If the country is so progressive, how come Bush won the popular vote four years ago? Did all the center right people die? Or are American voters somewhat mercurial? Also, how come Bush had no mandate four years ago? Did the American voter get more mandative? Would John McCain have had a mandate if he'd achieved these kinds of numbers? Or would that be entirely different?
No need to answer. The rest of us already know what the answer is.
I am struck by the memory of a seething Democrat four years ago, watching Republicans gloat about their "permanent majority": "They don't bother me. All their gloating will just make their tears sweeter when they finally lose." I'd be more worried about the permanent majority if I hadn't just checked the Democrats' congressional approval ratings. If they don't pick up soon--and now there are no Republicans to blame for anything that goes wrong--I estimate the life of this mandate at about three months.
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LBJ had a mandate. Mandates lead to Great Society-type over-reaching. This election was a referendum on George W. Bush and the GOP brand.
Given both candidates' positions on the issues, it was also confirmation that the overwhelming number of voters want to keep moving in a direction that gives more power and command over their wallets and personal affairs to the federal government, some just faster than others. I doubt 2% of the population would vote for a platform based on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
Despite the lack of necessity for my answer, I'll give it a go:
He convinced more of the country that he would keep America safe from terrorists and gay people than John Kerry would. America was, at the time, more concerned about their personal safety than about good governance.
Neither. I posit that the American people, like intelligent adults often do, examined the track record of the Bush administration and found it lacking. Changing one's mind in the face of evidence is not being "mercurial", but rather being a sign of intelligence. Perhaps, after seeing the massive failure of conservatism as practiced, they grew more progressive over time.
He did, but it was far more narrow than he (or other Republicans) thought. All elected Presidents have, by definition, a mandate. When the election is so close, however, it is probably best to govern from a position of conciliation and compromise. Bush chose to govern otherwise. His popularity is a testament to the success of that strategy.
Yes, yes and no. Compare the geographic and numeric breadth of Obama's victory to Bush's, and see the difference between a mandate and a squeaker. If McCain had pulled off a victory on the scale of Obama's that would have been a clear mandate. But he did not.
The Democrat answer to the low approval rating is Dems inability to push liberal their policy.
If they don't pick up soon--and now there are no Republicans to blame for anything that goes wrong--I estimate the life of this mandate at about three months.
We'll see. I personally think the ebbs and flows of the business cycle will greatly benefit Obama and the Democrats (although we're less likely to see the results in 2010 than in 2012). Much better to take power during the depths of a downturn than when you're overdue for one.
Jasper, if you think we are in the depths of this downturn, can I borrow your stocks for a while?
Didn't the anti-gay-marriage Proposition 8 pass solidly yesterday in California? OK, it's not like California's ever been on the cultural cutting edge or anything, but still...
Obama won because he convinced more people than McCain did that he's dead smack in the middle.
Megan, I know your rule is to degrade liberals at whatever cost to reality-based thinking, but give me a fucking break. The newsmedia is falling all over itself to pronounce this "still a center-right nation". No one is gloating out of proportion with this. It's just that "this" is a big deal. We got a larger lead in both houses of Congress, and a genuinely liberal president.
Four years ago, conservatives were going around saying that they were going to "curb stomp" liberalism for good. Everyone talked about a permanent Republican majority. And now look. Yes, yes. I'm sure those grapes are very sour. The truth is that this post and many like it are the sound a movement makes when it realizes that it's grand designs have for the time failed. No one was talking about "it wasn't so bad" four years ago. They were talking about absolute victory. Stuff like this just reminds me how far the goal posts have moved in my direction.
2000 was a split between two people who tried to out-moderate each other. That Bush bent it in his mind to a conservative mandate was wrong, and probably would have cost him the election in 2004, had it not been for the war.
2004 was very clearly a war vote. Everyone I talked to, who was backing Bush in 2004, simply was not done with their 9/11 anger and retribution. Fear of attack and safety were also big issues.
Now we say we have the same fear in polls, but there is clearly a human effect that old fears don't scare us as much as new fears. A risk, lived with for a time, becomes part of the background.
You're sooooo happy Obama won aren't you. Now you get 4 years of doing what you seem to love the most - tweaking at liberals.
Have fun. I'm out of here.
Jasper, if you think we are in the depths of this downturn, can I borrow your stocks for a while?
Don't follow you. If you're saying I can't predict the business cycle you're wrong. I most certainly can, although I can't necessarily do so accurately. But I have as much right to a guess as anybody else. So, sure, I could be wrong. But do you seriously reckon the chances are strong that the US economy won't be in better shape four years from now?
If you want to see what a mandate looks like, go to this site - http://www.270towin.com/ - and click on 1932. Or 1964. Or 1980. What Obama has is a clear win, not a mandate. And we should ponder what a 52% share of the popular vote for Obama means in a year with the most unpopular Republican incumbent in history sitting in the White House, while there was a financial meltdown a few weeks before the election. He won fair and square but this isn't some historical realignment. That's not to say Obama can't create a realignment, but it hasn't happened yet.
BTW Megan, should your retrospective of the Bush years include the "discovery" that united Republican government does not reduce the size of government?
As a Republican who will shortly de-register to independent, I find that a big factor, as was the focus on social before fiscal issues in the Republican party.
As Andrew Sullivan noted today at 3:50 PM Eastern Time in his post "Worth Mulling", the Democrats have won 4 out of the last 5 popular votes for President. So perhaps 04 was an aberration.
Sensing the mood of the electorate, both candidates ran as change candidates; Obama did so more effectively. The challenge for McCain and the Republicans is that they don't have a very coherent strategy for change from the current conservative solutions.
In addition, the demographics are really turning against the current Republican coalition of Evangelicals, white Southerners and business leaders. (Chris Bowers has written several posts at Open Left with details.) Many younger voters, especially non-whites, don't see the Republicans/conservatives having meaningful solutions to the current challenges. So the situation may get worse for the GOP.
The current dialogue of conservative thinkers like Andrew, Douthat, Ruffini, Henke, et al to catalyze attaining a more effective conservatism is helpful but I don't see agreement on this any time soon. In the meantime, we wait to see if Obama can execute his change strategy.
Obama won because he convinced more people than McCain did that he's dead smack in the middle.
I think he won for many reasons real and imagined - but mostly imagined. People believe that he can get us out of Iraq without consequences. They also overestimate the payoff of being loved by "the rest of the world". They believe that we could have magically avoided the popping of the housing bubble if Obama were in the White House instead of Bush.
In bad times, people have a lot of fantasies about how things would have been had things not been the way they were. They pour their hope of a better future into "change" (because anything is better than this, right?) and he wisely let them do it. Fantasies are pretty much all we have about Obama. I still don't know what or who he is. What does "change" concretely mean? Hope for what? The devil's in the details and he has given no details in his campaign - going only so far as to say that he's going to "spread the wealth around".
He won because he successfully convinced everyone that by virtue of being from the opposite party, he would magically make things different. By being completely vague and illusive he allowed every individual to caste him as their own version of a saviour and that's what they voted for. It'll be interesting to see what happens to his approval ratings once he actually has to start making concrete decisions.
The truth is that this post and many like it are the sound a movement makes when it realizes that it's grand designs have for the time failed.
The truth is, small-government conservatives like me should have realized that our designs failed a long time ago, with the elevation of Bush in 2000. We haven't won one in quite a long while. OK, we got rid of the Board of Tea Appeals in 1995, but that's a pretty small victory.
If the country is so progressive, how come Bush won the popular vote four years ago?
Megan: This is a rather absurd rhetorical question. It obviously doesn't violate the rules of logic for a less politically liberal country in 2004 to give Bush a bigger margin than the now more politically liberal country would grant him were he running in 2008. Indeed, given the disastrous consequences of "conservative" governance, it would be a miracle had the country's electorate not moved to the left.
Jasper, I merely made a sarcastic comment on your statement, which certainly implied that you knew that Obama will take office at the depth of the downturn. Yes, you could be right, just as I could play center filed for the Yankees next year. The evidence is far more supportive, however, that we will not have seen the depths of this downturn by this winter, or perhaps even by the following summer or winter.
Obama and the Democrats were given a mandate to govern, they just weren't given a mandate to govern Sweden. As long as they keep that in mind, things should be OK. It took Clinton until '94 and a Republican Congress to figure it out, but once that happened he did OK. Given his campaign, I believe (well, hope) that Obama has already learned that lesson.
