Obama policy shifts anger ardent supporters

It looks like the national news media's love affair with Barack Obama is starting to fray.

Time magazine this week actually has allowed an article to be printed listing 8 major issues Obama has changed his position on since he because the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party. To date, Obama has largely been free of bothersome press scrutiny, as they fawned over his every move.

It's only normal for politicians to move toward the middle once they've won the nomination. Republicans start moving from the right to the center, Democrats from the left to the center. John Kerry destroyed himself doing that, and Obama is certainly in danger. You have to be deft and clever, like Bill Clinton, to get away with it. He called it "triangulation" which caught the media's fancy in his day, and was portrayed as one who was such an intellectual that his positions evolved with time.

The left is miffed as Obama has moved to the center on Iraq, implying he might leave some troops there for a while. The real purists are turned off by his switch on accepting federal funds for his fall campaign. This is the group who have brought the energy and heft to his campaign. He angers them at his own peril.

The natural bent of the national news media would be to blink and ignore what's happening. But once again the blogosphere and the blatantness of Obama's shifts have forced their hand and they can't ignore it.

And by bringing in Arnold Schwartznegger's main political guru, John McCain might just be suddenly positioned to take advantage of it. The ABC new poll and a couple of others show the race even, after earlier showing 8 to 12 point Obama leads.

Fasten your seat belt. This might be a race yet.