That is the new meme emerging following the two gubernatorial losses last night for Democrats. I seemed to have missed it where Obama was on the ballot, but that’s what all the talking heads want us to think.

Let’s take a look at Creigh Deeds and the Virginia race. Actually have a look at Think Progress and you will notice how Deeds made a sharp move to the right towards the end of the race. Moves like that won’t bring in any last minute voters, but it will certainly tell the more progressive crowd to just stay home, including those Obama voters.

Then we have a new message being pushed by the right saying that the Democrats should move “more towards the center’”. That’s an interesting angle considering the conservatives want the Republicans to move more towards the right. Sadly we can expect the Democratic leadership to heed this warning and do just that. They are already talking about moving health care reform until next year, and we know what that means. It will then be “well we got to worry about the midterms so let’s go ahead and put it off until 2011”.

The problem is that Democrats are gullible, and not just the elected ones but even the membership at large, including many in the progressive blogosphere. I have pointed out in the past how many Democrats seemed to drink the Kool-Aid that Obama is some uber-liberal, comparable to Ghandi light. Afghanistan is a perfect example of this. The left is acting like Obama has broken some promise by not pulling the troops out of Afghanistan, when he actually is doing what he campaigned on. Instead of listening to the candidate, the left chose to listen to the right wing talking points. This practice is very dangerous for any progressive movement.

The Democrats need to learn how to control the message. Until they can do that they will exist as puppets to the right. Falling for the new meme that the left must move towards the “center” is not a way of doing this.