Claims of Obama's abandonment of his core beliefs are premature...

Today in his nationally syndicated column, E.J. Dionne claimed that Barack Obama is avoiding ideological differences and went on to claim that "ideological differences in the United States are rather small." Both of these claims are nonsense. Most Democrats in Congress as well as in the country have disagreed radically during the Bush years with most Republicans about the war in Iraq (Democrats believing that wars should not be used to rearrange other parts of the world politically); climate change (it's real, and not, as many Republicans insist, a myth); regulation of markets (on which Democrats have lately been proved right); and civil liberties (if they're sacrificed for security, we will cease to be the nation we thought we were). These are matters of profound ideological difference, and Democrats' beliefs imply one common belief: In a democracy, the instrument of the people's will is government, and it should be used to prevent the theft of our prosperity in the name of prosperity, and of our liberties in the name of liberty. There is no doubt that on all these fundamental questions, Barack Obama is an unambiguous Democrat. He is not and has never been a Republican, overt or covert. It remains to be seen if his decision to rise above emphasizing partisan differences at the time of his inauguration indicates that he is trying to rise above what have been his clear ideological beliefs. But we don't know that yet, and we have no evidence in his record or his life to suggest that he is only ephemerally attached to his ideas and beliefs. (Obama's recent disparaging of "ideology" is a clear reference to the kind of rigid ideology espoused by so many who served in the Bush Administration. The way he uses the word doesn't imply that he doesn't have core beliefs or ideas.) No one can read his account of how he felt about protecting the children of the projects on the South Side of Chicago, whose parents he successfully organized in order to force the city to free their buildings of asbestos, and really believe that he is a detached political calculator who does not feel deeply about the people who he is now going to lead as president. That kind of feeling is what makes a Democrat a Democrat. We're a long way yet from having to "go postal" about Barack Obama, as one prominent Democratic blogger -- digby on Hullabaloo -- suggests might be imminent, unless he stops showing so much solicitude for the views of Republicans. As his soaring approval rating shows, it is politically astute beyond the skill of any recent new president for him to be willing to listen to his opponents' views before undertaking action on many fronts that is sure to upset them.