The New "Moderate" Democrats

Andie Coller of Politico.com reports that some Democrats are getting very concerned that President Obama may be branded as a liberal by his own party. Andie quotes Drew Westin, a political psychology expert, as essentially saying that less radical liberal congressmen should stop referring to themselves as “moderate”. By doing so, the implication is that Obama and his pals on the left are not so “moderate”. Why, heavens to Betsy, someone might actually mistake them for liberals!

Horror of horrors! But, as Andie reports, liberal and conservative are passé appellations and need to be updated.

In the meantime, Westen suggests, Obama and like-minded legislators ought to claim the mantle of moderation for themselves — before it’s too late.

“When you hear one of the conservative Democrats say, ‘I don’t think we should be pushing forward on things like health care or energy right now, because we’re in a big hole already fiscally — that’s not a position that needs to be branded as a moderate position,” he says.

I’m sorry, I’m confused. If Mr. Obama is a “moderate”, then what is a “liberal” in this brave new world? After all, didn’t the radical revolutionary Socialist dictator Hugo Chavez recently make the comment that Obama is more left-wing than both he and fellow-revolutionary Socialist dictator Fidel Castro?

Apparently, Democrats are attempting to dial the middle more and more toward the left, with the able assistance of our compliant state-run media. In the modern updated version, conservatives are drooling, mouth-breathing cretin Republicans incapable of rational thought, and the Democrats who agree with them. To be a liberal on the other hand, you would need to be, say, Ayatollah Khomeini’s crazy half-brother Vladimir who’s looking forward to the coming of the fourteenth Imam.

Good grief! As Mr. Obama is fond of saying, “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.” By the same token, you can put lipstick on a liberal and call it a moderate, but it’s still a pig…I mean, a liberal.

Andrew Thomas aka Angel Artiste
Edited version published in AmericanThinker.com