The Mandate Thing
In the last couple of weeks, I argued almost constantly that if Barack Obama would win, I hoped it would be without a landslide. If he would beat John McCain easily electoral vote wise, I argued, he, the liberal Democratic base and the party’s congressional leaders would say they had received a ‘mandate’ to “fundamentally change” America - Washington D.C.’s foreign and domestic policy - that would not at all be beneficial.
And so, it only took liberal columnist and blogger Paul Krugman only hours until he declared that, indeed, Obama’s victory constitutes a ‘mandate’ for radical progressive change.
Obama, Krugman argued, ran on a distinctly liberal platform, which would come as a great surprise to the many moderates and even moderate conservatives who voted for him yesterday. Now the time has come, the Nobel Prize winner wrote, to “begin the work.”
Krugman argued that Obama ran on a distinctly progressive platform, which was denounced by the McCain campaign as socialist, but Americans voted for the progressive agenda nonetheless. So, Obama and Democrats in general now have permission to bring the kind of change to America, Social Democrats brought to Europe years and especially decades ago.
This is exactly what I feared would happen, and what I tried to warn moderates against. Despite the hopes of so many, Obama was the darling of the progressive base and activists, and for a very good reason: throughout his career and throughout the primaries he proved to be one of them. Voting for him in a manner that would allow him and his most ardent supporters to claim a ‘mandate’ would, I feared, result in a highly progressive agenda, both domestically and internationally; neither of which are supported by said moderates.
Krugman proves that this is indeed what the progressive base, and the backbone of Obama’s victory, have in mind for the coming years. The only question is whether the president-elect agrees with them, or whether he understands that the reason many moderate Americans voted for him regardless of the “spread the wealth around” controversy, was that they believed it to be taken out of context, and the ’socialist’ attack a smear.
If Obama does not keep this in mind in the coming years, he will lose support, and he may have a hard time getting reelected. Moderates who voted for the senator from Illinois, now president-elect, should hope that Obama’s sense of self-preservation trumps his possibly highly progressive views.
As should America’s key allies in key regions of the world, such as Georgia, Turkey and Israel.
Electorally it was a landslide, but I would’t call a 52-47 popular vote a landslide. He is accountable to the people, in fact, the people are the ones that fininaced most of his campagn (and some of those people are republicans that he pulled over from the right). Read this comment in the Krugman article,
couldn’t have said it better myself…
“I think it would be wise to avoid throwing around terms like “mandate” and “superiority of progressive values.” Obama won a narrow majority in the popular vote — I think it was 47-53%. If the dems don’t want to be voted right back out again in mid-term elections, they need to work on demonstrating to other 47% that the can solve problems without going off the ideological deep end.
Anyway, we’re broke. I think we can forget about any new big-government schemes for awhile. There’s no money. “
I’d also add that we are still a center-right country. Just beucase some center right folks voted for hope an change out of desperation (from a horrible past president’s 2 terms) doesn’t change that. From the folks I talk to, the solid foudation of center right principles are still alive an well. (I think we can see this in the stock market’s response in the past day and a half) These center right folks have rolled the dice, but unlike a game of craps, the outcome of the roll is not out of their hands.
“I’d also add that we are still a center-right country.”
How do you come to that conclusion?
In what context?
What issues do you base it on?
If the context is that of all developed countries we are indeed center right or perhaps even further right.
If the context is two party American politics I disagree.
Certainly on most social issues 9with the notable exception of gay marriage) we are as a populace to the left of this countries political party center.
On the broad concept of taxation and federal spending we are center right, but that breaks down when you start asking about specific programs.
On issues of war, peace, and American hegemony it depends on the specific issue, but at this time I think we are more center left in the R v D dichotomy.
I’ll be happy to go into specifics if you like and I encourage you to list issues that you feel show that we are indeed a center right nation.
Jon Meacham of Newsweek thinks we’re center-right and explains in some depth.
“Is this a center-right country? Yes, compared to Europe or Canada it’s obviously much more conservative,” says Adrian Wooldridge, coauthor of “The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America” and Washington bureau chief of the London-based Economist. “There’s a much higher tolerance for inequality, much greater cultural conservatism, a higher incarceration rate, legalized handguns and greater distrust of the state.”
@marc
Read the article. Mostly he places American politics in the context of Western European politics. In that context American politics is certainly of the right, possibly center right depending on where you are in Western Europe.
My thinking is that this is less useful when we are speaking about politics only in the context of American political movements. What is understood by most when someone says we are a center right country is that we are a little more Republican than Democrat. I think the most useful yardstick in this context is to look at public opinion on a list of key issues. More useful would be splitting these issues out into categories, for example: social, economic, environmental, foreign policy etc. Typically more Americans agree with Democrats on social and economic policies (with a few notable exceptions) and more with Republicans on foreign policy (with notable current exceptions).
I think if you list out specific policy issues (social security, medicare, abortion, gay marriage, home loan buyouts, wall street bailout, domestic wiretaps, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, etc.) and look at the polling data you will find we are a center right country. I haven’t cobbled together a comprehensive list recently, but last time I did that’s how it came out.
I would welcome lists of specific policies that should be included and will try to synthesize any lists offered and find the most recent polls. It would be an interesting excercise.
Ok, Grewgills, but your idea for polling would be biased and would reflect only what has happend in one (the last) “Republican” administration. It would be biased becuase if anything, Bush actions show that he isn’t very conserviative (neither is McCain.) One could argue(and many have in the MSM) that the President Bush has (and a lot of Republicans in congress) have moved away from the core Republican principles (low taxes, fiscal responsibility, etc.) Rather than being tax and spend Democrats, they are just as bad in being borrow and spend Republicans. Just because a Republican president and administration “goes rogue” doesn’t mean Conservitism is dead, it just means President Bush (and others in Congress like him) haven’t practiced what their party and Americans have been preaching for a long time. The people still want a President that has these vaules, This time around they thought McCain wouldn’t do anything different than Bush did, and went with Obama for “Change”. His change message obviosly was able to pull Republicans in to vote for him. That doesn’t mean the country is no longer center - right.
Saying that since 53% of the people (just over half) voted for Obama this time around given all that has happened on Bush’s watch: The war in Iraq, the war in Afganistan, a fiscal crisis that is the worst we have seen since the depression, Patriot Act, etc.. Given all this, still almost half voted for “McSame” tells you a lot. If you can’t see it, I can’t help you there.
And I’ll add that since Bush, McCain and many Republicans in Congress have tainted what it means to be Republican, sites like this…
http://rebuildtheparty.com/
are striving to repair the party on it’s founding principles by getting input from the people, not from idealistic party lines.
One more thing..I read somewhere (can’t remember exactly) that roughly 50% of the American people consider themselves moderate, compared with 30% who call themselves conservative and the 20% who say they are liberal. We always for get the independents in ths scenario (I did above).. Independents are the largest and fastest growing segment of the electorate. The math: 50 +30 =80 and 50+20=70 (hence the push to center right rather than center left)…To win elections with wide margins, you need to reach beyond your party’s base (as Obama did) – but that’s a lesson that ideological liberal activists hate to hear because it threatens their influence. That being the case, their discomfort is with the concept of representative democracy itself.