How to Push Obama.

• Author: Nichols, John (American writer)
• Position: Barack Obama - Essay

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On November 4, the American people by a popular majority of more than eight million votes selected as their new President a Democratic contender who had been attacked by his Republican foe as a radical who "began his campaign in the liberal left lane of politics and has never left it."

If only.

In truth, Barack Obama was never the Che Guevara in pinstripes that the rightwing attack machine conjured up. His record on Capitol Hill was never "more liberal than a Senator who calls himself a socialist [Vermont's Bernie Sanders]," as John McCain wheezed at the last stops of a dying campaign. And he has never even been in competition for the title bestowed upon him by former Senator Fred Thompson during last summer's Republican National Convention: "the most liberal ... nominee to ever run for President."

Thompson had apparently forgotten not just George McGovern but Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis, all of whom sought the Presidency as more left-leaning contenders than did Obama in 2008. And, as McGovern, an able historian, himself reminds us: Franklin Roosevelt put contemporary Democrats to shame when it came to embracing and advancing radical notions.

For today's liberals and progressives, who find themselves moving from the comfortably predictable opposition stance of the Bush-Cheney interregnum to the more challenging position of dealing with the first Democratic President elected with something akin to a mandate since Lyndon Johnson in 1964, it is important to see Barack Obama for who he is and his Administration for what it can be. The best way to do this is not by listening to Obama's Republican detractors--or to the lite-Republicans of the Washington Democratic establishment--but by hearing the President-elect in his own words.

After he secured the delegates required to claim the Democratic nomination, Obama found himself at a town hall meeting in suburban Atlanta, where he was grilled about whether--having run as a primary-season progressive--he was now shifting to the center.

The Senator was clearly offended by the suggestion. "Let me talk about the broader issue, this whole notion that I am shifting to the center or that I'm flip-flopping or this or that or the other," he began. "You know, the people who say this apparently haven't been listening to me."

Obama continued: "I am somebody who is no doubt progressive. I believe in a tax code that we need to make more fair. I believe in universal health care. I believe in making college affordable. I believe in paying our teachers more money. I believe in early childhood education. I believe in a whole lot of things that make me progressive.

Those were not casually chosen words. Barack Obama knows exactly what it means to say he is a "progressive." When he does so, he is not merely avoiding the word "liberal," as the sillier of his rightwing critics like to claim...