UPDATE: Here’s another interesting take on the “Obamabot” phenomenon. Please read it.

Earlier this afternoon, i read Budhydharma’s diary at Daily Kos entitled “What Happens if Obama Loses the Left?”

There are over 1,000 comments on that diary as I write this here.

As a new member of the community, I have to qualify my statements in this, my first diary, and one that is – gently – disagreeing with the owner of the site. So here goes:

I’m a former Christian fundamentalist.

I’m a former neo-conservative “warblogger.”

I’m a former “pro-life” advocate.

I’m a cynic.

With those qualifiers, I voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election. I did so because I saw all that my previously-held beliefs had wrought both within our nation, and in the greater world community.

That said, I disagree with Budhydharma about this statement:

We all have seen the tensions on the blogs between the members of the Center-Left and the Issue-Left. The CL are the people who portray activists pushing for their issues as “wanting a Pony” or insist that Obama has only been in office for __ number of months…..you know, the people who confuse political activism with impatience.

Okay, I’ve actually argued that “it’s too early” to gauge how Obama is doing related to a number of issues, including torture prosecutions, LBGT rights, etc.

Having said that, I don’t like being lumped into a group called the “center-left.” I’m NOT center-left. In fact, on issue after issue, I consider myself to be farther to the left than Obama would find comfortable.