Forewarned

Is forearmed.

Rotwang of TPM cafe:

Not to count any unhatched chickens, but I'd like to gently remind all you Obamaniacs that the Democratic candidate is running on tax cuts, enlarging the military, expanding the invasion of Afghanistan, and sustaining the grip of private insurance companies on the nation's health care system. Our likely Secretary of the Treasury and economic policy czar is Larry Summers, who to the best of my knowledge has never worn love beads. Bush's Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, may stay on for a bit. Obama is running as the competent Republican. No doubt, a competent Republican is better than an incompetent Republican, especially if he or she happens to be a Democrat.

We know this already. Obama is a centrist (so the feeble McCain/Palin charge that he's the most extreme liberal in the Senate is a crock). I'm sure that President Obama will disappoint liberals the country over when he takes the reins and starts cleaning up the mess. But I'm ready to be disappointed, not horrified as I'm sure I would be in a McCain administration.

Update:
Think Progress goes after the center right myth::

As David Sirota has noted, the idea that Americans are fundamentally conservative is a myth. Indeed, a majority of Americans want progressive solutions to the nation’s problems, supporting universal health care, expanded environmental protections, a higher minimum wage, the availability of safe and legal abortions, federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, and the rights of same-sex couples to be legally recognized. Additionally, a majority opposes the Iraq War.

By insisting that — despite all appearances to the contrary — Americans favor conservatives, the right wing is trying to handicap the progressive agenda before it has a chance of being enacted. But today’s election results are likely to throw an even greater wrench in the “center-right country” myth. The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne disputed the conservatives’ entire premise, on MSNBC:

I disagree the notion that we are still a center-right country. We may have been a center-right country. But I think what you’re seeing here, John McCain is running very clearly against Barack Obama as a redistributionist and a socialist. And if the country votes for Barack Obama, I think the country will be saying not that they move far to the left, but we’re not center-right anymore. They want some government action to solve some of these problems.