As Barack Obama moves to broaden his appeal beyond loyal Democrats, a chorus of anger and disappointment has arisen from the left. But those voices are a distinct minority because the party has a more pressing concern: winning in November.
On Wednesday, Obama again bucked his liberal allies, voting in the Senate to give legal immunity to phone companies that took part in warrantless wiretapping after the Sept. 11 attacks. Critics chided Obama for the vote -- which put him crossways with dozens of Democratic colleagues, including Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.
The vote, a reversal of an earlier pledge, was Obama's latest perceived step away from his party's base on a range of issues, among them the death penalty, gun control and taxpayer money for religious groups.
Reaction has been swift and -- aside from the blogosphere and some newspaper columnists -- notably mild.
"We're willing to work through this period," said Richard Parker, president of the liberal Americans for Democratic Action, one of the party's most enduring advocacy groups. In the long run, he said, the organization's "serious concerns" about Obama are far outweighed by its disagreements with Republican John McCain.
Gerald Austin, a veteran Democratic strategist, put it more succinctly: "When I hear people complaining . . . I tell them I have one thing to say: 'President John McCain. Three Supreme Court appointments.' That's all I need to say."
Obama denies any sort of shape-shifting. Campaigning in Georgia on Tuesday, the Illinois senator said that those who see him as moving to the center "haven't been listening."
"Everybody has become so cynical about politics that the assumption is you must be doing everything for political reasons," Obama said. "And the message I want to send to everybody is: You're not going to agree with me on 100% of what I think. But don't assume that if I don't agree with you on something, that it must be because I'm doing that politically. I may just disagree with you."
At the very least, Obama has changed his tone and his emphasis after competing with Clinton for months to seem truest to the Democratic Party's traditional values.
Last week alone, Obama gave a speech on his support for public funding of social programs run by religious groups, and another on patriotism, wearing a flag pin on his lapel. The week before, he welcomed the Supreme Court's decision overturning a handgun ban in the District of Columbia and criticized its ruling against the death penalty for child rape.
