“Say it Ain’t So, Joe” was the legendary plea of a young fan when famed baseball hero, Shoeless Joe Jackson, testified to his part in throwing the games during the great Chicago Black Sox scandal of 1919. (The boy apparently was more grammatical and said “it isn’t so, is it Joe?” but media hype being the same then as now, “ain’t” became the blazing headline that echoes through the years.)

Now many in Obama’s left-wing base of idealists, those among the cadre who came 75,000 strong to hear him in Oregon, those minions who went door to door in an historical primary of Hope for a New Kind of Candidate, those chatterers who supported him on a gajillion blogs, are thinking “Say it ain’t so, O.”

Negative reactions to Obama’s shift to the center are flooding the web, television, newspapers and magazines. First he was attacked for his support of the Supreme Court decision to overturn a gun ban in the city of DC. The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence emphasized their slippery slope plea for money by posting the NRA’s immediate crowing that this was “just the opening salvo”, to use gun-ho language. “The NRA is going to see that every American has equal access to guns.”

Then came Obama’s decision to join other Democrats who are supporting the FISA bill “compromise”– which grants immunity to telecom companies for past warrantless spying. Even chief cheerleader and apologist for all things Obama, Keith Olberman, has begun to challenge him. Some media bloggers, pundits and citizen-journalists argue that he had no choice; as a junior senator he didn’t have the clout to change the inevitable vote and so why give ammo to “soft on terror” smears. But an outraged ACLU pitched a plea to members, many of whom support Obama, blasting senators who are caving on a bill that would “let telecommunication companies off scot free after they broke the law by supplying mountains of your personal information to the government without a warrant.”

Last winter, when locked in a breathless battle with Hillary, Obama uttered tough words and spoke in favor of the Dodd-Feingold amendment to repeal retroactive immunity for these companies. “There is no reason why telephone companies should be given blanket immunity to cover violations of the rights of American people — we must affirm that no one in this country is above the law.”

That was then.

This is now. Headline on the Washington Post’s Web site: “Obama Supports FISA Legislation, Angering the Left.”

Then on Tuesday, Obama wooed the evangelicals with a promise to keep the concept of Bush’s faith-based government-church affiliation supported by taxpayers’ dollars (vowing to toughen the policing of discriminatory hiring or proselytizing for a specific faith). Some pundits pointed out that many African-American churchgoers support a faith-based relationship with the government so this is not a flip-flop for churchgoing Obama. Separation of church and state advocates remain up in arms.

Anyone with the smallest knowledge of presidential politics knows that candidates move from their die-hard base to the center in the general election. But Obama cast himself above politics as usual. Of course he wasn’t, nor could he be and still win in a country so disparate. The cynical gamble has always been that the base has no where else to go. Still, hardcore Obama partisans might just give up that much-needed, soaring sense of “yes we can” that fueled his historic candidacy. It all ended tragically for Gore in Florida when he and Lieberman pandered to the Republican Cuban-Americans who would never vote Democrat. The fizz went out of his liberal base and ridiculously purist leftists voted 90,000 strong for the all-time spoiler, Ralph Nader. Just a thousand of those would have cinched a Gore presidency, dangling chads or no.

The country remains hooked on Terrormania, or at least the politicians perceive this and the media belts it out endlessly. Flag waving and flag wearing (in a lapel but not on your jeans) have been constants in American politics and often a patriotic hallmark of the basest scoundrels. Swift-boating taught the Democrats to counter hard and fast and now Obama endlessly appears before a blizzard of red-white-and-blue flags. However, Obama runs the risk of appearing more and more like a candidate who will do anything to win –shades of the criticism against Hillary — if he trims and tempers his message too much in his centrist push. There is also the possibility that he was never the politician others thought. Today he said people get surprised at his positions because he has been “tagged” a liberal by others, but he really hasn’t changed.

There remain some he will never win over, no matter his parsing of words. Back in Shoeless Joe Jackson’s day, Sinclair Lewis wrote about the God-fearing bigotry that was alive on Main Street, USA. A recent Washington Post profile of citizens in the aptly named Flag City revealed a remarkable myopia regarding the truth by residents who insisted that Christian Obama is a Muslim and not even an American. They know because friends and hate-bloggers had told them so. The blogs are filled with hate for Obama’s color, polls show a “prejudice” as Andrea Mitchell delicately termed racism. No amount of flags on the podium, pins in the lapel or avowals of patriotism will change that hardcore ugly mindset.

Yet here he is, stuck in a personal kind of “Patriot Act” , forced to reiterate the truth that he is a true patriot, when he should be free to talk about the terrible fears average people have about the economy and what he could do about it as president.

Ironically, when Obama began his race it seemed that he could win simply by being fiercely anti-war. Many who oppose our presence in Iraq continue to see this as a truly patriotic position. Now that issue is blurred by some lessening of carnage in Iraq and Fourth of July style hype in daily doses by McCain. And so Obama abandons FISA to prove that he can be as tough on terrorism as the next guy.

And pundits are now asking, is it conceivable that McCain could turn things around again? Win on jingoistic patriotic symbolism and stay-the-course rhetoric? After all, McCain just brought on board one of the swift boaters who smeared John Kerry in 2004.

Soft on terrorism has just begun.