Look we Democrats know, and I mean know that this is an easily undone situation. But we're not gonna sit around and go, "yeah we're doing this great thing and we'll stay in power for 20 years, and ...". The fact is we know that come January 09 its on, the Republicans had their shot, hitched their boats to the USS Bush and are now in drydock figuring out what to do next. We, the Democrats, are going to try and succeed. We're gonna do so by getting broad government support across party lines and we're not going to deal with social issues on a large scale until, well people aren't losing their homes and we aren't in Iraq. Then we can debate all the crap, that quite frankly has no place at the current table.
It's possible that 2008 was a repudiation of big government, foreign interventionism, deficit spending, or what I used to know as the Democratic platform.
America may truly be center-right (whatever that means) but which party is closer to center-right? The election suggests it is the Democrats.
how come Bush had no mandate four years ago?
Because his margin of victory over Kerry wasn't nearly decisive as Obama's over McCain.
We're successful as a country. GDP has grown greatly really over the last 20 years. Dreamed of successes in medicine have perhaps not happened so much but possible remarkable advances have occured. We're all in some sense upper class. We have now, in politics, a 'permanent morality' as we can afford any morality we want. We have a leader who can relect the shibboleths but probably doesn't drink them too deeply; so not to worry. Bush took care of the nihilistic sociopath S. Hussein and now militarily we face addled ideologues like the Iranians. We did that before with the communists; we're not worried.
America is progressive because they just voted in a number of progressive politicans, including the president. As in - America was conservative four years ago, and its progressive now.
That's your simplest answer, courtesy of Occam's razor.
Several points, Megan:
If McCain ran as a bipartisan moderate and Obama still won by 6 points, I'd say the country would be pretty damn progressive. He didn't: he ran to the hard right in the primary and never really went back. So, more so than the country changing, more people are simply closer to Obama's policies than McCain's.
On mandates: Bush didn't have one. You don't get automatic political capital by winning, though you do get to nominate judge and make executive orders. Given recent history, a 6-point win is comparatively large, but what matters a lot more than how large your win is is what Congress you're dealing with. If McCain won by 6 points or 20 points, if he had the current Congress he wouldn't have any capital or mandate, he'd have total gridlock. Presidents sign and veto bills, not vote on them.
On Congressional approval ratings: This is actually irrelevant. Congress is at 12% or whatever but I believe every single senator except Lieberman is over 50% approval by their constituents. People just hate all the *other* people in Congress, who they don't vote on.
What happens in 2010 and 2012 depends a great deal more on how the economy is doing then than what's passed on health care or global warming.
The evidence is far more supportive, however, that we will not have seen the depths of this downturn by this winter, or perhaps even by the following summer or winter.
Evidence which I see you forgot to provide...
Anyway, I was using "depths of downturn" figuratively. I wasn't claiming, in other words, that I believe or know that we happen to be at the trough at this particular moment -- although I do think it's possible, and maybe even likely, that we're there -- or very close (ie within the next several months) to this cycle's nadir. I was just trying to make the point that economic conditions are likely to be much better in the autumn of 2012 than they have been in the autumn of 2008. I tend to be an economic determinist when it comes to politics -- especially at the presidential level. I wasn't one of the many liberals who thought Bush was a goner in 2004, for instance. Why? Because it's virtually impossible to unseat an incumbent president in the middle of an expansion.
If you look at history, you'll find that usually a president who initially takes office during hard times ends up running for reelection during significantly improved times. My advice to Republican hopefuls is don't run until 2016.
Hahaha, well I think that just because America vote a progressive party on this election doesn't mean that America is a progressive country. In fact, if history is any guide, America is certainly more inclined to the right than to the left.
However, as most advanced economies in the world. The mode of political preference in America tend to be close to the center of the political spectrum -even if it is a bit to the right- the fact is that the republican party has been moving to far to the right in recent years. Indeed, some of the proposals of the Bush administration could be qualified as facists.
So, even if the political preference of America is a bit to the right, the extreme movement to the right from the GOP has pushed America to vote democratic on this election. However, the Democratic party must be concient that the results of this election are not a mandate of extreme liberal policies, they would make a big mistake if the fail into that mistake. And Democrats are prone to do so. Let's just hope they have learned something from the Clinton years.
Whatever the case, even if Democrats push their ideal liberal agenda it will be far better than the GOP pushing their extreme right agenda.
By your logic, you should abandon libertarianism, because America has never elected a libertarian president, no?
Also, define progressive. Like Christian, it means different things to different people. Until you make clear what you take a progressive to be, and make a real case, you are doing nothing more than constructing a straw man to annihilate. Have you nothing better to offer?
Why what a magnanimous sentiment! It shows what a truly gracious, intelligent person you are. No shrill, bitter, petty mindedness for you! No sir.
"No need to answer. The rest of us already know what the answer is."
That's plain presumptuousness Megan. Reasonable as you usually are I'm disappointed.
Yes, I think that all political parties do, always and everywhere, treat an election victory, however narrow and influenced by utterly extraneous factors to their ideology, as mandates for their ideology in entirety.If your sole objective, however, is only to point out (what you, and in this case me, think is) the absurdity in such positions, disable the comments section entirely. Why the pretense of comments when you "already know the answer"? Your attempt doesn't even pass the qualification, if indeed that's what it is, of fine sarcasm.
A better, and more honest, attempt would have been to raise the questions and let the comments rip, or to add a byline to the blog that says, this is my space, solely and exclusively, to let you know what I think.
Look, all this "mandate" talk is silly, especially since the Bush administration reduced the term to meaningless-ness. But trying to argue that there are really no substantial differences between the 2004 and 2008 elections except that more people voted for one guy over the other, is even sillier. There are actually plenty of reasons to say that this election provides greater opportunities for progressive policies than the 2004 did for conservative policies, and you would know that if you were reading other intelligent bloggers who are talking about that issue at this very moment. Reducing the differences in a fit of pique is not really contributing to that conversation and you demonstrate that you certainly do not "already know what the answer is."
A majority of voters picked Obama over McCain. That was the choice. Making wild claims about what the elections means is silly.
Still, if Obama wants to rule like he has a mandate for a far left agenda the Republicans will be happy to take back the House in 2010. And then we can type about how America has once again rejected left wing nuts.
Note to Libertarians:
Whatever happened last night, it wasn't a vote for a libertarian mandate, so climb down off the high horse for once.
Thank you,
A lot of people who voted on all sorts of practical considerations rather than allegiance to a simplistic principle of society.
"If they don't pick up soon--and now there are no Republicans to blame for anything that goes wrong--I estimate the life of this mandate at about three months."
So clean up this major crap-feast in 3 months that took the Republicans 8 years to create or your out??? Whatever... I still like your....I Know I saw a recession around here somewhere.... post.
I think that national turnout for elections is hampered by the electoral college. It just happens that the three most populous states in the Union, NY, CA and TX are solidly red or blue. CA had 10M votes, but 36M people. In contrast, Ohio had 5M votes, but just 10M people.
I haven't seen the data, but I'd be interested in seeing the difference in turnout in the states that weren't "battleground" states in 2000 and 2004, but were in 2008.
So how long until Jane's law kicks in? It seems that the lefties here are both smug and insane.
And to all the lefties claiming that they are done with this blog: Oh thank you God! Hopefully the misogynistic leftists who spam the comments section will leave and we can return to the decent comment section of old. Unfortunately Andrew still has a job and gets favorably quoted by people here, so I don't see any improvement in the reasonably near future.
I would suggest that some of this is jockeying for position within our party. With the deficit and debt being so problematic, and many of the pick ups being Blue Dog Dems or types like me, the liberals are worried that the new President will please me and my Blue Dog friends on economics and disappoint them.
I'm not worried, because I believe President Obama is more likely to end up pleasing me on economics than liberals.
"f the country is so progressive, how come Bush won the popular vote four years ago? Did all the center right people die?"
Answer: Kerry did pretty well with male voters in 2004. What happened was women, who typically vote for the Democrat, voted higher than usual for Bush. Why? Because Bush and Cheney scared their panties off talking about Nuclear War, 9-11 time ten, etc, etc. As for why those same people didn't vote for McCain? Because Bush is thew worst president of all time. Fear of another four years of Republican rule is worse than the abstract fear of a terrorist attack.
"Also, how come Bush had no mandate four years ago?"
