That shift that puts Obama in a bad light with some voters is being put to good use, in Republican eyes, by tagging Democratic candidates for other offices as being super-liberal like him. A sort of shredding of the Obama coattails -- before they were even cut from the cloth.
His comment that disenchanted small-town people bitterly “cling” to guns and religion and his preacher's condemning of America defrocked him too late to affect his run in several states. But they are affecting change now.
Maybe a sea change.
“The public, week by week, is becoming more familiar with his big government, far-left vision for America,” says Ed Patru, a spokesman for Freedom's Watch, a group that's painting him as ultraliberal in ads running in Louisiana before a special House seat election.
If Clinton is precipitously forced out of the nomination, the extreme liberal aura about Obama will exist a long time as a sour taste left in the mouth. The GOP, like a true elephant, doesn't forget. Every time they trot out another candidate they'll trot out that sour taste for all to sample again.
And no matter how hard her detractors try, that aura can't be laid at Clinton's feet. Obama did it himself.
It was unfortunate for America that it took too long for this Obama fault to be found out to do the Democrats and Clinton any good. Now it mostly does the Republican Party a good turn.
If extremes didn't have such influence in both parties there would be more time and effort spent on helping the people in the middle and getting their help in return. They are the ones America can truly depend upon.
So what's the middle supposed to do -- sit back and be quiet for fear of being called racists or some other obnoxious name?
Left-leaners shouldn't call them racists unless they really mean it – or even if they don't – because they may wish they hadn't. It's no way to ingratiate themselves with voters, and they may need every last one of the Bible thumpers and gun toters they can get. It's not how to speak to a friend.
McCain is running around among the centrists, bleating like a lamb because he doesn't speak their language either. But he's trying to learn it. And he can't pass up an Obama boost so freely offered.
Sorry, lefties on the port side, there are some people in the middle about to jump ship.
