I would think you should know from experience that being “correct” is one of the fastest paths to marginalization in politics. Whether progressives are “correct” about various issues has nothing, I repeat nothing, to do with whether they succeed in electing their candidates or enacting their policies. It is like being “correct” about some technical matter in the playing of baseball. One still has to have the talent to play the game, and win. Obama has the talent, and most progressives recognize that. They can certainly hope he will listen to them, but the actual playing of the game is for those with the skills, not just some sort of abstract analytical ability to figure things out. Not that Obama lacks that ability either, but what makes him a real player is his overall skill set at playing the game.This is how the real world works, and ideological purists have to understand that. The smart ones do.

When did I say that they expected this? Their coolness towards him from the beginning was partly a result of their recognition that he was not going to be as progressive as they thought some of the other major candidates would be. Each time he does something they don’t like, they keep consoling themselves with talk of pragmatism and necessity. That’s all very well, but judging from the remarks of Sirota, Bowers, and Hayes, to name a few, there is some feeling that they are being marginalized or ignored and they aren’t very happy about it. Maybe they aren’t representative of progressives. Frankly, that’s too bad, because their dissatisfaction with compromises on FISA, the bailout and the rest is correct.

“They supported Obama because they imagined Obama was serious about certain basic agenda items they support.”

Lots of people have been and are excited about Obama for strictly symbolic, aesthetic reasons. Most are excited because, first, he’s going to reverse most of what Bush did, including the war in Iraq, torture, and tons of domestic policies. They aslo think he will at least partially solve a number of nagging problems by pushing through new legislation reforming health care, increasing alternative energy, and revising tax policy. Plus, of course, find a way through this present economic crisis with sound monetary policy and God knows what. Progressives are generally supportive of all these things, because each of them represents “progress” in the right direction, as far as they are concerned. Now, you are suggesting that the most important thing, in their view, is that someone who can be labelled a “progressive” gets appointed to certain cabinet positions. Well, who are you referring to? Who would represent a progressive appointment? Someone proposed Kucinich at State. Well, that’s not going to happen, not just because Kucinich is an idiot, but because he wouldn’t actually advance progressive causes. Hillary Clinton, for all her centrism, has a better chance at actually advancing progressive causes in foreign policy than Kucinich, and guess what, progressive know that too. That’s one reason why a lot of progressive originally supported Hillary, or Edwards, rather than Obama, and certainly not Kucinich.

In a word, Progressives are not being ignored or marginalized by Obama. He is clearly trying to advance their causes, and they are happy with that generally speaking. He just isn’t trying to institute some radical, sudden transformation. There simply are no high caliber far left “progressives” who can actually do a good job at the higher levels of government, and progressives know that. They know that they have to build over time towards that, and they hope they will be able to use the Obama administration to make their agenda more mainstream and popular. They also know that undermining Obama is not the way to do that. It would sink their cause for another generation at least.

I’m guessing you are confusing Obama with a leftist Reagan. You have to realize that the parallels between Obama and Reagan aren’t all that deep. Reagan was a leader of the conservative revolt long before he became President, and he rode into town on a wave of conservative ideological politics, and appointed hardline conservatives everywhere he could. Obama is not a leader of the progressive movement, and he road into town due to the collapse of the conservative movement, not due to some long-fought victory by progressives. He’s a pragmatist with a very different relation to progressives, who are not even the base of the party. Calling him a centrist isn’t really accurate, in that his ideology is very plastic, readily conformed to the problem at hand. If he can solve a problem using progressive solution, he will. If he finds that more centrist of conservative solutions will work, he will use those. His general opinion is that liberalism is what works, but he’s not going to advocate a liberal policy simply because he thinks it is “right”, but because he thinks it will work right now.

Even more important, most progressives understand this. You have been presuming for months now that progressives are idealistic idiots who don’t know this about Obama, and of course are going to be disappointed in him. That’s just not what the situation is. There are certainly ways Obama could disappoint progressives, such as re-instituting torture, or invading Iran, but not appointing progressive leaders to cabinet positions isn’t one of them. You simply have no real sense for what the progressive movement is, and how these people think. Which is understandable, given that you are on the margins even of the GOP and the conservative movement altogether.

This may turn out to be naive on my part, and if it does, then I will be among those deeply disappointed, but I am at this point greatly relieved by what seems to me to be the shaping of a cabinet which, in dramatic contrast to the people Bush surrounded himself with, will not simply kow-tow to a President’s ignorant, self-serving ideas and let him aggrandize himself to the detriment of the constituency he once swore to serve.

