The Fuzzy Left.
When I was a kid (in the 1950's), they didn't call people "left-wing" very often in the USA. You had your liberals, a few socialists in the big cities, your Communists (called "commies" if you didn't like them), and your fellow-travelers, which is what the Communists called the liberals and socialists. The anti-communists called the fellow-travelers "dupes" and "com-symps," which meant Communist sympathizers. The Communists called themselves "Progressives," a term borrowed from Teddy Roosevelt, because they knew that most Americans didn't like commies. After all, we had fought them in Korea and they were threatening to nuke us, even before they took over Cuba. Life was simple.
And who were the Communists? Basically, members of the CPUSA, America's very own Communist party, which everybody knew took their marching orders from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR. Later there were Chinese commies, Maoists, and of course, North Koreans, but they were still basically commies.
Then came the Summer of Love, 1968, the New Left, Ronald Reagan, and Gorbachev. No more commies, except in such far-off places as Italy. There were only the Republicans and the rest of us. The rest of us included hippies, environmentalists, gays, and, later, hipsters. But there were also hard-core political types, basically former commies. They pioneered the use of the term "leftists," which described people who were not either Republicans, members of the Ku Klux Klan, or Christian terrorists. Those people who were, were designated "right-wing extremists" or just "right-wing." Those "leftists" who were not Republicans, members of the Ku Klux Klan, or Christian terrorists I am calling members of the "fuzzy left."
So what? So this. Senator Barack Obama, whose political opponent called him Senator Governent (a slip of the tongue?) is now accused of being a socialist, merely because he wants to take money from each according to his ability to earn it, and distribute to each according to his need for the money. Does that make him a socialist? Or is he merely a member of the fuzzy left? Or is he, perhaps, a commie? (The CPUSA still exists.)
I wish I knew. Senator Government, excuse me, Senator Obama, is a very mysterious fellow. He was educated at Harvard, where it is rumored that the leftists, fuzzy or otherwise, are running things. He took courses there but to the best of my knowledge, details of what courses he took, who taught those courses, and what grades he got are not available to mere voters like me. His relationships with Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright are mysterious. What did he know and when did he know it? But does it matter? Ayers may simply be a fuzzy leftist, and Wright may be be too, although he is supposedly a Christian. Not a right-wing terrorist Christian, obviously. So he must be a leftist of some kind, however fuzzy.
One thing is certain. If Obama becomes President, and the polls suggest that he will, there will be change. He has promised that, and that is an Obama promise that I can believe in. Does that mean that the USA will move to the left? I think so. How far? It could be very far. But it's all so fuzzy.