and Obama has built a career on that and concentrating on maneuvering within the rules of the game: removing opposition, voting as ambiguously as possible, and manipulating the media - an entity which knows something about manipulation, but perhaps not enough.

[stop7997]

You took the words right out of my mouth, only better.

[YellerDawg]

Agreed, but it takes a politician to succeed at politics. Obama didn't get where he is by being dumb. He gets more Clintonian every day. Maybe, that's not a bad thing.

[tbone99]

Fine let him be his "own " man .... but not on the taxpayers dime.We have a legal document to go by in this country , just because he "feels" it 's ok to dump it , doesn't make it legal or him make him wise.

Your comment about "his ability, issue by issue, to decide the right medicine at the right moment" is so vague as to be applied to any politician.I',m pretty sure Bush and Cheny say thats what they do.
The man SAID he would fight FISA, until we nominated him.Why do you think he got our vote.?
Now that he has our vote, he's switching agendas.

When you make up rules in the middle of the game it's called cheating.I call FOUL!

[tyrdofwaitin]

Thank you Trey. I've spoken at length on other blogs at Huff Post so I won't belabor again for those who are tired of hearing me. But I will say this much: Obama is no idealist, yet people confuse his "audacity of hope" for idealism. Obama is a pragmatist with a conscience or better yet, he is a humanist who is acutely aware of the need to get things done and knows that he may often have to forsake appearances.

We will be tested to take a leap of faith into uncharted waters with an untested leader. But if you remember history, our greatest leaders were plucked unknown and untested. To wit: the stutterer Moses; Miriam; Ruth; Rebeca; the shy and introspective preacher's son Martin Luther King, Jr; the unschooled former prisoner Malcolm X; Rosa Parks, a seamstress, Rosie the Riveter, the icon of the wartime factory worker; and most recently, Nelson Mandela, imprisoned and tortured much of his adult life.

We cannot judge Obama by an old world view; Obama's arrival on the scene signals a cosmic shift --- one that MLK referred to as "the cosmic elbow that bends towards justice". Like MLK and the others, Obama is his own person: trust that and trust yourself to love and protect (that doesn't mean we can't disagree --- Obama has already welcomed that), but trust and love enough not to destroy him out of our own anxiety. Something greater than Obama and greater than ourselves is in charge.

[tbone99]

Why don't you start a church of Obama? You're saying the same things the Evangelicals said about Bush- he's ordained by God. We could jsut return to the age of divine monarchy.

[AlButerol]

I would like to know how supporting the constitution (e.g., the fourth amendment) became a leftist position.

[luvangelHussein330]

Obama has always been more centered. It's the republicans who are caliming he is some sort of libreal extremist. And fo course obama's leftist supporters egged them on. All of his positins haven't changed at all the same thing he was saying during the Primary has pretty much stayed the same...The only thing that is different is he doesn't have his own party member throwing him off message while he dodges kitchen sinks.

[connorin]

for a unifier...Obama's record is decidedly liberal...he doesn't have much of a record reaching across the aisle (unlike McCain)...

[KingCranky]

Wow

For a non-liberal who's "his own man", Obama sure did suck up to the libs during the Dem primary.

No worries though, as his unbroken promise on the FISA vote shows, he's got a spine of steel.

Obama will be the best Republican President since Bill Clinton, seeing as how, like Clinton, Obama has no desire to push any kind of "liberal agenda".

[eCon]

Obama? A Centrist? That is the biggest joke I have ever heard.

Unfortunately, you are right that he is his own man. He is in it for his own power, his own glory, his own career, and his own ideologies. Never forget that!!

When he talks of hope and peace and believing in something, he is really saying set aside your beliefs and follow me. I, I am the new Messiah. I can save this country from itself. I, and only I, know the true way.

The truth is strikingly different... and not more to the left.

[S1m0n]

Dennis Kucinich was the only democrat in the race with real leftist credentials. All others--including John Edwards*--were centrists advancing positions chosen by their strategists.

*As Russ Feingold said of Edwards "he's running on MY voting record, not his own."

[FirstShirt]

Some issues are neither liberal or conservative as some posters have noted. We all want the best for our country and our loved ones. I think Barack is a centrist on many issues.

[loucreattie]

Thank you, thank you, thank you. This was an excellent article and exactly how I feel. I love the fact that he uses his OWN mind to make discussions that might not fit the mold of what the left or the right want him to do. He will make a difference cause he proves that no one owns him. He is no ones puppet. He is just a man trying to do the best he can to make America better for his kids and yours. If that's not inspiring , I don't know what is.

[luxou812]

Like selling-out unknowing citizens? What are you talking about "his own mind"? I though he already told us what he thinks and how to follow and as soon we did, he sold us out. Shameful. You are an uniformed cheerleader.

[dtd]

Anyone who thought that Senator Obama was a raging leftist clearly has never read his books or listened--AT LENGTH--to his policy positions. He isn't moving to the Center; he's always been there! This is the mistake that Liberals make, stereotyping ourselves. It was a mistake during the Vietnam War and it is a mistake today to frame being against the war as a Liberal position. It's not! It's not Liberal or Conservative to be against unjust wars. Just as it's not Conservative to love Jesus Christ. The most reliable voting bloc for the Democratic Party are African Americans, who are largely socially socially conservative: against aborition as a moral issue, for school prayer in principle, wears Jesus on their sleeves, pro-gun ownership for protection, and pro-death penalty. However, the are also the most anti-war group of any demographic. So, what does that make us?

[Rao]

Amazed to hear that the principle of not granting retroactive immunity to Telecoms is
leftist. Asking for fair wages is leftist. Demanding universal health care is leftist. Asking for protection against unfair global competition is leftist. If O wants to be in the center, that is fine. That is not the impression we got from the primaries. The way he wimped out on General Clark shows that O has no
backbone. I may still vote for O because of the SCOTUS. Though I am not sure O would not kiss the ring of Scalia.

I would like Hillary back in the game. Can one do something at the convention?

[leftcoastliberal]

Obama may be a centrist, but Hillary is a right winger! She supported Bush's war in Iraq, has no problem with telecom immunity, and the unfunded mandates in her health care plan bear no resemblance to universal health care. She's married to a multi-millionaire corporate lobbyist who initiated the extraordinary rendition torture of terror suspects. She criticized Obama for wanting to negotiate with America's "enemies" while pondering the obliteration of Iran. If you want a liberal, Hillary is not for you.

[3Gs]

O man didn't back out on the General, he re-asserted his position for non-defacing comments in the political debate. He knows as well as anyone that the Generals comments were on the mark, but there is no way he can condone them when his main objective is to talk about real issues. Let the GOP have their fun with personal attacks; we as a nation can rise above them.

[OriginalScreenName]

IF you got any impression other than he's "in the middle" so to speak - then yeah, you obviously weren't listening.

O has no backbone? Are you serious? O has tons of backbone. Just because someone isn't always on the constant attack doesn't mean they have no backbone. Obama has said plenty of things to groups that wasn't what they wanted to hear.

Thinking your position is the only one with an ounce of merit isn't just rightist either. Many on the left are just as guilty.

BTW - Universal health care supplied by the government, is a left position. Asking for protection against competition from the government is also a left ideology. Both of those are classic left ideologies actually. The right would look for the market to solve those problems. Looks like you need to look at your own definition of left.

[luxou812]

"Obama has said plenty of things to groups that wasn't what they wanted to hear."

Like "we are going to make the illegal spying legal, and I will make sure that the criminals go free and there will be not reparations -- even though I said I would NEVER do this"

Yeah. I guess your right. I'm in that group that didn't want to hear that.

I will not vote for this charlatan.