Barack Obama Only "Sounds Like" a Liberal?

Sen. Obama gets the Hillary Clinton centering treatment.

White House reporter Anne Kornblut contributes to the mass media cheering for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama in Wednesday's "A Senate Newcomer, Helping Fellow Democrats on the Trail and Drawing Big Crowds."



"Senator Barack Obama of Illinois has become the prize catch of the midterm campaign. More sought after than virtually every other Democrat, Mr. Obama was fully booked, long ago, on a schedule to take him across a large swath of the country to help his party try to win control of Congress."



Kornblut, like most of the press, slides by Obama's liberal views in favor of forwarding his self-styled pose as a moderate.



"The war in Iraq, which he opposed from the outset, is among the areas where he sounds most like the liberal wing of his party. In other ways, especially in tone and with regard to politics, he insists that neither party has a monopoly on good ideas and frequently declines to criticize President Bush as unfit."



The Times will never come out and call Obama a liberal, although his brief Senate voting record situates him firmly in the liberal camp (the American Conservative Union awards him an 8 out of a possible 100).