The increasingly right-wing character of the transition being organized in preparation for President-Elect Barack Obama’s inauguration in January has elicited expressions of concern from the middle-class “left.” This milieu, whose views are reflected in publications like the Nation magazine, played a significant role during the election campaign in promoting Obama’s candidacy and the Democratic Party as vehicles for fundamental political and social change.

The past ten days have served to expose the real content of Obama’s “change you can believe in.” First came the appointment of Rahm Emanuel, the right-wing Democratic congressman and millionaire investment banker, as chief of staff. No sooner was he tapped for the post than Emanuel pledged to the Wall Street Journal that the Obama White House would “stand up to” the strengthened Democratic majorities in Congress.

Then came news that the transition teams at the Pentagon and CIA were headed, respectively, by supporters of the Iraq war and CIA veterans who were complicit in policies of torture and extraordinary rendition as well as in fabricating the phony intelligence used to promote the war against Iraq.

What is taking shape is a government that represents continuity with the last eight years far more than change. Its personnel and the policies with which they are identified spell a continuation of wars of aggression abroad and domestic policies that defend the interests of America’s financial elite at the expense of the broad mass of working people.

To anyone who paid serious attention to what Obama was saying and doing in the course of the election campaign—his vote to expand domestic spying and grant immunity to the telecoms, his statements threatening war against Iran and Pakistan and vowing undying fealty to Israel, his admission that his Iraq withdrawal plan would leave a “residual force” of tens of thousands of troops in the country, while its pace would be set by commanders on the ground, and his support for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout—the character of the transition should hardly come as a surprise.

Were you listening during the primaries and then the campaign?  If you were then you will be weary of this administration taking shape.