EEEK EEEK BARACK OBAMA HAS BEEN REPLACED BY A WINGNUT POD PERSON OMFG!!!!!1!!!!11!!!!!

This whole thing is making me cranky; all I can say is: what Steve Benen said.

If you want primary sources, here's Obama on FISA and Obama on every other "lurch to the right."

I don't know what some progressives thought -- that Obama was a clone of themselves, exactly as far to the left on every issue? He wasn't. That it was possible for him to be elected president without ever wavering or waffling? It isn't -- though one so-called rightward move is just a misreading of an unfortunately worded remark (Iraq), another is non-left-wing thinking that we should have known about going in (Obama "appeared to endorse the death penalty for child rapists" in The Audacity of Hope), and another is more complicated than it appears (Bob Herbert, denouncing Obama's position on religious-group provision of government services as a clone of Bush's position, apparently didn't read the article in his own paper that cited Obama's insistence on non-discrimination in hiring by religious recipient groups as a poison pill that infuriated the likes of the Catholic League and the Family Research Council).

I know I'm supposed to be up in arms about FISA, but there are just too damn many impediments to a win here -- the genie who was supposed to wave a wand and magically eliminate the influence of big money in politics is clearly stuck in traffic; red-state Democrats still, for some reason, think it's in their best interests politically to be to the right of Jane Hamsher and Glenn Greenwald; and Republicans, bafflingly, still portray Democrats as weak on security issues even though voters only fall for that about two-thirds of the time. Snark aside, the big problem is that the public isn't with us on this; on Iraq, on Katrina, on the economy, on Terri Schiavo, the vast majority of America is on our side -- but on dirty, nasty things done in the shadows in the name of security, Americans are still at the wrong end of the learning curve. I'm not sure the 120 days before a presidential election are the right time for a cram course, and that's what I think Obama is thinking, too; it's regrettable, but I don't blame him.