I guess it was predictable: No sooner does Barack Obama get the nomination sewed up than the complaints start that he's not liberal enough.

As the Times' Gail Collins noted last week, the critics seem to have forgotten something that was obvious during that long primary campaign: On the issues, there was scarcely a hair's breadth between Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Now, though, some on the left are insisting that Obama has moved to the center.

I never did think Obama was the most liberal Democrat around. He supports the death penalty in some cases. His health-care plan is a long, long way from single-payer universal. But he's a good, solid candidate with a lot of liberal positions.

And as Collins noted in her spot-on column: "if you look at the political fights he's picked throughout his political career, the main theme is not any ideology. It's that he hates stupidity."

For the past seven and a half years, we've had a president who is, frankly, stupid. And we've had a vice president who isn't stupid but is perfectly willing to ignore the facts when they get in the way of his ideology or his friends' interests.

If Obama is the next president, I'm certain there'll be many times I disagree with him - and some times when I'm furious with him. I won't worry, though, that he'll invent reasons to get us into war, dismiss the findings of scientists, install conservative ideologues on the Supreme Court, and manipulate the justice system for political ends.

Let the fringe lefties rant on, though. Maybe they'll counter the Republicans' efforts to paint Obama as too far left to be president.