Don't Settle for This Center-Right President

Last month I wrote, in regard to the failed Dawn Johnsen nomination:

This White House doesn't cave to the repugs and Blue Dogs on warmongering and corporatism because it's afraid or spineless; it caves to the repugs and Blue Dogs because it agrees with them.

To war and corporate welfare you can now add an even more rightwing Supreme Court.

[R]ight now Obama has the biggest Democratic majority in the Senate he's ever going to have. So why not use it to ensure a solidly progressive nominee like Diane Wood instead of an ideological cipher like Kagan? . . . . When Obama compromises on something like healthcare reform, that's one thing. Politics sometimes forces tough choices on a president. But why compromise on presidential nominees? Why Ben Bernanke? Why Elena Kagan? He doesn't have to do this. Unfortunately, the most likely answer is: he does it because he wants to.

Digby concludes:

At this point there's no longer any reason to assume that Obama doesn't get it or is just trying to get his legislation through and doesn't want to alienate Republicans. He is what he appears to be, which is a dry, pragmatic, status quo, technocrat who makes symbolic leftward gestures while offering center right policies. The power of his iconic status is enough to create the illusion of idealism, which keeps him interesting. The Right is freaky enough to keep the left wary of going too far in challenging him.

But the right smells that he prefers to avoid fights, whether for psychological or ideological reasons, and they are successfully pushing him ever rightward while portraying him as a radical socialist. It's very clever. But then they are far more clever at macro-politics than anyone on the left*.

Read the whole thing.

The last time we had to deal with a corporatist "Democratic" president, liberals had to spend our political capital fighting repugs bent on impeachment.

But this time, we're the ones who put that centrist in the White House. We're the ones he's going to need to stay there. And we're the ones who have to force him out of his corporatist, warmongering, anti-Democratic comfort zone.

Call or email your members of Congress and President Obama here.