It seems to be more than a political analysis and political propaganda on the right; Obama is certainly shifting toward the center as his apparent constituents are ready to blow their tops.

This is an ongoing series from the national tour for THE UPRISING. You can order The Uprising at Amazon.com or through your local independent bookstore.

OUTSIDE OF WACO, TEXAS - I'm filing this weekly column dispatch at a rest stop outside of Waco, Texas on my way to the Netroots Nation conference. On the drive from Dallas, I've been listening to talk radio and obsessing over the concept of "the center."

The pundits like to talk about "moving to the center", as if voters actually selected candidates based upon their proximity on a one-dimensional left-right vector.  The Clintons made of this an art.  Obama tried it over the past month, to the support of many MSM pundits but vexing his strongest supporters in the process.  And his numbers have dropped, not risen.  This should have been predictable, because the pundits have it all wrong.

There is no "center", because there is not a straight line.  Instead, it make more sense (if you are looking for an oversimplification) to look at politics more like a conical volcano.  It's roughly round, not linear, and there's one place you never want to be.  

The pundits are always telling us that our candidates need to move to the center to win over voters.  What they never explain however is how it is possible for a member of congress to take a centrist position on a bill.  When a bill is voted on our members of Congress either vote "yes" or they vote "no", but there is no option to cast a vote half way between yes and no.

Because there is never a centrist option when it comes to voting our pundits have came up with a simple solution to define what the center is, to them the way to be a centrist is to vote for the Republican position.  It doesn’t matter where the American people stand on any particular issue, if a Democrat votes with Republicans our media considers them to be a centrist even if their votes go against what the vast majority of Americans want.

There's obviously a lot of noise about Barack Obama's "shift to the center" inside the blogosphere, and today it bubbles up into the mainstream.  The LA Times thinks that most Democrats don't care (based on nothing but anecdotes from insiders), while the Washington Post thinks his ideology is problematic, saying that liberals are calling him a centrist and Republicans are calling him a liberal, so who knows???

I think these thumbsucker pieces offer little in the way of identifiable information.  Then again, so does the blogosphere, increasingly.  That herd mentality we've all noticed in the traditional media has definitely migrated over, and the narrative has definitely hardened.  There is perhaps no bigger critic of Obama's vote on the FISA bill than I.  At the same time, I can't believe that this wasn't a far bigger story, particularly in the blogosphere.

"Anyone who makes up their mind before they hear the issue is a fuckin' fool, OK? Everybody! No, no, no... Everybody's so busy trying to be down with a gang. 'I'm a conservative.' 'I'm a liberal.' It's bullshit. Be a fuckin' person. Listen. Let it swirl around in your head, then form an opinion. No normal, decent person is one thing. I've got some shit I'm conservative about, and I got some shit I'm liberal about. Crime? I'm conservative. Prostitution? I'm liberal!" --- Chris Rock

Just something to think about before we get started here. This is going to be a pretty thick diary, and you might not want to wade through it unless you're ready to do some thinking.

As much as I'd like to cut loose and seek some comfort by writing a fun, apolitical diary full of cats, rainbows and unicorn farts, I just can't do it today. I'd like to see if I can do my part in alleviating some of the tension on this site as some of its users are in full-on panic mode and are consequently saying some very foolish things.

There's quite a few things wrong with the now commonly held assumption that Obama is "moving to the center." Some people say he's doing the politically expedient thing and selling we lefties down the river. Still others insist he was never that progressive to begin with, and has always been a centrist Democrat.

First of all, a person's political ideology is hard to identify in the first place because it's so very subjective. One person's center is another person's far-left.

Second, how is it that we Kossacks, who are normally so sharp when it comes to detecting a manufactured media outrage story, are suddenly so credulous? Are we now listening to the very serious people who are telling us that our nominee is moving to the center?

And finally, even as we ask ourselves whether Obama is moving to the center, he is continuing to fight for progressive ideas -- even though we may not notice it in our current state of limp-noodle mumbling and hem-hawing.

There has been quite a lot of critical commentary, here and elsewhere in the blogosphere, about what appears to be Barack Obama's move to the political center, now that the general election season has begun. While it may be a bit hard to stomach seeing Obama offering his qualified qualified support for the death penalty, seeing him have his own  Sister Souljah moment, and his going against his own better judgement on FISA, to me, none of this suggests that Obama has become a Blue Dog or a DLC'er; it's simply smart politics.

This is, of course, not to say that I am happy with the idea of granting immunity to telecom companies. About this, I am deeply unhappy. And that unhappiness is directed primarily at the leadership of the Democratic Party. That means you, Nancy, Steney, Harry and company.

I know I'm going to be called out as a troll as soon as this diary is written, because that's what the people here at the Kos tend to do.  Before I start writing this diary, which is to be controversial, I just want to point out that it's annoying as hell when we Kossacks call "troll" whenever someone expresses a view that's not 100 percent in line with what everybody else here thinks.  

