Given poor election results which seem to indicate independents moving away from democrats in droves, if Obama wanted to moderate, migrate to a definitive centre a la Clinton, could he? His election was a mirage, a fantasy narrative based on illusion and hyperbole, the result of a gullible and profoundly ill informed electorate suffering from Bush fatigue and reaching out into the darkness for relief, for something new. He moves to the centre, a place that I believe is not at all amenable or propitious viz his rather superficial talents, that may mollify independents but then I think the founding illusion of his presidency is undone or at least marginalized thus exposing a central weakness since a move right will leave his base feeling betrayed, disheartened and potentially hostile: if the founding illusion is sullied and his base abandons him what's left? Clinton could move to the middle because that essentially is where he came from - he didn't owe his political fortunes to the uber left, he won the election running on bread and butter issues, and as a democratic white governor of a southern state the pragmatism of moderation was pretty much in his political DNA. Obama is about as far removed from those conditions as you can get: given his predilections and sympathies I don't see how the fanciful narrative that sustained his presidential run could survive a move to the middle.
Not that Obama is doomed, no, many turns left in the road - but I fixated rather early on the central problem for him: the enthusiasms that carried him into the office were either fed by the vain and illusory hopes of the ultra left or governed by a wishful thinking amongst the electorate in general - what would happen when reality came crashing down on those enthusiasms? We don't have a clear answer to that question yet, but his highly partisan and doctrinaire pursuit of health care reform, his almost flippant willingness to spend money and raise taxes and his dilatory and as far as I'm concerned misguided if not indeed incoherent approach to the twin evils of Iran and Afghanistan and the whole Mideast problem in general seem to be suggesting that the scepticism of non believers like myself was not entirely misplaced.
