Time Will Tell

Truthdig has a new article by E.J. Dionne about the much reported feelings of despair on the left that Obama isn't appointing a progressive cabinet. Dionne ties these reported feelings to similar worries back in 1960 and points out that Obama's cabinet, as announced so far, is already to the left of the one Kennedy picked, if only because of the cultural and political differences between 1960 and 2008.

Two key Senators were interviewed:

Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who proudly describes himself as a democratic socialist, has as much of a claim as anyone to speak for the left. He thinks those who see Obama as drifting right are overlooking the importance of the president-elect’s past as a community organizer and also his “sense of history.”

“I believe he understands that he is coming into office at a time when the country faces more problems than at any time since 1933,” Sanders told me. “The American people are prepared to support strong action.”

Sanders acknowledges “concerns” that key Obama appointees supported financial deregulation in the past. He called them “some of the people responsible for getting us into where we are right now.”

But Democrats, Sanders says, realize the burden they bear with full control of the government’s elected branches: “If they don’t begin to really deliver for the middle class in this country, they’ve got nobody to blame but themselves.” Obama’s pledge on Thursday to push hard for health care reform suggests that he shares Sanders’ view.

Sen. Sherrod Brown, another hero to economic populists, argues that even Obama’s appointees among the middle-of-the-road veterans of Bill Clinton’s administration “have all moved from where they were” because economic circumstances have changed so much since the early 1990s.

“I think they pay much more attention to middle-class needs right now—the shrinking middle class and the gap between rich and poor,” the Ohio Democrat said. “I think they understand their mistakes on deregulation.” Like Sanders, Brown stresses Obama’s past as an organizer. “I think his sentiments are progressive,” Brown says.

I think only those who truly felt that Obama was a very liberal candidate are seriously disappointed so far. To anyone watching the debates and the campaign unfold, it was obvious that the only true liberal running for the Democratic nomination was Kucinich. The rest were centrists. To be surprised that we've now got a centrist President-elect, you'd have to have been paying little attention for the last few years.

I think Obama will be a hell of a lot better on most issues that Bush & co. have been, but for the most part, we're just going to have to wait and see what he does in office. To get panicked about his administration before it has even started just seems silly.