It’s Starting: The L-Word Backlash Against Obama

I’ve been waiting for people to start tossing around the word “liberal” as if it’s some kind of curse, and applying it to one or both of the Democratic front-runners.

Today for the first time, I saw hint of it, directed against Obama–by someone who seems to be a supporter, Joan Vennnochi, writing in the Boston Globe:

Other questions, just for the sake of political argument: Do endorsements from the liberal Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and from the ultra-liberal political action organization, MoveOn.org, come with a downside in the general election? The National Journal just released a listing that ranked Obama as the most liberal senator in 2007. Have the old labels truly lost their ability to zing?

And why, you ask, have I been so eagerly waiting for this? Very simple: it gives me the excuse to give Barack Obama my very best advice:

Barack, stand strong, don’t back down, and don’t be ashamed to be liberal. You were voted the most liberal Senator; make the most of it, and wear it as a badge of honor.

I want to hear you say these words, or something similar:

You say I’m a liberal as if it’s some sort of dirty word. Liberals shortened the work day from 12 hours to 8. Liberals made it possible for all of us to still breathe the air and drink the water, by passing the Clean Air an Clean Water Acts. Liberals brought us universal public education, the civil rights movement the idea that discrimination is wrong no matter who its target. I’m proud to be a liberal, John. In the next four years, liberals will bring us universal health care, will get us out of a war we had no business entering in the first place, will reverse the Bush Administration assault on civil liberties, and will restore our standing as a leader among nations that it had before the very unliberal Bush administration took over. John McCain, aren’t you ashamed that you’re so adamantly not a liberal?