Answer: He acted like he did and claimed he had one. Remember how he was going to spend his political capital fixing social security? You do remember that, right? Well, what happened was, he spent his time drinking and hanging out on his ranch while New Orleans was reclaimed by the ocean. Since then, the president of the United States has basically been an empty office.
"Would John McCain have had a mandate if he'd achieved these kinds of numbers?"
Answer: Yes.
"No need to answer. The rest of us already know what the answer is."
By 'rest of us', are you referring to people who voted for Bush twice or used their blogs to cheerlead the Iraq War?
The first Bush won with a bigger majority then Obama won with this year. Was that year a huge mandate for country club Republicans?
President Obama is socially more conservative then many here seem to think.
And Obama should thank President Bush for keeping the nation safe after 911 and he should thank McCain for having the courage to support the surge in Iraq. With those type of national security issues off the table. Obama's path was much easier.
Obama was an accidental Senator from Illinois. The Chicago Tribune investigated the private lives (their marriages and divorces) of the two main Republican candidates and knocked them out of the race.
Obama is charmed in his political life. He has never done much but he has been gifted at getting elected.
Still, for the sake of the country and my retirement plan I hope he does well. And ignores the left wing of his party
As Andrew Sullivan noted today at 3:50 PM Eastern Time in his post "Worth Mulling", the Democrats have won 4 out of the last 5 popular votes for President.
A cute way of counting.
Of those five elections, the Democrats have managed to win an actual majority of the popular vote all of once (2008). Of the other three times (1992, 1996, 2000), nobody won a majority of the popular vote. On two of those three occasions (1992, 1996), there was a combined popular vote majority for candidates to the right of the DLC-DLC Clinton-Gore ticket.
The statistic I want to see most: How many votes did Obama get from people who voted for Bush four years ago?
Who are these people? Where do they live? How much of a difference did they make to the outcome -- in the aggregate numbers and the state-level results?
(I realize we'll never know, and that even if there are a few scattered exit polls that touch on this, they won't give an accurate picture.)
That was a really lame shot at Congressional Democrats. Congress nearly always has a lower approval rating than the president, but try looking at the approval rating for voter's own Congressman, and you will get a different picture.
I guess Megan conveniently forgets all that blather from Karl Rove and pals just a few years ago how conservatives were going to rule for decades. And George Will just said a few weeks ago on ABC that this is "still a center-right country." Then why, oh George, did they just elect "the most liberal member" of Congress and a (According to the Republican attack machine)socialist?
LBJ had a mandate. Mandates lead to Great Society-type over-reaching.
Like the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. That was some serious overreaching. Cost the Democrats tons of votes and congressmen via the very successful Southern Strategy. So I guess LBJ shouldn'ta overreached like that, right?
"Conservative". You (all) keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
We have not had conservative policies the last eight years. We have not had cautious, belt-and-suspenders incrementalism. We have had chronic overreaction combined with a hogs-to-the-trough mentality. I don't see either ending soon.
Our root problem is that a 3 trillion dollar spending plan convinces everyone that their few million dollars dipped out of the slop will never be missed. I cannot believe that any organization which spends 3 trillion dollars can do so efficiently and effectively.
I voted for McCain because he is a sometime budget hawk. I wanted divided government. It was the best I could do. I don't think anyone can seriously reduce the size of the federal government. It's a tapeworm in our economy.
I fear for the United States.
Get out of Iraq without consequences? Reports are already coming in from the Iraqi government that they have Obama's word that he won't jeopardize their fragile state by pulling out quickly. If people voted for the illuminati politician du jour on the basis of him ending the war speedily and efficiently, I think they'll be unpleasantly surprised.
I think we elected Senator Obama because when the crop fails the king must die.
President Obama has the constitutional responsibility to "recommend such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient." The notion that he is somehow constrained in doing by an eccentric, to put it kindly, interpretation of the American electorate is ludicrous. This is a bit like arguing in 1932 that FDR had no mandate for the New Deal because Republicans had won 5 out of the previous 7 presidential elections by landslides. Furthermore, in 2000 Bush lost the popular vote, the Republicans lost seats in both Houses, and yet they governed as if they had just swept 50 states, and that following the first election in nearly 40 years when center-left candidates actually won a majority of the popular vote. I don't recall anyone from the Right or Center question the political legitimacy of the Bush agenda. Having just won the largest and most decisive electoral victory in the past 20 years, it's simply absurd to assert that Obama lacks the political capital to advance progressive policies. If they're successful then 2008 will be remembered as one of the few true pivotal elections in American history. And if they're not so successful, well let me remind my Republican fellow citizens that you can't beat something with nothing.
No need to answer. The rest of us already know what the answer is.
the answer is that Republicans pretending to be libertarians actively supported a seriously crazy President Cheney and his grossly ill-advised Iraq Adventure. Or did something else happen.
Megan, the reason the Good Guys won was summed up by the e'er prescient Onion. Things got so bad that people realized they really ought to vote for the smartypants faggot you'd rather not have a brewski with (and in this case, another epithet). People like you still can't admit that you actively supported the Iraq Invasion, heckofajob Brownieism, Monica Goodling et al, and everything else that came with the Cheney Administration. If you would come clean (or at least stop pretending to be a libertarian), maybe we'd give you a break. Until then, good luck washing that blood off your hands. That stuff stains.
*correctly spelt
I don't think anyone can seriously reduce the size of the federal government. It's a tapeworm in our economy.
I fear for the United States.
Posted by BobW | November 5, 2008 9:31 PM
Well, of course, we'd all be MUCH better off in a state of seething anarchy, wouldn't we? I mean, those roads would just fix themselves, evildoers would make nice when the police vanished, and all in all the sun would rise on a happier better world. Now, can I get the name of your dealer?
Huh, that's certainly a novel theory of politics, Megan. When Republicans win elections, regardless of margins, it's all very well and proper for them to govern like Republicans because, hey, winning the election is the "accountability moment" and if you won, why, you must have a mandate to do whatever it is you want to do.
But when Democrats win elections, that can't possibly be taken as any sort of indication that the American people actually voted Democratic. Absolutely not! When Democrats win elections it's absolutely incumbent on them to govern like Republicans anyway, since we all know what a conservative right-of-center nation it actually is, even if the American people need a little help remembering that (help that the Supreme Court and Diebold are more than happy to provide.)
I am struck by the memory of a seething Democrat four years ago
Is that a real memory? Or just a truthy one?
Or are American voters somewhat mercurial?
Right, because there's nothing as "mercurial" as changing your mind once every eight years.
Megan--I can't believe you buy into this thing (do you really?) about "Democratic congressional approval ratings." Congress enjoys low approval ratings in large part because Congress was unable to put a stop to Bush. Those low ratings aren't just coming from the center and right, after all. The left gives low ratings to Congress, too.
Re: On two of those three occasions (1992, 1996), there was a combined popular vote majority for candidates to the right of the DLC-DLC Clinton-Gore ticket.
Disagreeing: Perot's populism (poorly flesh out in some respects) does not fit well on a Right-Left scale.
alcibiades:
The last time I looked, the states and local governments ran the police and fire departments.
The bigger any organization gets the more overhead expenses there are. It's the nature of the beast. Smaller organizations are more efficient. There's an optimum size.
Furthermore, if the local government doesn't work well you can move away from it. That's the great feature of federalism. It's rather harder to escape the federal government without leaving the USA entirely.
Let each level of government stick to a limited set of missions.
JonF:
The right-left scale messes up our thinking so badly.
Ross Perot freaked out when his new national prominence attracted attention from the loonies. It suppose that's one benefit of the campaign process. The President has to deal with such things all the time.
Ah yes, BobW, you can indeed flee from mythical small community to mythical small community, until you finally find an anarchist paradise. But where, my friend, where? And does the phrase "economies of scale" mean anything to you? Still, have fun roaming the wilds!
Riiiight, massive federal domestic initiatives like NCLB and Medicare part D were Bush governing like a Republican with a massive Republican mandate.
Seriously, cut back on the LSD, guys.
Yeah, there's definitely a narrative struggling to get out there, that Obama better behave himself. Or rather, it's being aggressively pushed by the usual suspects, spouting the same bull.
Why do you know it's bull? Because of the way they stack the deck: given this disaster and that catastrophe, how come the margin of victory is only X points? What, you're only counting the favorables? Nothing in there about, say Obama being BLACK? About how many percentage points that cost him? Throw just those into the pot, and his margin widens from six to sixteen percent.
