Obama Addresses Critics on ‘Centrist’ Moves

By Michael Powell
NYT blog

POWDER SPRINGS, Ga. — Barack Obama had heard quite enough of the complaints that he is pirouetting, leaping, lurching even, toward the political center.

He is at heart, he told a crowd in suburban Atlanta, a pretty progressive guy who just happens to pack along a complicated world view.

“Look, let me talk about the broader issue, this whole notion that I am shifting to the center,” he said. “The people who say this apparently haven’t been listening to me.”

To this, he adds, parenthetically: “And I must say some of this is my friends on the left” and those in the media.

“I am someone who is no doubt progressive,” he said, adding that he believes in universal health care and that government has a strong role to play in overseeing financial institutions and cracking down on abuses in bankruptcies and the like.

(Continued here.)