creative commons/flickr/ by roxannejomitchell

Progressives are in a vociferous snit. Barack Obama has not even uttered the word “progressive” and is now advocating (gulp) . . . wait, you’d better sit down first . . . federally funding religious-based initiatives and charities to encourage more involvement in government programs. Oh, my. These groups, Barry swears, won’t proselytize, mind you, but will just help out making the community the epicenter of his efforts to fortify this great land. Right. Evangelicals not proselytizing. Riiiggghhht.

It gets worse, my progressive brethren. Bam recently lamented the Supreme Court’s prohibition against the death penalty in child rape cases and heralded everybody’s favorite SCOTUS originalist Scalia in his majority opinion creating (hardly an originalist notion), that’s right, creating a right to possess firearms. This is the same Obama who apparently is either flip-flopping or (my preferred nuance) evolving on granting telecom immunity in new FISA legislation so as to permit retroactive review of past transgressions. (Don’t ask me what that means.) And let’s not forget throwing Reverend Wright, his spiritual guru and avuncular pal, under the bus and then backing up repeatedly over his twisted and contorted proverbial corpse. And, oh yes, his retreat from accepting public financing. Bam, we hardly knew ye.

And, while we’re on the subject of repudiation, don’t think for a moment that Wes Clark’s off the hook with his McCain comments about his dearth of commander-in-chiefness merely because he was shot down in Vietnam, captured and tortured daily for over five years. Remember, Wright was ditched when perceived wrong. Clark’s a (pardon the bad military pun) loose cannon. You won’t be hearing anything from General Wesley from now on. Trust me. He’ll be gone (or silenced, at least) faster than you can say “Samantha Power.”

This is the campaign of “isn’t.” McCain isn’t a conservative (so the conservatives claim) and he isn’t a progressive or a liberal or consistent for that matter. And Barry isn’t your cookie-cutter, prototypical progressive (or anti-regressive as I prefer). He isn’t a liberal or a radical or a Muslim or . . . whatever you think he promised not to be.

But here’s the kicker: What did Barack promise exactly? He only mentioned change initially. But I warned also initially that a vague, open-ended promise of change was not enough. I wanted specifics.

I wanted not change, but improvement. And it’ll, I submit, happen. Si se puede.

Obama in ’08.