Someone is trying to say that winning by sixteen points is _not_ a mandate? What are they smoking? The DFH brand?
No, these guys are already telegraphing the fact that they plan to oppose the new administration in any and every way they can. Any tax increases? Expect all sorts of elaborate explanations as to how 'the American people' didn't vote for tax increases, they 'voted for change'. And so on and so forth. Didn't Bush get more time than this? In fact, several years worth of time?
Megan,
Truth be told, presidential elections are a relatively poor proxy for measures of voters’ ideological sentiments. After all, beliefs about candidates’ knowledge, experience, leadership style, and temperament influence many voters’ decisions no less than party platforms and policy proposals. Voters have been known to choose the opposing party’s nominee when their own is perceived as corrupt or incompetent. By contrast, your “mercurial electorate” interpretation needs to address the fact that voters have expressed preferences for various liberal policy positions in polls measuring their views about a wide range of issues, including healthcare, environmental matters, and education, for years. I will grant you that voters’ views in polls can be somewhat contradictory, but there are broad patterns.
and to think that not two weeks ago Megan was claiming the high ground for not dealing with low brow intellectuals like Naomi Klein, and is not replying to random bloggers.
By the way, this sort of equivalency is a false one. "You said it wasnt a mandate back then and that we were not a center right country, and now that the tables are reversed you want to claim the opposite."
This is, of course, faulty. Highlighting someone else's hypocrisy like this also highlight one's own. I.e., if the democrats who decried claims of mandate and center right back then are hypocrites for claiming the opposite given the recent election, than those who claimed a mandate back then and highlighted a "center right" nation are hypocrites for denying the opposite now.
Nevermind that all the things that you are talking about (mandate, permanent majority) were reactions to exaggerated claims in that sense.
And also, nevermind that Bush's margin of victory in 2004 was the lowest for an incumbent in quite a long time, while Obama's margin of victory is second only to Reagan's for a non incumbent candidate over the past 50 years...
"and is not replying to random bloggers."
CORRECTION:
and is noW replying to random bloggers.
SoV,
Of course Obama and the Dems have a mandate - a pretty damn broad one I'd say. But your assumption that Obama lost 10 points because he's black is one of the most hilariously stupid things I've read since the election. He lost a few points due to direct racism, and picked up an impossible-to-quantify number of points because of his compelling life story (of which race is a significant part) and the historic nature of his candidacy.
I'm inclined to agree with Megan, that the mandate is against Bush and not for progressivism. I think the event that will confirm whether or not the nation moves leftward is when Barry-O starts nominating Supreme Court justices, and I, for one, welcome our new judicial activist overlords.
The _point_, MikeF, is that a narrative is being constructed around the numbers, a narrative, moreover, which is actively trying to impose limits on what is 'acceptable' for the incoming administration.
The _point_, MikeF, since you didn't get it the first time is that these sorts of narratives are ridiculous. Anyone can concoct them. Not everyone would try to use them the day after the election in a rather blatant attempt to frame what is acceptable policy.
Now do you get the _point_? The conversation might be better directed at who Obama is spotting for his team. Like that Rahm fellah. That certainly doesn't bode well for the 'bipartisanship' meme that others are trying to push off on the new President.
Riiiight, massive federal domestic initiatives like NCLB and Medicare part D were Bush governing like a Republican with a massive Republican mandate.
Well, let's see your two examples. Undue influence of politics in educatiional curriculum? Massive entitlement giveaway to a major industry?
Sounds like Republican governance to me. Is there anyone, seriously, who doesn't see this whole attempt to re-write one-day-old history as anything but the world's largest concern troll? I mean you've got to be shitting me. It's as stupid as saying the 2006 elections were a victory for conservativism. Doesn't anyone know the difference between reality and self-serving bullshit anymore?
Megan, the Congressional Democrats' approval ratings are low, but still considerably higher than the approval ratings for their GOP counterparts. Overall congressional approval ratings, on the other hand, are absurdly low.
Maybe if you actually knew how to read a public opinion poll, your "predictions" for the shelf life of the Progressive mandate might be significant.
Keep up the good work, dipshit.
SoV,
A narrative that "actively imposes limits" on the president? What? Look, if you have a problem with a certain interpretation of the results, fine. You obviously think Obama has a mandate for sweeping change, and I agree - but claiming that people who disagree are "stacking the deck", and then pulling crap premises out of thin air to back it up is just dumb.
Slinkybender@9:07 asked:
The statistic I want to see most: How many votes did Obama get from people who voted for Bush four years ago?....
I voted for Bush four years ago, and 8 years ago, and voted for Obama this time. Registered Republican, but black, and voted for Dole and Bush Sr (2x) before that.
I don't think Obama or Democrats have any kind of mandate, although it's natural for them to want to make the claim. What they have is merely and opportunity to do something different. That is what I think people wanted most.
They saw a host of unresolved problems, and thought that the old familiar solutions are not quite getting it done. Merely cutting taxes across the board does not solve complex problems for the average person, and futher, when you declare something that can't be wiped out (terrorism) as the number one threat to the country, it just suggests to people that your priorities will not be aimed at internal problems. McCain's biggest concern was international terror, but a great many people have greater concerns closer to home.
Hopefully Obama attempts to do some basic good (meaning, one or two of the things he personally wants to do, combined with bipartisan policy actions) and Republicans use the time to reform and rethink both their ideas and their campaign methods.
Demographics are killing the Republican party. As the old racists and bigots that formed the soul of the Southern Strategy die off, so does the GOP.
This thread is so full of liberal nonsense I don't know where to start.
Mandate? - Mandates are in the eye of the beholder. It's ridiculous to dogmatically assert that Obama's 6% margin of victory is a mandate while Bush's 3% margin in 2004 wasn't. In my opinion, neither is a mandate. But that's just my opinion. 56,000,000 Americans voted for McCain (I wasn't one of them) but he lost. The Democrats control the entire federal government and, mandate or not, they can govern as they wish. Democrats are claiming a mandate in an attempt to justify their policy agenda. They don't need a "mandate" and they don't need to justify anything. They are in control and time will tell how their agenda is received by the public.
Dems. won the popular vote in 5 of the last 6 elections -
Yes, but let's look a little closer. In 1992, Clinton won 43% of the popular vote. 57% of the American people, in what was until yesterday the largest turnout since WWII, wanted someone else to be president. Despite liberal fantasizing, Perot's voters wanted smaller government, and less spending. They were right of center. In 1996, Clinton could only muster 49% of the popular vote and the Republicans maintained control of congress. In 2000, Gore won 48% of the popular vote and Republicans maintained their majority in Congress. In 2002, Republicans increased their majorities in Congress. In 2004, Kerry won 48% of the vote and Republicans maintained their majorities in Congress. The worm may have turned but in 5 out of the last 6 presidential elections, the majority of voters wanted someone other than a Democrat to be president.
Bush and the Republicans governed too far to the right for the American public-
This is laughable. Republicans were repudiated yesterday for exactly the opposite reason. In fact, Bush's unpopularity is a result of his deviation from conservative principles. Federal spending ballooned as he failed to veto a single spending program. The prescription drug program (which the majority of congressional Democrats voted for) is the largest federal entitlement program enacted since the Great Society. He agreed to let Ted Kennedy eviscerate the standards originally included in "No Child Left Behind" while he kept all the spending. He failed to veto McCain-Feingold (which has been such a great success), he supported amnesty for illegal aliens and he decided to "nation build" in Iraq (a la Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo and, despite their subsequent, Stalinist attempts to re-write history, congressional Democrats overwhelmingly supported the war resolution that was drafted by R. Gephardt). Bush also failed to reform social security and medicare. In sum, Bush has been anything but a conservative and every bit of his pandering to liberals has come back to bite him in the ass.
Conservatism is still very popular in this country. Unfortunately, the Republican party has not been conservative over the last 8 years; Bush has ruined it. The perfect storm in which Obama was elected consisted of a complete void of conservative leadership, the media's total abandonment of objectivity and an unprecedented economic crisis, the genesis of which preceded Bush's tenure. Yet, with all those advantages, Obama's candidacy was premised almost exclusively on vague representations of "hope" and "change" which were bolstered by the fact that he has almost no track record (e.g. 100 plus present votes in the Ill. senate) and little to no experience. Furthermore, if liberalism is so popular, why were pundits all over cable TV today furiously spinning for Obama claiming that he intends to govern as a centrist. I think Obama's election is a classic case of being at the right place at the right time. As for the senate, in three of the four seats that the Democrats gained, there was no Republican incumbent and all four of those states went for Obama. Without the human cypher's coattails, those seats may have remained Republican.
