Why Obama isn't a socialist

In Progressive? liberal? socialist? Where is Obama coming from? Charles Richardson writes that both sides seek to label Obama as a socialist, although for different reasons:

That conclusion suits the interests of pundits on both left and right. For the right, Obama is a target of fear and loathing, for reasons that range from the simply partisan to the deeply pathological, so “socialist” or some near equivalent is a natural charge for them to make. For the left, Obama is recognised as “one of them” (again for a complex of reasons, some of which I’ll come to shortly), and since most left-wingers still have an emotional if not rational attachment to big government, they bring him within the same tent.

Richardson concludes that the label is wrong.