Advice for Obama: The Press and the Republicans Will Call You a Liberal, So You Might as Well Be a Liberal
This is especially true because by and large liberal policies are good policies. To pursue sub-par policies and abandon policies that are good for the nation because you think your political viability is enhanced by being a hippie-punching non-liberal simply does not work. It simply does not work on the terrain of politics, for you are going to be classified as a liberal no matter what. And it simply does not work on the terrain of policy.
Duncan Black explains:
Eschaton: Unforced Errors: The Republicans shit the bed and I get that it is indeed difficult to unshit it, but the thing to remember is that every Democratic president is, no matter how they portray themselves, the representative of liberalism and their policies, and policy outcomes become liberal policy outcomes. Whether it's JFK's Brahmin Bolshevism, LBJ's Stonewall Stalinism, that peanut farmer from the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, Slick Willie's Hillbilly Marxism, or, of course, the current Kenyan Muslim Socialism, they all represent The Left because, well, they run the damn country and they're nominally of The Left. I tend to think the hippies get it mostly right, and while none of these people are actually hippies, given the way they're portrayed they ultimately do represent them.