Is this a historic realignment?
Some pundits have claimed this, but I'm skeptical. Clearly, the Republican brand has been damaged, but the bursting of the credit bubble won't leave Democrats unscathed either. Democrats have benefited from invidious comparisons between the economy and budget under President George W. Bush and President Clinton (e.g., a budget surplus under Clinton and deficits under Bush), but going forward the basis for comparison is going to be a lot different.
The deficits during the first years of the Obama administration are going to be easily more than twice as large as the largest deficit during the Bush years. Unemployment rates, and eventually, inflation and interest rates, will probably look significantly worse too. Granted, this will be due largely to the continuing effects of the credit bust, but then the surpluses under Clinton were largely due to the dot-com bubble. Presidents, and their parties, get the blame or the credit for economic conditions when they are in power.
Unfortunately, the Republican party has not been conservative over the last 8 years; Bush has ruined it.
Essentially, the Republicans governed like crap the last 8 years. They were elected in 2002 and 2004 by playing on to our fears that Democrats were weak and we'd be killed by terrorists if we voted for them. By 2006, the veil was pierced and the Republicans were trounced. In 2008, they didn't learn their lesson, tacked hard to the right but were trounced again. Palin was a direct play to the hard right conservative base and it backfired.
Bush's political appointments ended up being political hacks. Gordie Brown and Gonzales are just the tip of the iceberg. The politicization of the DoJ is another example of Bush incompetence. Torture, detentions without trial, massive power grabs for the executive branch and warrantless wiretapping all brought to you by the party of small government. What the hell does the Republican party stand for in actions and in words?
The cranks in this thread are reminding me of Howard Beale's famous soliloquy.
The reason why the Democrats approval rating is so low is that they had the opportunity to actually oppose Bush's idiotic decisions, but they went along with him anyway.
The Congressional Democrats assumed the fallacy that this country is truly center-right. Thus, they went along with Bush's right-wing agenda so that they wouldn't seem too liberal. It back-fired--why would the American people want the Congress to stamp their approval on the policies of a President that has low approval ratings?
It's one thing for Bush to blindly dumb on his own. It's another for a Democratic majority to keep kissing his tush when they were elected in opposition to Bush. The country had moved to the left, Congress was still obsessing about being considered "left-wing."
All of this arguing over whether Obama and the Dems have a "mandate" or not is silly. It's a made-up concept. Every elected official should consider it his or her responsibility to do whatever he or she thinks is in the country's best interest. Now I realize that's idealistic, and the sad reality is that most politicians would not remain in office very long if they didn't take a lot of positions for purely political reasons. Still, the notion that "I think X, Y, and Z should be done, and I campaigned on all three, but since I only got 50% of the vote, it's only proper that I limit myself to X and half of Y" strikes me as absurd.
Though I doubt I will support much of it, Obama and the House & Senate leadership are going to craft an agenda. In doing so, no doubt they will take into consideration such things as likelihood of passage and reelection concerns. But the notion that they should automatically restrain this agenda to a degree set by whatever % of the popular vote Obama received, is nonsense. They aren't going to do this anyway, so why even argue over it?
"If the country is so progressive, how come Bush won the popular vote four years ago?"
He played the fear card. The terrurists are gonna get us! Every time the polls dipped, the scare-o-meter would go orange. The war hadn't dragged on as long as it has now. Katrina hadn't happened. Kerry looked like a robot compared to Obama. The GOP slime machine and assorted 527's were flush with cash; Swift Boating Kerry was child's play compared to going up against the funding and groundwork laid by the Obama campaign.
There were oh so many reasons.
But 2008 was four years later. The war had dragged on, the public had grown indifferent to the scare-o-meter. They were up against a black candidate, and the southern strategy was starkly written across GOP country, as we watched endless TV and YouTube videos of monkey-shaped Obama dolls, rabid racists yelling "kill him", etc. The country is changing, these tactics are starting to backfire. Old voters are dying, new ones are taking their place. Demographics are not the same, not even in the south. Palin was the icing on the cake. The more the far right applauded her, the more middle America came to fear her.
I wonder where the Republican Party will go next. The old coalitions might not be the winning ticket in a changing country.
I still find no evidence that Bush governed like a conservative.
2004 was a vote not to cut and run from Iraq and flush the sacrifices of those who had been injured and died down the toilet.
Obama is a cypher, but 2004 was the critical election in my book. The right man won and dealt with the sore of Iraq as a serious leader would and thus the issue has been removed from the table.
Obama?
Who knows, but a Kerry victory in 04 would have been a disaster and the war on terror would have been the only issue in 08 is if he won.
It is entertaining to see the repeated use of the term "disastrous conservative policies" in the comments. Ah, Lakoff-style framing at its best.
Just keep in mind that this invites response-in-kind to any problems or setbacks in the Obama administration (e.g. "disastrous liberal policies" if crime ticks up a notch).
The primary "disaster" I see is that partisanship runs so deep.
More to the specific point that the posters are trying to make, "Conservatism" hasn't "failed" and certainly not "disastrously."
For example, the meltdown of the financial markets is not a failure of "conservatism." What conservative was advocating an utter abandonment of common-sense financial restraints in the 1990s? Don't just answer "you believe in completely unfettered free markets!" - that is a straw man.
The failure after Katrina was more a failure of the corrupt Louisiana democratic machine than anything else - despite Bush's failure to recognize same and to lead. Think I'm wrong? Then why did Mississippi - equally devastated - do so much better under a Republican governor? Why is Florida - which is hit far more often and with equal devastation - able to recover so much more quickly?
There have been no terrorist attacks on any American interest outside of the war zone since 9/11. (*That* is a conservative interest).
Finally, and most importantly, Bush simply isn't a "conservative" in the way that intellectual conservatives like Buckley, et al, championed the term. Indeed, under Bush, the Republicans have all but abandoned their claim to both "intellectual" and "conservative."
Obama looking for a moderate, conciliatory approach?
Gee, look who he's considering for White House Chief of Staff:
Rahm "Mr. Warmth" Emmanuel.
Ask folks in Illinois about this guy. They'll give you an earful about him--none of it pleasant.
There may very well be a realignment of sorts occurring, though I'd be cautious about assuming the country is realigning itself as far left as where the current cast of congressional leadership roosts. Obviously, as many have pointed out, the Republicans have been committing ritual suicide for many years, and have only now noticed the pool of blood around them. But the Democrats would be well advised to not take much more from the election than that it was a repudiation of Republicans, and not so much an embrace of the Democrat's agenda. If they start in with far-left agenda items like the Fairness Doctrine, card-check legislation, tax increases during a recession we'll soon see a repudiation of Democrats as well. People seem to be ok with the notion of income distribution only as long as the income being redistributed is someone else's. That will change soon enough.
Maybe we'll see a bona-fide third party emerge from this mess. One can only hope.
"This election was a referendum on George W. Bush and the GOP brand."
How about this "This election was a referendum on how advertising rules the day. If you spend 3x what you opponent does, and CBS spends 10x covering you what they spend covering your opponent, you'll get as many votes as Bush did last election."
The majority of Americans have no problem with (if not support) liberal/progressive economic policies (progressive taxation, national health care, education, etc.) However, liberals/progressives have always been viewed as weaker on national security. A further complicating factor is social issues (God, prayer, guns, abortion, etc.) A lot of culturally conservative blue collar voters went for the GOP because the social issues mattered more to them (paradoxically voting against their own economic interests). Generally when national security is a bigger concern, most Americans vote GOP. When it is the economy (like this election), they tend to go democratic. Also the GOP's hold on culturally conservative voters is getting somewhat weaker.
Ultimately it is silly to say that Americans are majority this or majority that. Matt Yglesias had a great post on this which said that the majority supports good outcomes. If the Democrats implement sensible policies that have good outcomes (peace, security, prosperity), then a majority of Americans will support them. If not, then they will be voted out of power. Ideological purity matters only to people at the extremes.
Also, Megan *hates* liberals. I wonder why on earth she supported (pretended to?) Obama.
