Clearly Obama will be far better than Bush, and we're delighted that he has won the election. However, the hawkishness of his new foreign policy team is a matter of especial concern. It's our job to nudge him, and our congressional delegations, to implement progressive measures.

We've moved from far right to center-right; our perspectives are just skewed because the politicians and media have dragged the mainstream so far to the right.

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Pragmatically, these "centrist" monsters are necessary- a Kucinich style cabinet would get nothing done. In a few years, real progressives and progress will (hopefully) be phased in. This is Obama's hope. The elected officials who resigned their positions will have to run again to regain status, once they leave Obama's first cabinet.

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Jingles, these alleged centrists are the same ones who retailed Bush's lies about Iraq and supported the war. The same ones who sat back and allowed war crimes, war profiteering, violations of the Constitution and citizen's rights to go on, and did nothing.

At best they are quislings, and more likely co-conspirators. Remember, extraordinary renditions, known as forced disappearances when people we don't like do it, were started by Bill Clinton, not George Bush. The Clintons adore landmines and cluster bombs.

Bill Clinton proved a bitter disappointment to progressives, and the only reason we're pleased with Obama's election is that he isn't Bush or the Bush-clone McCain. We got Neocon Lite instead of Neocon Extra Strength.

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He was standing there in that long line of advisors in the photograph that went everywhere.

He's been an economic advisor to Obama since late 2007, or even before.

Robert Reich defines the word Progressive, and some of the ideas Barack has espoused, such as the creation of jobs through green industry and urban renewal, were first heard in Reich's campaign for Massachusetts governor.

David Bonior was also in that photo, and is on the short list for Secretary of Labor. He advised Edwards before the burnout, and was the author of a lot of the Edwards economic positions which made sense. He's a supporter of organized labor, and would be invaluable in working with unions to salvage jobs.

So, there are a couple of Progressives who appeared on the scene, have had obvious influence, and who may have positions in government. There are some very important posts still vacant.

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The author may be modestly "sympathetic" with Obama's "current predicament", but I think the predicament exists in her own mind and in the minds of a lot of premature nay-sayers, who can't even wait for the next administration to begin before they start spouting what amounts to mindless opinions about nothing.

We haven't come very far by taking our gospel from the basically uninformed, run-of-the-mill members of the, to coin a term, information community. If you want to start some change, let's change that.

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I think the Democrats and Republicans play a game of good cop/bad cop with us. Both parties work against our interests, but standard liberals smile gleefully as Democrats carry out Corporate America's agenda.

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We cannot sit back and say "he's better than Bush" for the next eight years. We have to put constant pressure upon all levels of government, and make our voices heard. Otherwise progress will be stalled indefinitely.

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Wishful thinking, perhaps?

Just sort of liked the guy?

Shall I go on? I think there are more ways to say this.

Next clue: Larry Summers is chief economic advisor, just where I would have liked to see Krugman, or Galbraith, or even Herman Daly. It's a tip-off: those are the policies he wants to hear about. And it keeps Summers' foot-in-mouth disease a little out of sight. Clever - nobody said he was dumb.

No, he's a clever, charismatic Clintonite. No wonder Hillary is willing to work for him: he's just like Bill.

I just hope he manages to rise to the economic occasion, or it'll be a rough 4 years and a very short Democratic ascendancy.

Hamsher's article, incidentally, has a very odd, equivocal tone. Sort of like a worm wriggling on a hook. Just how strongly DID she support this blatant non-progressive?

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Whenever everybody else is ready I will be there to say I told you so.

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"Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to help keep the obstructionists off his back and push him to fulfill his campaign promises to end the war, pass health care legislation and the Employee Free Choice Act, clean up the environment, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, repair our infrastructure, create good jobs and restore the middle class.

You're so right. Barack Obama is ONE man, it's going to take all of us. Plenty of blame to go round, plenty to do.

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Just a shout out for Dems.com and God help us all

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...who would that person be?

