For the past few weeks, the punditocracy (especially the rightwing ones and their media familiars) have been repeating the very wrong assessment that the US is a center-right nation. Why is it wrong? Because a center-right nation would not elect a center-left President (you know, the one who was supposed to be the most liberal Senator?) AND add to a bunch of mostly center-left Congress. CNN provided this poll shortly after the election:
Bob Borosage (conservative) and Stan Greenberg (liberal) have been doing joint polling all season for NPR and they conducted their own election night poll which points out that the moderate portion of the electorate is orienting itself to a center-left position, but shows how that position might be solidified:
Progressives needn’t be defensive about the majority that is dubious about government spending. Making government work effectively is at the heart, not the capillaries of the progressive agenda. This test doesn’t distract; it focuses us on our task. No progressive majority can ever be consolidated for long if it doesn’t demonstrate that government can be an effective ally for everyone.
And that is all moderates are looking for. They aren’t skeptical about the need for government. By large margins, they think regulation does more good than harm. They want investments made in education and training. They favor a concerted government-led drive for energy independence. They far prefer a health-care plan with a choice between their current insurance and a public plan like Medicare, rather than one that would give them a tax credit to negotiate with insurance companies on their own. Their concern is less that government will do too much and more that government will fail to do what it must and waste their money in the process.
Besides, Tod Lindburg from the Hoover Institution (Platinum right wing credentials) says that you can draw the obvious conclusion from majorities of voters actually voting for more liberal candidates:
Here’s the stark reality: It is now harder for the Republican presidential candidate to get to 50.1 percent than for the Democrat. My Hoover Institution colleague David Brady and Douglas Rivers of the research firm YouGovPolimetrix have been analyzing data from online interviews with 12,000 people in both 2004 and 2008. It shows an overall shift to the Democrats of six percentage points. As they write in the forthcoming edition of Policy Review, “The decline of Republican strength occurs by having strong Republicans become weak Republicans, weak Republicans becoming independents, and independents leaning more Democratic or even becoming Democrats.” This is a portrait of an electorate moving from center-right to center-left.
None of this is to say that things can’t change and can’t change quickly — the Reagan administration is instructive, I think — but there shouldn’t be much doubt that the Obama landslide wasn’t a comfortable ratification of conservative policies.