Mis Triangulation

...A month after emerging victorious from the bruising Democratic nominating contest, some of Barack Obama's glow may be fading. In the latest NEWSWEEK Poll, the Illinois senator leads Republican nominee John McCain by just 3 percentage points, 44 percent to 41 percent. The statistical dead heat is a marked change from last month's NEWSWEEK Poll, where Obama led McCain by 15 points, 51 percent to 36 percent.

Obama's rapid drop comes at a strategically challenging moment for the Democratic candidate. Having vanquished Hillary Clinton in early June, Obama quickly went about repositioning himself for a general-election audience--an unpleasant task for any nominee emerging from the pander-heavy primary contests and particularly for a candidate who'd slogged through a vigorous primary challenge in most every contest from January until June. Obama's reversal on FISA legislation, his support of faith-based initiatives and his decision to opt out of the campaign public-financing system left him open to charges he was a flip-flopper. In the new poll, 53 percent of voters (and 50 percent of former Hillary Clinton supporters) believe that Obama has changed his position on key issues in order to gain political advantage...

So let's get this straight. Obama positions for a general election audience, cans his promises on surveillance, rejects public financing, panders to the religious righteous, and indicates he may not be so quick to end the endless war after all- and falls flat on his face.

The main$treamers also paint him as "flip-flopping", too, without mentioning McCain flip-flops three times in every speech.

Could it possibly be Obama's excellent advisors have no bloody idea what the general election audience wants?

Where did he get his fine new friends?

...In the weeks since Mrs. Clinton officially suspended her candidacy, the Obama campaign has recruited the services of the Clinton campaign’s director of national security, Lee Feinstein, as well as foreign-policy advisers Mara Rudman, the deputy national security advisor under Bill Clinton; Robert Einhorn, a former assistant secretary for nonproliferation at the State Department; and Stuart Eizenstat, an international-trade specialist who was policy director for Jimmy Carter’s 1976 campaign. On the domestic side, Gene Sperling, who was the top economic adviser on the Clinton campaign, has begun consulting with the Obama policy team.

The establishment of these working relationships follows formal announcements from the Obama campaign that they have hired former Clinton policy director Neera Tanden to report to their own policy director, Heather Higginbottom, along with Ms. Tanden’s own stable of wonks from the Clinton campaign, and that they have brought in Clinton adviser and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to work on national security issues....

Move to Center: Fail.

Just a clue if you want to win this election, sir. Go back to your gut feelings from, say 2003, when you voted against the war. Fire the triangulators. Their consensus view isn't what the general election audience wants, it's what the main$tream media punditocracy declares "the People" want.

And those People are the People that own General Dynamics, Lockheed, and a hundred other corporations really interested in having the Endless War stay endless. Those people really have no interest in seeing someone with your orignal convictions get elected. So their consensus is your original politics of change makes you unelectable.

The more you move to the middle, the less you distinguish yourself from McCain. When a Republican runs against a Republican, the Republican wins every time. So keep triangulating and moderating your positions, sir, if you want to lose this $election.