I want to throw a pie in Joe Leibermann's sorry grinning face, I can't stand that meally mouthed bastard. How dare he speak against Obama and the dems at the repug convention and during the campaign. PIG! OINK! I find him particularly annoying and downright creepy as he rarely left McCain's side. Your turn, who would you throw a pie at?

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Yes, the psudeo-"Progressives" blather, let's give Obama a chance cause he was the lesser of two evils. What they fail to understand (at least publically) is that simply rewards evil.

Let's see, we got Clinton as SoS. Wasn't her foreign policy judgement found to be lacking during the primaries? Suddenly she is . . . SoS?

Let's see, we got Geigner and Summers at Treasury. Ask Indonesia and South Korea how well these two "helped" them. And isn't Geigner part of the Paulson Cabal that seems to be having such success in remedying the "greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression". Were not both of these people part of the former Clinton administration where they helped to lay the foundation of the very crisis they are now going to fix.

Eric Holder had no qualms about helping Chiquita when it got caught playing patsy with Colombian death squads. Along with the Rich pardon?

There is no change here. it is the same-o same-o with a new face. Old wine in new bottles comes to mind. Along with the adage put forth by a Roman philosopher who observed that "For the poor only the faces of the masters change".

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Obama is not a progressive. He doesn't even claim to be. Also, anyone would seem progressive when compared to Bush.
Personally, I'm very disappointed in Obama.
He threw the 4th amendment out the window and voted to give the telecoms immunity;in doing so, he also lied to us, as he had promised to join in a filabuster to stop this action from even coming to a vote!
He has staffed his Cabinet with center-right politicians.
He hasn't ever supported holding Bush and his cronies responsible for their multiple war crimes and crimes against humanity.
NORML says his drug policy does not look
promising at all. He promised to end DEA raids on medical marijuana patients and dispensaries in States that had enacted medical marijuana laws, but will he keep this promise, or prove himself a two-time liar, and counting?

Dennis Kucinich is a true progressive.
That's why he was attacked, shut out of debates, just as his progressive republican counter-point Ron Paul was, and generally marginalized. This was done because the powers
that be knew that Kucinich was the real thing.

No true agents of change or progressives will ever be elected until we change the system. If one is not willing to tow the corporate line, he/she will not be elected.And we don't want him or her to tow that line!
AT&T and Verizon spied on you! Why keep using their services? Bush said if we held the telecoms accountable they wouldn't co-operate with the Gov't in the future!
Well, since they didn't hold them accountable, we should! If you have AT&T or
Verizon, switch to another company, like T-Mobile or even better CREDO mobile.CREDO will pay off your current contract and give you a free camera-phone! And make sure you write Verizon and AT&T and tell them WHY you have stopped using their services.
How we spend what little money we have
has just as much power, maybe more, than how we vote, or protest.

Our country is not so much about Black and White as it is about Poor and Rich; Obama
was half-white, highly educated, wealthy, and
obviously willing to tow the corporate line,
or he would NEVER have made it President. This
is not comforting to me.

We need a President willing to end
the stupid, wasteful, hypocritical War on Drugs, which is really a war on marijuana.They make too much money off the other drugs to mess with them too much...which is why marijuana arrests keep rising, while arrests for other drugs have fallen. We need a President willing to start closing the 700 bases we have around the World, which we wouldn't need if we had energy independence and took care of our planet
and its resources! We need a President willing
to prosecute white collar criminals in the same way the average man in the street is prosecuted. When do we ever see a CEO sentenced to ten hard years at a real prison?
They screwed everyone else over, let them get screwed, literally! We need a President who will amend the Constitution so that it says any non-Constitutional laws, whether in the form of Congressional legislation or Executive Orders, that conflict with the Constitution are automatically void, NO EXCEPTIONS...which should be the case anyway, since the Constitution is supposed to be the Supreme Law
of the Land!

That's progressive, and rational!

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special interests are driving policy instead of real people!

its long past time to real in lobby interests and solve this rather burdensome quagmire

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