There’s a lot of growing frustration on the part of progressives that there isn’t a single hardline leftist in any of Obama’s cabinet positions. I know this comes as some surprise to McCain voters who see Barack Obama and his former primary nemesis Hillary Clinton as harbingers of Marxism in America, but the reality is that the American left is very displeased with these choices.

Here’s what the left doesn’t get — the country, though not “center right” as the Republicans believe, is neither conservative or liberal: it’s centrist. People take and pick their viewpoints from a variety of sources and don’t necessarily view two policy positions as incompatible if one rises from leftist thought and the other rises from conservative thought. There is general disgust with hardline ideological positions, as many Americans just aren’t that ideological.

George W. Bush governed from the hard right. Iraq, Katrina, Social Security privatization, purging the Justice Department of Democrats, Terry Schiavo, etc. were all extremely partisan, hardline conservative positions. And Bush failed because of them — his support collapsed because he governed from an ideological position and not a fact-based position. People who normally didn’t care about such things started to think of him as a right wing nutjob. And that was that. But just because they dislike a rightwing nutjob, doesn’t mean they won’t also dislike a leftwing nutjob. I think most ordinary people think that hardline positions of any stripe are bullshit.

Obama is smart. He knows that the only way he can govern successfully and gain consensus is from the center. Anyone who read either of his books should understand this. That’s why he’s got sensible centrist picks, and not a single avatar of the left among them. This may be disappointing to my fellow progressives, but we need to suck it up and accept that we’ve got a competent team of people at the helm at last. Change may happen, but it will be moderate change. Such moderation may seem radical to Americans in the center after eight years of Bush, but progressives are just going to have to accept what we can get. The Republicans didn’t accept what was realistic, and now they’re out in the wilderness after six years of overreach. If we want to stay in the majority, Democrats are going to have to learn to provide sensible progressive solutions and not try to radically change the country as the Republicans did.