Josh Painter remarks on the wonderful way the usually so volatile hard left has been accepting the President-Elect’s departures from campaign positions in the direction of the center. How long, one wonders, will the honeymoon last?

The hard left, I must say, has shown remarkable patience in light of the middle ground the Obama Administration-In-Waiting has cautiously taken since election day. Oh, there’s been some grumbling about all the Clintonistas the O-Team is stocking the executive branch with, The One’s realization that perhaps it might be best to let the Bush tax cuts simply expire rather than repeal them during a recession and his decision to keep SECDEF Robert Gates around for a while. But the more unhinged of those Obama supporters hoping for change haven’t rioted in the streets in large numbers. There have been no hostages taken with demands that the post of Secretary of Defense be renamed to Minister of Peace and Dennis Kucinch appointed.

It’s really a good thing that progressives have the capacity to show so much patience. It really is. Because they’re going to have to go to that well again. This time, it’s over Gitmo. Leftists have been calling for an immediate shutdown of the Guantanamo detention facility, transfer of the detainees to federal prisons on U.S. soil, and speedy trials with ACLU lawyers and soft-hearted judges for those “freedom fighters” who were only trying to kill our troops because the prisoners were defending their right to feed people into industrial shredding machines and bury the remains in mass graves. Most of those who feel the urgency of shutting down Gitmo for once and for all believe that doing so should be a simple matter.