Say Anything Blog

This strikes me as a good analysis:

John Kerry flip-flopped to the left during the primaries to outflank the hard-left Dean on Iraq. The flip-flop secured him the nomination, but hurt him in the general election. He was left with a recently-adopted left position he could not easily abandon after having already flip-flopped to it months earlier.

The flip-flop hurt him two ways: He was shown to be a panderer and willing to adopt any position to advance his political interests, and he was adopting positions disfavored by the middlish independent voters vital to winning the presidency.

Obama’s flip-flop is the other way. He began by strongly pandering to the left—a la Howard Dean. Hillary was in John Kerry’s position during the primaries—she had to move further and further left to appeal to the harder-left voters of the Democratic primaries (and especially the very hard left activist types that bother showing up for eight hour caucuses). She failed, of course. No matter how far to the left she moved, Obama was always two steps further to the left.

But now it’s general campaign season, and Obama is flip-flopping, not to the left as Kerry did, but to the center.

So while he will be damaged by such principle-free mercenary opportunism, he does not have to fear that, like Kerry, he had made himself less electable among independents and those in the squishy middle. Indeed, Obama’s flip-flops make him more palatable to the center.

Where it may hurt Obama the most is that his pandering to the center is in direct contradiction to his claim to be a “change” candidate.  A “new politics” candidate.  The “authenticity” candidate.

There’s nothing new or different about pandering, and Obama can hardly claim to be “authentic” if he’s now trying to obfuscate his history of being a far-left political figure.