We started Progressives Against Obama this summer, when Barack Obama was busy kicking progressive Democrats in the teeth by embracing the worst of George W. Bush’s politics: Faith-based corruption, big government spying, and caving in to Big Oil demands for offshore drilling.

Barack Obama lost our support over these issues. However, that doesn’t mean that John McCain gained our support.

In fact, when McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate, he cemented our determination to vote against McCain

Where does that leave us? We can’t support Obama, but we can’t vote for McCain.

From the start, we’ve written that there are many valid forms of political opposition. Those forms of opposition include a vote for Obama, because he’s the best of the flawed presidential candidates, followed by opposition to Obama’s attempts to enact the right wing policies that have alienated us from his campaign.

We’re not happy making this choice, but the choice is a clear one to make. The idea of Sarah Palin becoming President after the death or incapacitation of the elderly John McCain is too frightening to ignore. Barack Obama won’t make the kind of President America really needs, but he will be a better President than McCain or Palin could be.

Politics is not an activity that is restricted to just Election Day. The election of Barack Obama as President will be just the beginning of the establishment of an Obama Administration. We have to make the sacrifice of voting for Obama, and then we need to work to make the imperfect Obama White House the best that we can.

How could a Democrat possibly lose the 2008 presidential election? That’s the question that shocked Democratic Party insiders are now asking themselves, as Barack Obama’s polling numbers have dropped dramatically down to the level of John McCain’s - or even below McCain’s.

2008 was supposed to be the year of the Democrats. After George W. Bush’s powerfully unpopular presidency, the American public ought to be hungry for change. So, why is Barack Obama getting so little support.

Actually, there’s not much mystery in the answer: Barack Obama has stopped being the candidate of change.

Barack Obama’s popularity began to dwindle precisely when Obama began a crass campaign of political triangulation. Trying to gain the support of Republican voters, Obama began to embrace the worst policies of George W. Bush: Warrantless wiretapping and spying against Americans, faith-based initiatives, waffling on Iraq, offshore oil drilling, and so on.

Progressives who supported Barack Obama felt slapped in the face. They stopped showing up to volunteer. They stopped sending in donations. They left Yes We Can in the gutter.

Barack Obama didn’t gain any Republican or independent support as a result of his betrayal of Democratic values either. To the Republicans and independents, Barack Obama suddenly was exposed as just an ordinary politician who couldn’t be trusted - a flip flopper.

Democrats, Republicans and independents all want to elect a President with a strong character. They want someone with integrity, not someone who will change his position on important issues for the sake of political convenience.

To the extent that Barack Obama is having trouble in the general election, it is due to the fact that his campaign made a clumsy attempt to abandon the Democratic Party’s base, just after they delivered Obama victory over Hillary Clinton. Maybe Barack Obama can still manage a victory, but if he does become President, it won’t be change we can believe in.