Barack Obama's Policy Switches are Giving the Left Whiplash - Timesonline

There's nothing much new in what the senator has done. In the lexicon of modern American politics, it's called a pivot. You campaign hard to the party's extreme in the primary election, where the base voters tend to be. Then, when the nomination is secure and there are no more idealists to be humoured, you pivot back to the centre. The only difference is that in Mr Obama's case the pivot is so hard and so fast that the entire Democratic Party is suffering from whiplash.

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Left-wing commentators have raised the usual cry of betrayal. Arianna Huffington, that rare creature, a young conservative who moved sharply left in middle age, dubbed Mr Obama's move not realpolitik, but “realstupidpolitik”.

Conservatives, meanwhile, led by John McCain's Republican campaign, say that the presumptive Democratic nominee's pivot shows that, for all his talk of offering a new kind of politics, he is really just another cynical politician who will say anything to get elected.

I suspect that all this worries Mr Obama not at all. The louder the Left complains, the deeper the satisfaction at Obama headquarters. The truth is that Obama has succeeded where others failed. He has challenged tough issues where others shied away.