OK, so David Brooks has been writing stuff about how President Obama is moving the country to the left, drawing as a case in point the budget, which today he calls "a liberal, big government document that should make moderates nervous."

As someone who is occasionally described as a moderate (and who certainly is more a moderate than a conservative), and doesn't totally disclaim the label (though I'm more a libertarian, really), I have to agree with this.

But it appears Greg Sargent does not. In discussing apparent thoughts expressed by the White House to Brooks about his column from Tuesday, which Greg initially construed as a tad defensive, Greg posits that:

maybe what we’re seeing here is more of the Obama team’s efforts to redefine the moderate center.

[...]

Yes, the Obama team is attempting an expansion of government activism not seen since Lyndon Johnson. But they’re redefining this type of government action as not radical at all, as the sensible and even moderate course, given the circumstances. And they’re saying this because that’s really how they see it.

I'm not going to argue that the redefining is what is being attempted, or that the administration really thinks that an outsized budget, following on the heels of a big stimulus package that many would also call outsized, is "moderate" (they probably do see it that way, even though I think they're bonkers, if indeed they do). ...

Looks like the paper I used to write for back in Seattle, the P-I, might stay alive... just in an online-only version.

If you're not clear on the background here, read this from Real Clear Politics from about 2 months ago.

Personally, I hope the P-I can survive in some form.  It has been a great source of local news.  Yes, it's more liberal than the Times.  But it's a paper whose staff have done some really solid reporting of late  (note the number of people from the paper who won at the 2008 CB Blethen Memorial Awards).  We need more of this right now, not less, and it might be argued that is especially the case in the markets that regional papers serve. [intro]

As was reported earlier by the Washington Post's Jose Antonio Vargas (and announced by the man himself in a post over at the e-Voter Institute), today was my former boss, Cy Krohn's last day as the RNC's eCampaign Director.

Here's what the Post wrote about Cy:

A veteran of Microsoft and Yahoo, Krohn joined the RNC in July 2007 and started to reboot the party's online infrastructure. Immediately, he launched new sites within GOP.com (such as GOPPlatform2008.com, which allowed visitors to help shape the party's platform in advance of the Republican National Convention), created the RNC's Facebook group (which now has roughly 7,000 more members than the Democratic National Committee) and grew the RNC's e-mail list from 1.8 to 12 million.

And here's what Cy had to say about achievements during his tenure:

The RNC made some notable gains during the past election cycle. I soon realized our online network was fragmented, our list of e-mail addresses was minimal and we lacked innovation. Today, we host 31 state parties on our website platform, and our e-mail universe has grown from 1.8 million to 12 million addresses. Based on our voter file matches with major web publishers’ databases, we can advertise online directly to 40 million-plus voters. We outperformed the DNC in several areas, accruing twice as many Facebook friends and producing our 2008 Party Platform using the internet. There is a lot more work to do, but the foundation has been laid for new faces to build upon.

[...]...