Sometimes I hate it when I'm right

Back in February, on the day of the Maryland Democratic Primary, I wrote this:

Watching the coverage makes me anxious. While Clinton's shown shaking hands with workers at the GM transmission plant, Obama's got crowds of young people waving signs and chanting. As Morra Aarons wites over at BlogHer:

Being a Hillary supporter is like being the person in the dorm who yells at her partying neighbors to shut up, because she's studying for a final exam. You know you have a good reason, but you’re a little annoyed at yourself for being such a pill.

I feel like a party pooper because I'm not shouting "Si, se puede!" But Senator Obama, se puede? Could I have some more details on how se puede?

At the time, many of my Obama supportin' friends (and I do have some diehards), thought I was being a stick in the mud by continually asking for more detail from Obama, and because I said my biggest concern about Obama was that we just don't know much about him -- not enough to know what he will do once in office.

And this week, Barack Obama has been very busy proving me right, crassly moving to the center on 3 important issues: gun control, death penalty, and FISA. Where is the "new" kind of politics? Where is the "Washington outsider"? Where is the man who spoke before thousands of adoring followers in Iowa and said:

Years from now, you'll look back and you'll say that this was the moment, this was the place where America remembered what it means to hope. For many months, we've been teased, even derided for talking about hope. But we always knew that hope is not blind optimism. It's not ignoring the enormity of the tasks ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path.

It's not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it and to work for it and to fight for it.

I thought that was too good to be true. I thought the Obama supporters were being naive to believe him when he said he would stand up and "fight for it." Now it turns out he's just another politician running for office, saying whatever he has to in order to get elected.

Crap. Sometimes I really hate it when I'm right.

Joel Stein of the LA Times received much grief for this characterization of Obama:

What the Cult of Obama doesn't realize is that he's a politician. Not a brave one taking risky positions like Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich, but a mainstream one. He has not been firing up the Senate with stirring Cross-of-Gold-type speeches to end the war. He's a politician so soft and safe, Oprah likes him. There's talk about his charisma and good looks, but I know a nerd when I see one. The dude is Urkel with a better tailor.

So. What's next, Mr Mainstream Senator Obama?

Obama and the death penalty: He disappoints again

I'm trying. I really am. Hillary Clinton has conceded the nomination to Barack Obama, and as so many people keep telling me, he's way better than that other guy, John McCain. But when I vote in November, I would love to vote for Obama and feel good about it, rather than ... "meh, he's o.k."

But lately it seems that on issue after issue, Obama disappoints me. The latest came yesterday when he publicly announced his disagreement with the Supreme Court decision barring states from executing criminals guilty of child rape. Now don't get me wrong -- this is a horrible, despicable crime, and society should deal with those guilty of this crime in the strongest manner possible. But when the government starts killing people who didn't kill, when we start killing people for crimes that do not involve murder, we begin a deep descent into a special place in Hell.

At a press conference yesterday, Obama said:

I think that the rape of a small child, 6 or 8 years old, is a heinous crime and if a state makes a decision that under narrow, limited, well-defined circumstances the death penalty is at least potentially applicable, that that does not violate our Constitution.

Obama agrees with Chief Justice John Roberts, Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas -- all dissenters in this case.

WTF?

There are so many reasons why the death penalty is wrong. Even if you agree with it in theory, you must acknowledge the Chicago Tribune description:

Who gets a sentence of life and who gets death is often a matter of random luck, of politics, of geography, even a matter of racism. Mistakes can occur at every level of the process.

As a state Senator, Obama was a proponent of death penalty reform because he understood the many problems with it as a truly just sentence. From Talk Left:

While an Illinois state senator, Obama was key in getting the state's notorious death penalty laws changed, including a requirement that in most cases police interrogations involving capital crimes must be recorded.

The changes enacted in 2003 reformed a system that had sent 13 people to death row, only to have them released because they were later determine to be innocent or had been convicted using improper methods.

"Without Barack's energy, imagination and commitment I do not believe the very substantial and meaningful reforms that became law in Illinois would have taken place," said author Scott Turow, a member of the state commission that recommended many of the changes.

Surely he understands that the problems were not unique to the state of Illinois. How can he now stand before us and say there should be more executions in this country?

I really am trying to like this guy, but he disappoints again. Because the guy who was supposed to be all about "change" looks more and more like the guy who's walking down the middle of the road.

photo AFP/Getty Images