I commented a few days ago, prior to the election, that I was having more and more trouble recognizing some of the Obama supporters as my fellow travelers in the progressive movement (or, at least, what I had thought was the progressive movement).  The way they see unions, not as a core component of the progressive agenda and an essential part of lifting up the working class and reducing economic inequality in this country, but rather as a "special interest" where "corrupt union bosses" act contrary to the interests of their members.  The way they see the netroots, not as an important part of the progressive infrastructure that disseminates information and arguments among the Democratic base as a countervailing force to talk radio on the right, but rather as a bunch of irrelevant purity trolls who would hopefully be marginalized through an Obama victory.  The way they take a basic, Krugman-style argument about reducing the economic inequality that has overtaken this country since the time of Reagan, and deride it as "an argument for socialism."

I don't really know what Obama himself believes about any of these issues, but when someone is supported by a bunch of people who are becoming less and less recognizable to me as progressives with each passing day, it makes me worry.

I don't think these people are being dishonest at all when they seek to redefine "progressivism" from how I understand the term.  Rather, it increasingly seems to me that they simply understand "progressive" to mean whatever Barack Obama happens to be for.  If Obama makes a disdainful comment about unions, well then, unions are no longer an essential part of the progressive movement, they're just a special interest.  Ultimately you arrive in a place where progressivism is not about Paul Krugman's economic arguments, it's not about the netroots agenda, it's simply about "bringing people together" and restructuring "our participatory form of government," as the above comments suggest.  It's almost as if the rest of us had no idea what progressivism meant before Obama came along.

Obama is not a leader and he's certainly not progressive.  I see quotes like above and think it really is like "1984".  You have hit the nail on the head - nothing is progressive unless Obama declares it so.

The Obama candidacy is not about policies and principles beyond window-dressing. It's about personality. If Obama says it, it's good. This is disturbingly like the dwindling Bushbots' in the GOP, people who think of themselves as conservatives when in fact their adulation of Bush has led them into a different ideology altogether: neoconservatism.

I intend to vote for Obama because I can't support McCain, and I don't know that it's in me NOT to vote in any major election. But I will cast that vote with serious trepidation because I do not know what this candidate and this party stand for these days.

The disturbing thing to me is that those who seem most excited about Obama's candidacy could care less about policies. All they care about is Obama. It's truly a personality cult. Hell, even Reagan had a few clear principles and some firm policy stands. He stood for things. (I know because I fervently opposed those things.) Obama stands for winning--and nothing else.

I mostly believed this even before they slavishly followed every Obama flip flop and deviation from progressive values. Even when I was mostly agreeing with them, I could pretty well see that they were doing little more than piling on to a position that someone else had articulated for them.

What it took Obama to prove to me, though, was just how far they would take this mindlessly dependent tack.

They are, one and all, lost souls waiting for instructions from the Mothership.

Really, this is one of the things that I have found astonishing about what Obama has done since he won the nomination and which his supporters enable, even admire: absolutely major flip flops that take place not over many months or years, but over as little as a few days.

How does a politician get away with that? How does a supporter in a position of responsibility like Halperin, who must base his own credibility on some reputation for reliability and firmness on policy, get away with it?

It's a political version of three card monte.  

But, like that old con game, it only fools the naive.

Obama has a 289-249 lead in the electoral college, which looks good until you notice the 327-211 lead Kerry held on this day four years ago.  Or the steady retreat from the 140+ EV lead Obama held in late June.

As I said earlier today, he doesn't lead, he travels with the herd, waiting and watching until he sees where it's going, then runs to the front and pretends ("my position has always been...") he was there the whole time.

Unfortunately, these "New Progressive Democrats" come with an agenda that looks a lot like the pre-2000 Republican agenda:  Low taxes, no unions, etc.  

Since Obama doesn't really have an agenda of his own, he has readily adapted theirs.