http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/07/has-obama-won-center.html

Is Obama gaining votes by shifting or refining his stances? I doubt it. But I know he's losing some.

Is This The Same Barack Obama? (New York Times, 7/8)

Instead, he is searching for that mythical creamy center located vaguely between the far right and the extreme right.

But Senator Obama is not just tacking gently toward the center. He's lurching right when it suits him, and he's zigging with the kind of reckless abandon that's guaranteed to cause disillusion, if not whiplash.

And you give me even more reasons to put my head in a bucket and POUND POUND POUND.

Having let loose the rabid attack dogs on Clinton, he now no longer has use of them and seems to happy to ignore their slavering on FISA.  They had better be careful, or he'll have someone take them out back and shoot them.  Because that's what you do with rabid animals.

I would bet dollars to donuts that most of the folks who now perceive Obama as "less liberal" are liberals themselves. It seems to me all Obama has accomplished with his "move to the middle" is anger the Dem base, created a "flip flopper" meme and changed the terms of the debate to one where the Dem position is the "Far Left" one.

As seems to be the rule these days, you're not just speaking for yourself!

The Illinois senator was responding to a question from a self-described "reformed Republican" who said he worked for Democrat Bobby Kennedy four decades ago and thanked Obama for restoring "that faith."

"You had an interesting week off being accused of flip-flopping, which is mostly nonsense," the man said. He then asked Obama to restate his Iraq position, and Obama used the opportunity to dispel the idea he had changed his stances on a range of issues.

1. It makes the he is a is a liberal attack less effective after the conventions (I have never understood why it is effective, but it obviously is, as every liberal politician has run away from this label)

2. I think he assumes he can win this thing, and by moving to the center especially on guns, it gives more conservative democrats in red states a better chance to win.  Liberal districts are already locked up, so to win in more conservative districts, these dems will need help.  The more democrats he has in office will allow him to put in place ambitious policy

3. I never thought of him as a "liberal", he seemed like many black democrats (which outside of civil rights, are generally more conservative then their white counterparts)

Poll after poll after poll has been showing that a majority of people trust Democrats to do a better job of handling a long list of issues.  And even though the questions did not ask them whether they would prefer the conservative version, the moderate version or the liberal version, the numbers for Democrats continued to go up.  Bush's approval rating is headed into the teens.

Seems to be there was a base there of people who were not looking for Bush-lite, for more of the same - who were ripe and ready to be brought into the progressive arena - who were so sick and tired of the abysmal policies and actions of Republicans that it seemed to them that it was time for a Democrat.

Why, in the name of all that is holy, has this opportunity been squandered in favor of a nominee who thinks the way to win is to slide ever-closer to the side of the spectrum that people are already fed up with?

Had he embraced and advocated for the more liberal position, Obama could have had some 18 million Clinton voters in a heartbeat, to add to the 18 million who had already voted for him.  Instead, he's losing support from Clinton voters who were willing to vote Democratic with no questions asked, and support from people who were convinced he was a real Democrat and now feel duped.  The Republicans and Dems-for-a-Day must be looking at him and thinking, "Hmmm...if he's going to be more like McCain, I might as well vote for the Real McCain."

Something tells me that if there are more polls like this one, we will see the reverse flip, with Obama tacking back to the left - but will anyone at that point buy the inevitable "this was always my position" explanation?  

 1) democrats stand for nothing

 2) democrats are under the thumb of a radical fringe

I signed on to the Obama Phenomena because I want a Democrat to win.  Obama is the presumptive nominee, so I'm on board.