My principle position this primary season is, as I've told some fellow local progressives, "ABC," i.e., anyone but Clinton. I've gravitated back and forth among Kucinich, Edwards, Obama, and even Dodd. Now that it appears to be a 3 person race - Clinton vs. Edwards vs. Obama, with the winner against the eventual Republican nominee (my gut feeling tells me it will be Romney), I find myself leaning a bit more toward Barack, but still liking much of Edward's message, but mainly because I see Barack Obama is potentially more likely to win in November. But I am getting ahead of myself. Instead, this is a diary for reflecting a bit on my deeply ambivalent relationship to the post-Clintonian/DLC Democratic Party.

Simply put almost all legislation that passes would be perceived as centrist by the public. "Centrism" is of course a meaningless concept set by the contingencies of history and sociology. The America political centre would be very right in Australia and lunatic right in Europe. That said "moderate" is a term with vast emotive power.

To a certain extent the Republicans have succeeded as portraying themselves as sensible moderates. The number of advertisements that describe X candidate or Y policy as far left is truly astonishing when, by both US and world standards, X candidate and Y policy are no such thing. Such rhetoric works because outside of a small minority being a radical is a Bad Thing in the mind of the public and today’s voter is a low information voter. Republican effort’s on this front are largely why Bipartisanship has come to mean "let the Republicans get away with things. Indeed the Republican party has pulled one of the greatest con acts in the history of politics, manufacturing acrimony and angst between the parties and then, to avoid further acrimony, painting cooperation with themselves as the only  way to overcome the acrimony THEY THEMSELVES HAVE CREATED. A sophisticated form of political blackmail.

Great, it looks like another plutocratic, pro-corporate authoritarian wants to rule us and he has the support of the Very Serious People in Unity '08. At this moment, I could become cynical and partisan and reject Michael Bloomberg out of hand. However, while I've always been very cynical, I've never been strongly partisan. Therefore, I will have to remain honest and consistent in my principles and pick who I think is the best candidate for the job. So, until Mr. Bloombergs answers some questions, the yard sign stays in the garage.

More Down Below

This is not a candidate diary, in part because I'm not allowed to write a candidate diary (being an employee of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania) and in part because I don't have a favorite candidate yet (which is academic in any case, as I'm registered Independent and thus can't vote in either primary in Pennsylvania). So, this is not a candidate diary. You can breathe easy now.

This is, however, an issue diary. The issue is one that I've been struggling with for a while now. The issue is Progressivism vs. Winning Elections. I am an unabashed progressive. I'm for universal single-payer health care. I'm for public financing of elections. I'm for a return of the Fairness Doctrine. I'm for rolling back the deregulation of media ownership. I'm for a more progressive tax scheme. I'm for reproductive choice, equality for all human beings, and amnesty and a citizenship fast-track for all current illegal immigrants. I'm for same-sex marriage and for the legalization and government commercial regulation of drugs and prostitution. I'm for the elimination of religious pressure on government to mouth placative words in favor of this or that faith. I'm for more direct citizen involvement in politics and government.

Barack Obama: Transformation Over Triangulation.

"We never get rid of an enemy by meeting hate with hate; we get rid of an enemy be getting rid of enmity."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr., Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, Christmas, 1957.

Barack Obama has been criticized on DKos as a moderate centrist. I beg to differ. Unlike his main opponent Hillary Clinton for whose husband the term "triangulation" was invented, Barack does not accept the label and went so far as to defend himself against it right here on DKos two years ago:

Are you a Liberal? Do you think you're "middle class"? Do you swear by individualism?  Are you black or gay? Then this article is for you.
INTRODUCTION: This essay hopes to do more than just instruct and inform; it hopes to be empowering, and, in more ways than you expect, transformative.

Modified from my blog.

American progressives flinch at the words "centrism" and "centrist."  Seriously, who can blame them?  Centrism conjures up images of Liberdems displaying their naked butt cheeks to Fox News "analysts," screaming "THANK YOU SIR MAY I HAVE ANOTHER?!?"  Centrism is generally agreed to be a lousy strategy, unless you're one of those lame-ass consultants paid according to how many elections you lose for the Democratic party.  

But is it really?  Does "centrist" have to be synonymous with "right-wing Bush brown-noser"?  Is centrism really the problem?  Or is the definition of centrism the problem?  Does "Blue Dog" absolutely have to equal "Bush Dog"?

I don't believe so.  

    Saith David Brooks, at least: see NYT, The Center Holds,

    ...Now it’s evident that if you want to understand the future of the Democratic Party you can learn almost nothing from the bloggers, billionaires and activists on the left who make up the "netroots." You can learn most of what you need to know by paying attention to two different groups — high school educated women in the Midwest, and the old Clinton establishment in Washington. ...
    Obama and Edwards get most of their support from the educated, affluent liberals. ...Hillary Clinton’s core support, on the other hand, comes from those with less education and less income — more Harry Truman than Howard Dean. ...
    Several weeks ago, I asked John Edwards what the YearlyKos event was like. He couldn’t remember which event I was talking about, and looked over to an aide for help.

    (more)

Update: The show is now complete and available for download at the On Topic page!

 Are you ready for a real debate on the issues with some of your favorite bloggers?  Well, today's one of your best chances in while!