Don't tell anybody, but Obama is actually a progressive. Greg Sargent captures an important dynamic:
This is probably too obvious to point out, but the game here is that Obama is working to frame GOP obstructionism in advance. By simultaneously claiming a mandate while approaching Republicans with "humility" and a request for their help, Obama is boxing out Republican opponents in advance, laying the groundwork to cast them as partisan and hostile to the people's will.
That's why it's still lost on yours truly why people are seeing Obama as "centrist" based on his bipartisan gestures and tone or his "pragmatic" staff pickes. This stuff is just about positioning in advance, and the real tell will lie in his actual policies.
For years, decades in fact, bipartisanship has meant that Democrats should do what the GOP wants. Now, Obama is turning that on its head. Bipartisanship now means that Republicans have every right to get out of the way and help the new government -- which happens to be a Democratic one -- do the business that they were elected to do.
© Jed Lewison