Obama is a Centrist
A liberal centrist, it's true. But that's a kind of centrist. A year from now, there will be a lot of leftier folks in the Democratic party who are complaining that he is too conservative.
That's a prediction you can take to the bank, homes.
In fact, that's one of the reasons I'm so pro-Obama: he won't be too far to the left. The real danger for the Dems--if they win bit--is overreach. The key is to make moderate, sane progress and put the foundations deep. Shooting forward with every crackpot liberal policy you can come up with is a blueprint for crushing defeat in 2010 and 2012. The lefty left will never succeed in this country (fortunately); it's liberal centrism or defeat for the blue team.
Anybody who thinks that Obama is a radical or a socialist is utterly clueless. He's a moderate and a centrist--not exactly like Clinton, but approximately like him. Some say that it was Clinton's centrism that made conservatives hate him. If so, they're not going to like Obama much any time soon.
A liberal centrist, it's true. But that's a kind of centrist. A year from now, there will be a lot of leftier folks in the Democratic party who are complaining that he is too conservative.
That's a prediction you can take to the bank, homes.
In fact, that's one of the reasons I'm so pro-Obama: he won't be too far to the left. The real danger for the Dems--if they win bit--is overreach. The key is to make moderate, sane progress and put the foundations deep. Shooting forward with every crackpot liberal policy you can come up with is a blueprint for crushing defeat in 2010 and 2012. The lefty left will never succeed in this country (fortunately); it's liberal centrism or defeat for the blue team.
Anybody who thinks that Obama is a radical or a socialist is utterly clueless. He's a moderate and a centrist--not exactly like Clinton, but approximately like him. Some say that it was Clinton's centrism that made conservatives hate him. If so, they're not going to like Obama much any time soon.
posted by Winston Smith at
9:23 PM
6 Comments:
WS,
What to make of his extremely liberal voting record in formulating your prediction? Especially when the Democrats will have considerable pull in Congress. I hope you're right, however. And anything is better than McCain-Palin. Anything.
I think you have to be very careful when talking about his 'liberal' voting record, because as I recall, the actual measurement used is how often he voted with his party expressed as a percentage of his total votes.
So, for example, if he voted once, and voted with his party, *POOF* he's the most liberal Democrat on the hill. Whereas the guy who voted 400 times, and 350 of them were with the party gets rated less liberal, because his percentage is lower.
The problem with this, is of course, that when you're gearing up to run for president, you end up missing a lot of votes, but (and this is the tricky part) you generally show up for the important ones.
As in: the ones where party unity is most likely.
So, yeah. I mean, it's not like I think he's a closet Republican or anything, but he's also not Ted Kennedy, you know?
---Myca
Yes, he is Ted Kennedy, and there's no evidence to prove otherwise.
First (and as he himself has pointed out) much of his record is constituted by his votes against Bush.
Second, he's already shown signs of moving toward the center (even when, to my mind, he shouldn't have) as in the case of the FISA bill.
Third, it's clear that some of his left-friendly positions were taken for the purposes of the primaries, e.g. his strong stance on getting out of Iraq soon. His qualifying "unless the Generals advise me otherwise" was largely ignored, but dead serious.
Fourth, you can just tell by listening to the guy. He understands the importance of centrism for democracy, and he's largely a consensus-builder.
The lefties will be squawking about it in a year. Two at the outside. That's my prediction.
Have you ever seen Ted Kennedy and Barack Obama together? WAKE UP SHEEPLE!!! BARACK OBAMA IS TED KENNEDY!!! Z10N IS 01!!!1~!~1
Only their ORIGINAL birth certificates can solve this mystery!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I think comment #3 was a joke, but it scares the hell out of me that I'm not sure.
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