Here I must disagree. The current administration has been radical, both socially and economically. No President eager to pursue legislation solely applicable to Terri Schaivo, to deploy a host of signing statements as an army protecting him from complying with laws he agreed should apply to everyone else, who sought and enacted legislation allowing for warrantless wiretap, who approved torture and who spent money in quantities no President in memory matched could begin to claim to be centrist. Note that I do not exonerate Congress in this; none of the three branches of government can reasonably be called centrist based on their performance during the last eight years.

So do I. I should have made that clear. His appointments confirm what we all should have known about him. I suppose the disappointment is greatest among the most radical, and I don’t think strong progressives or paleos and Obamacons should have had any illusions about what Obama represented. If most Obama voters are satisfied with “centrism,” I can’t believe they had that many objections to the current administration. Frankly, for all our sakes I hope Sirota is more representative than the people you’ve talked to. Of course, I have to assume that he isn’t.

Frankly, I don’t see any that Obama has moved in any direction along the political continuum. I don’t believe he has “tilted” center as the Times article you reference suggests by its headline; I believe he is as he was all along. It is because he was more centrist than left that he got elected. If there were, and it seems there must have been, more radical elements that voted for him less because they agreed with his politics than because they loathed the Bush regime, and if those people convinced themselves, as a means, perhaps, of consolation, that Obama was as progressive as they wished him to be, then they were doomed to disappointment from the start.

I think that the vast spread of Mr. Obama’s influence has all along been indicative of his ability to please many people, and that certainly means that his views have consistently been communicated to most of his supporters as much more centrist than the mythos that some press–and many Republicans, who often tried to brand him “the most liberal Senator”–have created. A choice not to ignore the farthest radical fringes of the Republican party, and indeed to cater to that element, has been the metaphorical death of George Bush; I don’t see Barack Obama making the same mistake. Instead, I see his Cabinet appointments as absolutely indicative of exactly what he promised throughout his campaign if one listened to him and not to his legend. Most people I come into contact with did just that and are neither surprised nor alarmed, but are instead satisfied, with the steps he has taken so far.

If progressives don’t care that they are being ignored and marginalized by Obama and the Democrats in Congress, why should I be more bothered than they are? However, there is evidence of discontent out there, and I think Obama and his supporters dismiss it or minimize it at their peril. From my perspective, that’s partly a good thing and partly not. It creates a political problem for him and might limit what he can do domestically, but it also means that he is going to conform to the establishment line on foreign policy perhaps even more than I thought he would.

The issues where Obama seems willing to ignore progressives are those issues where I tend to have the most sympathy with their views, because I share their opposition to the war, illegal surveillance and so on, so what I am concerned about, as always, is that Obama will pursue the same bankrupt “centrism” in foreign policy and antiterrorism that is just clearly bad policy and bad for the country. Progressives have some more leverage over the administration than conservatives do, obviously, so I would rather see them stand up to an administration that pursues these bad policies. If progressives don’t resist Obama when he trends towards “centrism” in foreign and security policies, no one else will who can have much of an effect. Of course, I don’t expect something remotely like Kennedy’s insurgency against Carter. I would like to see progressives take their convictions seriously enough not to go along with the administration when it is making mistakes, and I think we are already seeing the beginning of some of the undesirable directions it is taking.

Yes, many progressive would love to punish Lieberman. I’m one of them. But I don’t see how it actually helps us accomplish our goals, so I can let go of that minor satisfaction. Fact is, his vote on domestic policy issues will be important. So will McCain’s for that matter, who I think Obama can succeed at courting for “bipartisanship” cred. The GOP looks determined to try to undermine any health care program the Dems put forward, and every vote will count on that.

Now I admit, I’d like to see someone other than Brennan at the CIA, as would most progressives. But for one, he hasn’t yet been chosen, and more importantly, it’s Obama who sets the policy, and he’s stated openly that he will end all torture. If he breaks his word on that, there will be hell to pay, but getting rid of everyone in the intelligence community who has been complicit in torture is probably not an option at this point, since it was so pervasive. So I can live with such people if the actual policy has firmly and irrevocably changed.

The general point being, pay attention most of all to what policies Obama pursues. Putting in people who have widespread respect and experience is not undermining progressive goals, its a way to accomplish them. Probably the only way, given the shaky history of the democratic party on so many of these matters.