Meghan,
This moment is not the same as 2000, or 2004. This moment is more like the election of LBJ.
I don't know about it becoming a progressive nation, but the ideological spectrum is going to be realigned based on what happens in the next decade. And thus the new conservatives, once they regroup, will be much different from the ones we're now used to.
This is a big deal.
Tootat--
Because, as she has stated many, many, times on this blog, she hated McCain more.
I disagree with her that McCain was the lesser of two evils, but I can respect that.
"I still find no evidence that Bush governed like a conservative."
Of course he didn't. He governed like a Republican. The fact that after 30 years of Republican rule so many people still don't seem to notice that there's a difference boggles my mind.
The GOP stands for high spending, low taxes, and the resulting high deficits, with government run as far as possible to benefit the wealthy and corporations. They used to be honest about this and called it trickle down. Now it's apparently an insult to note that this is their governing philosophy, and that it's worked incredibly well, with the benefits of economic growth going to the wealthy while median wages stagnate. Republicans also stand for all sorts of government interventions into foks' private lives.
This collection of positions has been their consistent policy since at least 1980, if you pay attention to what they do rather than what they say.
The Democratic party right now is center to center-right. The idea that Obama's platform is some sort of wild-eyed socialist utopia is utterly divorced from reality. The Democrats broadly hold the same positions as the Rockefeller Republicans did back when there used to actually be Rockefeller Republicans--they're liberal on social issues and moderate on fiscal issue. There's a considerably longer tail to the left, but the center of mass of the party is centrist rather than liberal.
The only major new liberal initiative that has been proposed is some sort of national health care plan. And if you think that's beyond the pale, so far to the left that the electorate will reject it, then I'd ask you why the Republican candidate this year felt the need to propose his own plan to expand health coverage, and why the GOP, when they had control of Congres and the White House, still felt such electoral pressure that they passed a big prescription drug plan?
No, I do not think that 'Obama has a mandate for sweeping change'; I think that in general, the idea of 'mandates' is an extremely silly one (if not outright dangerous), and is used by lazy people in place of real analysis. Talking about mandates, or lack of them, says a lot more about the person trying to run the narrative rather than any external condition.
And when people like you try to make the narrative such: 'that even with a combination very favorable factors aligning just right and at the right time, Obama only won by a small percentage' that tells me that they're just trying to establish a frame for later use.
FWIW, _This_ is more what I think is the reality:
Thanks, Rob Leder. And I'll repeat myself: if you want some real analysis as to how an Obama administration will govern, you might drop the narrative and look at objective facts, like, for example, who he's hiring on. The big news yesterday was that Rahm Emmanuel was tapped, which suggests to me a certain willingness to, shall we say, stay on message. There's a lot more meat to that one fact alone than to any self-serving 'narrative'. What is this, a steam lodge gathering hosted by Joseph Campbell?
"and now there are no Republicans to blame for anything that goes wrong"
You didn't hear Pelosi yesterday. She said they were going to start working after the break they're on now, and that she hoped the Senate Republicans wouldn't stand in the way of what they want to do in Congress.
The Senate Republicans the focus of their blame for at least the next couple of years, guaranteed.
Megan, Bush did have a claim to a mandate in 2004. The problem was what he did with it. He manifestly did not have a mandate to privatize Social Security, which is what he tried to do and failed to get Congress to go along with (because they recognized he had no mandate to do so), or to hijack government for two weeks for the Terri Schiavo circus, and then Katrina happened and his administration and Congress lost any sense of what they were doing and drifted into the mid-terms.
In the meantime, he got to appoint two very conservative Supreme Court justices as the prize for winning large majorities in Congress and the Presidency, and also got to carry on the war as he wanted to. All the Democratic complaining, real or imagined, about his legitimacy didn't change that he had the power to do what he wanted, and did it.
How quickly we forget, Bush had a mandate.
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2001
Perhaps, after seeing the massive failure of conservatism as practiced, they grew more progressive over time.
Neither GWB's administration, nor his congressional Republicans, practiced conservatism in any true sense of the word. It was liberalism, from start to finish. Unless people are under the misguided impression that unlimited spending, democracy-spreading and growing the government is conservatism. It was Scoop Jackson neoconservatism. Please remember that important distinction. (See Ron Paul for what a conservative is supposed to be.)
The fact of the matter is, with Obama winning, what we have is a continuum.
It's Hoover-FDR all over again! And I have my doubts that Obama accepts the fact that FDR and his much-lauded New Deal prolonged the depression by 7 years. (Mmmm. Government cheese.)
Obama was an accidental Senator from Illinois. The Chicago Tribune investigated the private lives (their marriages and divorces) of the two main Republican candidates and knocked them out of the race.
Actually - somehow someone got into sealed divorce court records and gave them to the Trib.
convenient, eh? Ryan had a real chance.....
-----
Obama said he's a progressive, he's hung out w/"progressives" all his adult life.
this will be fun - the slow strangulation of America - no fear the producers will go somewhere else, they always do.
Advice to GOP, conservatives if independent, libertarians: stop getting in a snit and paying so much attention to the side that won and look into the mirror at what went wrong for your side, your team, and how that might be fixed for the future. Spitting against the wind is not a useful thing to do.
The story of the Obama Administration is already written.
Look at California, New Jersey, Chicago, Philly, St. Louis and every other urban center; owned and operated by Democratic machines.
Failures of social engineering. Colorado, New Mexico plus many Southern states are being inundated with Cali ex-pats fleeing the economic turmoil Democratic policies have inflicted....now those states are being tranformed into the same blue messes.
Soon there will be no where left to run.
Obama won a greater percentage of the popular vote than Reagan did in 1980.
Just sayin'.
A little recent Presidential election history
Reagan got elected on an economic downturn under Carter.
Reagan got reelected on an economic upturn.
Bush 1 got elected on a still good economy.
Clinton got elected on an economic downturn (rather soon after Bush 1 had an 85% approval rating following the first Iraq war).
Clinton got reelected on an economic upturn.
Bush 2 was an exception in his first election as the economy was seen as good, but the vote was essentially a tie.
Bush 2 got reelected, after weathering the results of the "dot bomb" bust and 9/11, on a good economy.
Obama got elected on an economic downturn
In this election, certain states that were particularly hard hit with the mortgage fiasco, Florida, Nevada, Colorado, North Carolina, moved to the Democrat.
The fact is that people vote for what, they perceive, will be best for their back pocket at the time of the election. In many cases, that's really just "punishment" of the party in power at the time of the downturn rather than any vote of confidence in a particular philosophy.
This country is still generally conservative. The problem with the Republican party is that people no longer identify it with conservatism.
This can be fixed quickly, of course, if the will exists to do it. The Democratic leadership is far more liberal than their popular image would suggest. It's important to remember that twice as many voters self identify as conservative than liberal, so the swing voters did not vote for Democrats in the belief that they would be restoring pre-Reagan liberal policies. So they are bound to alienate much of their constituency over the next couple of years, as actions and rhetoric fail to meet.
However, the temptation that must be resisted by the Republican party is to "wait around" for the Democrats to screw up. That would be a huge mistake. There are many areas where the Republican party could quickly get back into sync with the American people, and with conservatism in general. That would be good for the party, and much more importantly, good for the country.
The Tribune filed a freedom of information and forced the divorce papers open.
Even after Ryan pleaded that opening up the sordid details could damage his young children. And what the divorce papers showed, and what the Tribune expected to find, was details about the odd sexual preferences of the Republican candidate. A candidate that was a big early favorite over then mostly unknown State Senator Obama.
Obama then faced a token candidate from the Republicans.
To DLP the first Bush won by a bigger margin then Obama.
Rahm is an evil troll. The fact that Obama picked him means that he has picked a man who's main skills are fund raising, back stabbing, and opposition research. Rahm's role for Clinton was leaking nasty stories to favored reporters against perceived enemies. great start
Neither GWB's administration, nor his congressional Republicans, practiced conservatism in any true sense of the word.
And neither, I suppose, are they True Scotsmen.
Funny, really, that for three elections conservatives voted straight-ticket Republican. Who did they think they were voting for if not conservatives?
If this country is so conservative, why did the Democratic Presidential candidate win the popular vote in four of the last five elections?
If this country is so conservative, why does the election map show increased Democratic vote across a large majority of counties in the country?
