no sense of direction

temptingfate comments at FDL:

As is generally the case when reading news about the insiders through the lens of the mainstream press we need to parse the words. Moving to the center always means moving farther right. Pols that move to the left, if there were such a thing in our money driven election system, would always be moving to the left not the center. Thus it is correct that Obama is moving to the center because that’s the way that moving to the right is phrased for mass consumption.

What we are graced with is the same story passed on in the Clinton years and phrased in nearly the same way. Obama thinks he can “recapture” the independents and the border-line Republicans...

The only difference this time is that we already watched this story, via Bill, and it doesn’t play as well in reruns


White House Insider Debunks “Obama’s Moving to the Center” Meme


digby @ Hullabaloo:

It's the thoroughly predictable move for any president who's been accused of being a socialist for two years and suffered a bad mid-term. They always "run to the center" in the second half in order to get re-elected. And if the economy cooperates, it might just work. But it is at the expense of liberalism and the Party whether or not it's a conscious strategic decision to distance themselves from the left or not. At the end of the cycle, Obama will have run on a set of issues and solutions marginally to the right of those which he ran on in 2008. And those were marginally to the right of those which Kerry ran on in 2004 or Gore ran on in 2000. This is how we find ourselves looking back at Richard Nixon's agenda and thinking that even Dennis Kucinich wouldn't be so bold as to propose much of it.

Money, Power, Triangulation

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