Resounding victory

Paul Waldman
Published: November 28, 2008

By PAUL WALDMAN

Richmond Times-Dispatch

In the wake of the presidential election, innumerable commentators have sought to plumb the meaning of Barack Obama’s historic win. The strangest part of this discussion, however, has to be what
some have been saying about the election’s ideological meaning. To hear some in the media, you would never know that Democrats had achieved such a clear triumph.

It’s a familiar pattern: When Republicans win dramatic victories, as they did in 1994 or 2004, we are told that the election results prove that the country has “moved to the right.” When Democrats win,
however, we are told that the election revealed no ideological shift whatsoever — or even that the public was somehow rejecting progressive ideology as it voted for progressive candidates.

So commentators have rushed to the airwaves and op/ed pages to insist that despite all evidence to the contrary, America remains a “center-right” country, and Obama had better not “overreach” by
pursuing a progressive agenda. This message is coming not just from a raft of conservatives (who have an obvious interest in convincing people that the public is still with them), but from non-ideological
figures like NBC’s Tom Brokaw and Newsweek editor Jon Meacham.

Up until the election, Republicans were arguing that the proposals Obama had offered on issues like the economy and health care were so radically leftist they amount to socialism. Now some of those
same people are arguing that Obama campaigned as a centrist, and therefore has no mandate to pursue progressive policies. (The day after the election, Karl Rove claimed, “Barack Obama understands
this is a center-right country and he smartly and wisely ran a campaign that emphasized it.”) Both of these things cannot simultaneously be true.

The truth is that while Obama works hard to show respect toward those who disagree with him, the policies he put forth during the campaign were extremely progressive, and he made no attempt to hide
them. He proposed rolling back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest earners, while giving tax cuts to the middle class. He proposed a plan to move toward universal health care. He proposed new
investments in renewable energy. He proposed an expeditious exit from Iraq. None of these proposals was secret, and all of them have overwhelming support from the public.

It seems awfully strange to tell a president just elected by a considerable margin that he has no mandate. So anyone who claims that Obama shouldn’t follow through on what he proposed during the
campaign ought to be asked exactly which promises they believe Obama should break. And it raises this question: Just what would the American people have to do to convince us that this is not a center-
right country, but a center-left country?

They might try electing a progressive Democrat as president, with more votes than any candidate in U.S. history. They might try electing a Congress with strong Democratic majorities in both the House
and Senate. They might also try electing more Democrats than Republicans as governors, and giving Democrats control of a majority of state legislators as well. And while they’re at it, they might tell
pollsters that a majority of them support the progressive position on nearly every important issue currently at play in our national debate. Would that be enough?

Of course, they have done all those things. Yet some insist that any Democratic success can’t possibly reveal a leftward shift in the country’s ideology. It must be an accident of history — in the case of
this election, the economic crisis, and George W. Bush’s unpopularity. But both are inseparable from conservative ideology. There’s a reason Republicans aren’t loudly advocating the doctrine of
deregulation they’ve championed for so long: because it has been revealed as the cause of our economic woes, not the solution.

As for the current occupant of the White House, with the sole exception of smaller government (which Republicans always promise and never deliver), his tenure offered almost as pure an expression of
conservatism as one could imagine. It featured tax cuts for the wealthy, a bellicose foreign policy, huge increases in defense spending, the appointment of Supreme Court justices ready to overturn Roe v.
Wade, a fierce effort at deregulation, a consolidation of power in the executive branch — in short, nearly everything conservatives ever wanted in an administration. And the public couldn’t have been less
pleased with the results.

Nonetheless, many people are now advising Barack Obama to “govern from the center.” It may seem like a reasonable request, but it begs the question of just where the “center” is. Today, most
Americans vote for Democrats, want to get out of Iraq, want Supreme Court Justices who will maintain Roe, hope for universal health care, support stronger environmental protections, want to address
global warming, favor sensible restrictions on gun sales, and think labor unions are necessary to protect workers. It may not be this way forever, but at this point in history, the center of American politics
looks a lot like the left.

Paul Waldman is a senior fellow with Media Matters for America and a columnist for the American Prospect magazine.