I think Axelrod had a comment somewhere, that people do not want to be perceived that they are not part of a movement, that they will be left out.  I think the, progressive/left, got caught by the spinning and it became political anathema to the "scripted progressive" mantra to question the narrative.  The cultural signifiers duped them.  

Obama is only beginning to understand the capability he has at his disposal.

What brought us Obama is the upper middle class that reads the NYT and WaPo religiously and decided that it's quite fancy to have a black president. They also learned from the the papers they read that the worst thing that ever happened to the US is, not W, Bill and Hillary Clinton. This group, who Anglachel calls the Whole Food Nation, ran with CDS and Obama.

Kos and Josh and Co. showed themselves to be nothing but low lives without values and without morality.

Obama was always centrist; leaning a little left on some issues, and a little more conservative on others. It was all right there if you bothered to read his plans.

The same for Clinton. She was to the left of Obama a little on a few issues, but the differences were minor.

I preferred her because I was turned off by Obama's post-partisan talk, and initial refusal to stand up and defend Democratic principles (fortunately that changed after the convention). But I never had the illusion that what they would try to achieve as president would be wildly different.

Yet, somehow, the lefty blogs rejected Clinton as an evil neocon, and embraced Obama was a progressive knight in shining armour.

How did that happen? I think that CDS has something to do with it. All negative things got projected on to Clinton, and, almost as a consequence, all positive things got projected on to Obama.

Now why would Obama appoint someone like Brennan as CIA Director?  ...Because he attached himself like a leech to Obama's campaign?  I think that appt is completely unnecessary and will cause him trouble on the left, possibly even from the Democrats in Congress.  But some people on the left still want to defend Brennan because he could be competent and there are few competent people out there.  Regardless of the assumption that someone from that era of the administration is actually competent it disturbs me that people just won't draw a line.  Torture is wrong, the people who supported it are wrong, and it needs to be investigated.  That seems pretty simple.  And that is putting aside the trend of intelligence outsourcing that Brennan represents and that you can read about in Spies for Hire.

...influential progressive factions committed themselves early, loyally and enthusiastically to Obama even though he never even courted that support, let alone made commitments to secure it.

It is because of the breakdown in the understanding of debate and dissent -- the limits placed on reasoning by the conservative movement.

The bloggers I like the most are the most consistent.  The bloggers I like the least are like weather vanes - if you want to know which way the wind is blowing, just check their latest post.

How do you get to be this particular commenter's WBE! ?  Just refuse to jump on every passing bandwagon.  

Also interesting in the comments was the idea that it is never a good time to pressure Obama.  First let's get him elected!  Can't we wait until after the Inauguration?  ....  then it will be always be too soon and there will always be some milestone to be passed.  I'm sure by February, someone will proclaim that we can't expect the Democrats to do anything risky until after the 2010 midterm elections.