My God, this is the extreme of intellectual dishonesty and willful blindness and facts and context. Maybe McCain was right that the fundamentals of the economy are strong, because America is still able to support a class of professional ignoramuses.
To Chet: You said: "Funny, really, that for three elections conservatives voted straight-ticket Republican. Who did they think they were voting for if not conservatives?"
Voters very often vote "against" a candidate/party rather than "for" one. They basically ask themselves who they view as least destructive.
I've been voting in Presidential elections since 1968. In all that time I've only voted "for" a candidate twice. At all other times I voted to keep the other guy out of office.
A candidate that was a big early favorite over then mostly unknown State Senator Obama.
Obama was beating Ryan even before the divorce fallout. (And strictly speaking if Jack Ryan had been thinking about his kids maybe he shouldn't have been trying to pimp out Seven-of-Nine at swingers clubs. Just a thought.)
I mean, think about it for a second. If Ryan had been the "favorite" to win, why would the GOP have sent in a replacement with no hope of winning? Surely they would have sent in someone with the capacity to pick up as much of Ryan's support as possible?
The only reason they sent in Alan Keyes was that they needed to send someone, but knew they were already going to lose. And why did they know they were going to lose? Because Obama was already beating Ryan.
I goofed. My post "To Chet" should have been to The Third Policeman.
Voters very often vote "against" a candidate/party rather than "for" one. They basically ask themselves who they view as least destructive.
If both Republicans and Democrats were both liberals, both equally liberal, then how could you possibly have made that decision?
No, my point stands. Conservatives voted too overwhelmingly Republican. They didn't have to vote at all, you know, and the Bush revolution was that he could actually get them to vote.
You're trying to tell me that conservatives turned out in record numbers to vote for liberals? Please. We've just witnessed a decade-long failure of conservative ideals. Own up to it. Take some responsibility.
need to answer. ?
bullshit
it was the economy stupid
We've just witnessed a decade-long failure of conservative ideals. Own up to it. Take some responsibility.
Go to Thomas, locate Ron Paul's House votes (especially wrt economics) and then convince yourself what we have witnessed is "a decade-long failure of conservative ideals."
We have not had economic conservatism under GWB. No amount of progressives repeating that nonsense will ever make it true. It makes those who do try to sell that line look extremely ill-informed, actually.
That said, Republicans certainly should take responsibility for their massive failures (ignoring small-government, fiscally conservative principles) when they went along with "compassionate conservative" GWB on so many spending issues, just as Democrats should take responsibility for their massive failures (Fannie, Freddie) and by going along with GWB on so much (spending, Iraq, the No Banker Left Behind Bailout, FISA, Medicare expansion, NCLB, etc., etc., etc.)
Chet, the conservatives overwhelmingly voted in 2004 because they thought Bush was better than Kerry on the war, despite being not conservative. In 2000, the alternative was eco-warrior Gore, so again, the lesser evil. The only people who claim Bush was a hard right conservative are his opponents on the left. Bush claimed to be a compassionate conservative, and has pretty much followed through with massive aid to Africa, NCLB, expanding medicare, etc. The whole neoconservative movement has been interventionist, and that's about the only spot they appear to have won over a number of actual conservatives. By your argument, was Clinton extremely liberal since liberals overwhelmingly voted for him over his opponent? Given welfare reform and NAFTA, I think that would be a hard argument to make.
Nobody ever loves Congress, but our only options for replacing them turn out to be other Congress people. So I wouldn't sweat it too much.
If the Dems do a decent job--and the divided house argument was doomed to fail because right now people really want the branches of governement working together to actually accomplish stuff, not keeping each other from getting anywhere--then they should do okay in 2010 and '12. If the Republicans go with the I-
I'm not dismissing the Dems' historical ability to massively screw up a sure thing, but the hidden genius amongst the Republicans so far seems to be amongst those cast into the vast Obama tank for their apostasy.
We've just witnessed a decade-long failure of conservative ideals. Own up to it. Take some responsibility.
You can keep saying it, but that doesn't make it true. We have witnessed a decade-long failure of Republican governance, but that's not synonymous with conservative ideals.
Republican's clearly (and deservedly) lost this election cycle. But you should recognize that Obama campaigned on a middle class tax cut and zero-based budgeting and wanting to go into Pakistan to get Al Qaeda. Those are fundamentally conservative stances. Whether he actually does this is immaterial - the point is that he was able to run as a big change from the Bush administration by proposing conservative ideas.
The primary "disaster" I see is that partisanship runs so deep
Yes, it's amazing to see Obama talk about togetherness, reaching out, and his "supporters" so full of rage and hatred. I know people that absolutely hate half the the country. And these people claim to stand for sharing, caring about neighbors? They don't love their neighbors, they hate their neighbors.
I am just glad Obama himself is not like these "supporters" who don't actually believe in what he stands for. I voted against him, but I believe in his message more than most Democrats I know.
The Republicans broke every promise they made to everyone - except they didn't abandon the Iraqi people and up and leave no matter how politically dangerous it was. So they kept that promise at least, but no party can stay in power when it acts against everything it claims to stand for.
Maxwell makes a good point, although this statement isn't entirely correct,
"Bush 2 [43] was an exception in his first election as the economy was seen as good, but the vote was essentially a tie."
As Larry Bartels of Princeton has noted,
"...studies of economy-driven voting almost invariably find that voters are strongly influenced by economic conditions during the election year, or even some fraction of it, but mostly ignore how the economy performed over the rest of the incumbent’s term."
Recall that by the election of 2000, we'd already had the collapse of the dot-com bubble (that March) and the economy was starting to weaken (it contracted in the third quarter).
Here's DailyKos response to the question of whether America is really "right/center". http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/11/5/194654/175/875/655100
Agree or disagree, but notice that it shows a chart using data and stuff. Meaning they make an argument by trying to define a concept, measuring, and then citing the measured result as evidence for the conclusion.
My main issue with the last eight years of Republican governance is the death of reason particularly when applied to public policy issues.
The short answer is, Obama certainly has both legal authority and democratic permission to attempt to do the things he campaigned for: Iraq withdrawal, tax policy, healthcare plan, energy plan.
Wether or not he can even pass these items is quite another matter.
So what is all the rest of the debate about?
I personally think the ebbs and flows of the business cycle will greatly benefit Obama and the Democrats
Hope you're right, but I think you're wrong.
In terms of timing, Obama's situation is much more like Reagan's in 1980 than it is like Clinton's in 1992. By the time Clinton took office, the recovery was underway and probably had been for two quarters. Obama is coming in as the economy is still finding the bottom of the current recession. In 1982, the GOP lost a lot of seats because his efforts to squeeze out inflation had led to a steep recession. If Reagan had been on the ballot that year, he would've lost.
Obama might be able to do what Reagan did by '84, steer the country back to prosperity, and then his re-election would become a foregone conclusion. That depends on whether you think his economic policies are growth-inducing. If they aren't, I doubt he'll be able to argue like FDR did in 1936 that it's all the GOP's fault, still.
That's the beauty of America. Left, right, pshaw. If you can't grow the economy, you're out. So even the most liberal redistributionist has to consider incentives if he wants to win.
To DaveinHackensack: You said: "Recall that by the election of 2000, we'd already had the collapse of the dot-com bubble (that March) and the economy was starting to weaken (it contracted in the third quarter)."
It had not been felt yet. It's sort of the opposite of Clinton's first election. All the leading indicators at the time pointed to the (short lived) recession ending, but Bush 1 lost due to that (ending) recession.
This election has been very odd in that many things just popped up unexpectedly - moving the whole discourse. We had the huge jump in oil prices in the spring, but they subsided. Then the "mortgage crisis" jumped out of nowhere, even though it had been growing for 2 years but had been left out of the discussion. You will not find candidates of either party talking much about it in the primaries. The Wall St./Banking crisis followed the mortgage mess.
So the huge economic issues - oil prices, mortgages, Wall St - only entered the equation later in race. That is very rare.
"You can keep saying it, but that doesn't make it true. We have witnessed a decade-long failure of Republican governance, but that's not synonymous with conservative ideals."
By that logic, the collapse of the Soviet Union was a failure of communist governance, not communist ideals. Not a very persuasive argument.
Actually, I think it's probably more like the election of Jimmy Carter.
