I like to use the term "a true Democrat" to refer to someone who believes in and fights for the view of government entertained by Roosevelt, Truman and Johnson. Similarly, I hesitate to call the views today dominating the Republican party as Republican. Ronald Reagan is what I think of as a Republican. Or Barry Goldwater. Our retired Senator Voinovich of Ohio was a Republican. On the other hand, our current Ohio Senator Rob Portman and Governor Kasich are so different that I hardly feel it is accurate to refer to them as belonging to the same party. The first three were citizens. These new guys are political players who draw their inspiration from right-wing (corporate) think tanks and the right-wing press. When they left congress they hung around in the corporate sector and now they are working to bring corporate government to Ohio. (At the turn of the twentieth century, Standard Oil owned both Ohio Senators, so this is historical déjà vu).
It is becoming increasingly evident that Barack Obama is not a liberal. His views are very difficult to distinguish from those of Mitt Romney. Indeed, I've gone to referring to ObamaRomneyCare. (As governor of Massachusetts, Romney signed healthcare legislation into law that is eerily similar to the Affordable Healthcare Act.) Not only is Obamacare not socialist, it isn't even liberal democratic. It is based on the notion that the role of government is to leave initiative to the private sector, dominated today by international corporations. If you object to the mandate that people must buy health insurance, keep in mind that the mandate is for them to buy private insurance, which for practical purposes means buying it from some corporate entity.
During the debate over the debt limit, Obama repeatedly stated to his Republican opponents: "I have to deal with my people on the left just like you have to deal with those on your right." In other words, Obama was equating his liberal progressive wing with the Tea Party movement. His goal was and is to situate himself halfway between the Tea Party and the liberals in his own party, which situates him in that space that used to be occupied by something that was called "the moderate Republican," but which doesn't exist anymore. There's a blog to be written on the systematic elimination of this creature starting around 1980.
During the great debate on the raising of the debt ceiling, Obama took to referring to the need to cut "entitlements." In other words, he took up the perspective that either, 1) the United States of America is too poor to spend money on the poor, sick and elderly or 2) the "Government" is not the appropriate means of caring for the poor sick and elderly. These perspectives are by definition conservative perspectives. Of course he expressed pain at taking up these perspectives, which is typical of the now disappeared "moderate Republican" creature. Roosevelt, Truman, and Johnson argued explicitly that these perspectives were false and immoral. That's because they were Democrats. What today has come to be called Liberals.
Obama's course of sacrificing liberal principles in order to compromise with the new Right seems senseless and incoherent. It may be, however, that his advisors are simply responding to the power of big money. To maintain its power, big money needs to be perceived as independent of either political party, and donates to the candidate perceived as being independent of politics. This also explains Obama's simultaneous denunciation of the progressive left and the Tea Party. These are the two groups with the political patriotism to push for reform of the political status quo.
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