Left in the lurch

Donald Lambro:

Soon after Americans for Democratic Action endorsed Barack Obama last month, its leaders were e-mailing deep concerns over his flip-flops on the ADA's bedrock liberal beliefs.

With his party's presidential nomination secure and Democrats rallying behind him, the ultra-liberal freshman senator was making a mad dash to the political center in preparation for the general election. Positions on gun control, trade protectionism, terrorist surveillance, the death penalty and even his Iraq withdrawal plan were being abandoned, softened or blurred to make his candidacy less threatening to more moderate voters.

That has sent off alarm bells in the Democrats' liberal base in the past week or two, among both its foot soldiers in the blogosphere and its oldest leftist bulwarks of party orthodoxy.

Over at the venerable ADA, keeper of the liberal flame, e-mails were flying back-and-forth among its board of directors and other members who were troubled by Obama's sudden change of mind on issues near and dear to their heart.

"There's some concern that has been expressed in e-mails between the board and staff and some of our issue analysts," an ADA official told me. "There's a dialogue going on among people who are not sure what his remarks mean."

And no wonder. The freshman senator's apparent makeover for the general election abandons some of his party's most fervently held positions in favor of gun control, opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement and opposition to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which would give retroactive legal immunity to telecommunications companies that help the government intercept calls and e-mails from terrorists.

The concern bubbling up from the base ranges from feelings of betrayal to pragmatic, if grudging, acknowledgement that he can't win the presidency unless he reaches out to the center where elections are won or lost.

...

The left has been determined to win on their issues and the lurch to the right has left many of them stunned by Obama's cynicism. Let's face it. He is a Democrat and he knows he can't win by telling the public what he really believes, so he tries to convince the voters that he believes what ever they want to believe. He is becoming a master of the politics of fraud.