Reply #16: Frankly, he turned out to be a stealth centrist [View All]

[Armstead]

In the primaries, it boiled down to Obama, Clinton and Edwards.

In terms of actual positions, Edwards was the liberal on issues -- but he turned out to be a duplicitous phony horn dog (His wife should have been the candidate.)....When he flamed out it was a choice between Clinton and Obama.

For many people (me included) who did not want to see a return to DLC Clintonian centrism, Obama became the default candidate. And Obama talked the talk of sort of liberalism -- although he skirted around the issues enough to raise questions of where he actually stood....Which is part of the notion of Democrats running away from liberalism.

By that time the "swing voters" were fed up with the mess Bush created, was likely no Republican would win -- and a grumpy old man and boneheads reactionary Sarah were not the team to pull off an upset.

But it turns out Obama was a closet centrist. HIs blurring of ideological labels is a classic centrist avoidance tactic. Talk about post partisanship is actually a code word for allowing the corporate status quo to continue to decimate the middle class with no real challenge.