I keep seeing this over and over - someone saying that Bush wasn't really 'conservative', but, strangely, unable to post any references where they were saying this in 2000, 2001, . . . on up to about 2004. Does SG, I wonder, have any cites remarking on the fact that Bush is in no way a conservative within that time frame?
Because, you know, I never heard that 'Bush isn't really a conservative' until after a fairly large percentage of the electorate had turned against him. It seems that the vast majority of conservatives/libertarians/right-wingers were eager to claim him as their own up to, say, Katrina. Post-Katrina, not so much.
For example, here's what Megan had to say back in 2003:
No, I'm not going to believe anyone of a certain persuasion with a certain reputation who is going on about Bush not being a conservative unless they've got some documentation to back up the fact that this is what they've always said.
Hey, this is fun:
This is off topic but
Peter Fitzgerald was a very good Senator but both the Republican and Democratic parties wanted to get rid of his efforts to reform politics in Illinois.
Obama won the Democratic primary btw it was the most expensive Senate primary race in history. Why does that always happen to Obama?
Next, Obama was sending emails, off the record, to Illinois reporters about Ryan having problems in his private life and that reporters should be investigating Ryan's divorce. The Ryan's agreed to open the divorce papers but both parents asked that custody hearings be kept quiet.
The Chicago Tribune, where some reporters were very open supporters of Obama,used it's first amendment claims to investigate the sex life of his opponent. Once the Tribune was on the story like a pitbull, Obama backed away from the story.
The Ryan Obama race was competitive, the outcome very unclear. Once Ryan was forced out, the thought of raising money at short notice scared other candidates. Obama by that point had the Pritzker family money behind him. Plus the Republican Governor Ryan was facing criminal charges.
Out of a pile of shit, with the help of the Chicago Tribune, Obama won.
Why does that always happen to Obama?
Yeah, that's right. Obama blew his vast personal fortune on a Senate primary.
You people.
The Ryan Obama race was competitive, the outcome very unclear.
Obama was up by 19% before Ryan was knocked out. Like I said if it had been anything approaching a "competitive" race - instead of a shut-out - before Ryan resigned, the GOP wouldn't have subbed in Alan Keyes. Keyes is the guy you bring out when you're already losing.
Um, and you know, he did just win an incredibly competitive race for a major national office, I don't know if you heard. Winning tough elections isn't exactly out of the realm of possibility for Barack Obama.
If the country is so progressive, how come Bush won the popular vote four years ago? Did all the center right people die?
1) John Kerry.
2) No.
For your consideration:
The Club's Nationwide Election Poll
Club President Pat Toomey wrote an op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal detailing the key findings from a nationwide election poll that the Club conducted on Sunday.
http://www.clubforgrowth.org/2008/11/the_clubs_nationwide_election.php
have any cites remarking on the fact that Bush is in no way a conservative within that time frame?
I didn't say Bush "was in no way conservative". I said that Republican is not synonymous with conservative. That's hardly an groundbreaking claim. The growth of the federal government under Bush was widely bemoaned by conservative commentators, even as they praised his judicial appointments. Bush's actual record of domestic governance, starting with NCLB and ending with the partial nationalization of the financial sector can't in any rational way be considered representative of conservative thought. That's why I claim that Bush created a fair amount of room for Barack Obama to campaign on some moderately conservative ideas while simultaneously and legitimately presenting himself as a change from Bush.
Political parties are at best imperfect vessels for ideologies. Democrats aren't wholly liberal and Republicans aren't wholly conservative. A reasonable person ought to recognize that a president's policies will not necessarily reflect the dominant ideological identity of their party. Bill Clinton was a liberal, but he signed NAFTA and welfare reform into law. I consider those to be conservative policies; that they received Bill Clinton's signature did not magically make them liberal.
Bush is unpopular so from liberal and Democratic perspectives it makes sense to tie conservative thought to him. It's good tactics, and it even makes sense in certain circumstances; the Iraq War sprung from a strong national defense and a belief in American exceptionalism - both largely conservative ideals. Likewise his Supreme Court nominations (excepting Harriet Myers) were conservative. I'm not arguing that Bush was a liberal. I'm only disputing the claim that Bush ran the federal budget according to any known conservative ideals. This claim is as ridiculous as claiming welfare reform in the '90s was a liberal ideal. Just cause the President has an (R) after his name does not make all his policies conservative - it only makes them Republican.
I'd be very happy if President Obama and the Democratic Congress implements zero-based budgeting and offsets new programs with spending cuts. I would call it a conservative budgeting approach even if it were being done by Democrats to fund liberal programs. Here's to hoping...
"...now there are no Republicans to blame for anything that goes wrong..."
Of course there are. Everything the Dems will screw up for the next four years will be "Bush's legacy".
And so, SG, you admit that you haven't said anything about this administration not being conservative until very late in the day? But you're still going to stick with your story.
Why am I not surprised(and, no, you don't get to make the argument that Bush wasn't really 'conservative'; you've forfeited the right.)
Let me say this once again: you don't get any points now for saying Bush and the Republican Congress are not really 'conservative' unless you you can point to where you (plausibly) said this at least three years ago. You don't get to disown them just like that, not now when they are no longer useful.
Just like, as someone else as already pointed out, you can't dismiss the collapse of the Soviet Union as evidence against the workability of Communism on the grounds that they weren't 'really' Communists. Well, if you had said that the SU or Red China wasn't 'really' Communist back in the 50's or whenever, you'd be allowed to say that as a valid debating point. But not otherwise.
First of all, you're making the positive claim: Bush has governed according to conservative principles. You get to prove the claim. I'm under no obligation to prove the negative. But if you can find me one reputable conservative that advocated for federalizing education policy perhaps I'll concede that that point.
Secondly, I didn't say Bush wasn't a conservative. I said that not all of his policy initiatives represented conservative ideas. Clearly Bush was more conservative than Gore and Kerry. But that still doesn't mean that everything he did was in service of conservative ideas.
Thirdly, I did acknowledge that Bush did somethings that were conservative and unpopular and/or poor (here's another one: privatizing SS). I don't claim that conservative ideas are blameless, only that they don't care as much weight as you're giving them. How much weight they should carry is a matter of fair debate.
And finally I pointed to NAFTA and Welfare reform as examples of conservative principles that translated into effective policy. I didn't claim that "true conservatism has never been tried", only that it's not as simply as looking at the (R) or the (D) after the predisdent's name.
It's no big deal to me in any case. We'll have another election in 4 years. If Obama is successful, he'll be reelected; if not, your "disproof" of conservative ideals (since you're claiming iff Republican then conservative) will have lasted all of 4 years - Great proof you've constructed there.
I wish I had checked the name of the post I was replying to. If I had, I would have realized that it was just another of your intellectually dishonest rants (seriously, it's actually impressive how many willful misreadings, logical fallacies and just plain bad faith you can put into just a few paragraphs) and not bothered replying. You have nothing to offer and nothing to learn - there's no point in continuing my mistake. Have a pleasant evening.
But if you can find me one reputable conservative that advocated for federalizing education policy perhaps I'll concede that that point.
Eh, sorry. I'm still too busy looking for a True Scotsman who puts sugar in his porridge.
Analysts get paid to analyze, and they often analyze wrong. I remember in 2004 when analysts were saying the Republicans had a potentially lasting political majority because they overwhelmingly won the "exurbs" (remember them?) and the exurbs were the fasting growing region of the country (how'd that work out for Republicans?)
The people who claim some sort of lasting political dynasty are generally those who are HOPING for a lasting political majority. If you genuinely thought it was going to happen, it would simply happen. You wouldn't have to explain to all those dumb voters that "It's going to happen and you better like it!"
There's no lasting Democratic majority so long as the Republicans reform themselves (and I believe they will).
Everything that could have gone wrong for the Republicans (unpopular President, cheerleading press for the Democrat, lagging economy, economic crisis the month before the election) and the Democrats maxed out at 52 percent.
No. I. Am. Not. I am point-blank telling you that you don't get to use the excuse that 'Bush wasn't really a conservative'. Not unless you can post some sort of proof that you were saying this earlier than 2005. Is that slow enough for you? Bear in mind your initial post which provoked my reply:
What I see on your part, and the part of other 'conservatives' is a complete and total unwillingness to modify your beliefs by even the tiniest atom(do we even have to ask what these types would be doing if 'liberals' behaved as they are doing now?) You are unable - constitutionally it would seem - to say, 'Hey, maybe we got a few things wrong. Maybe we should go back to the drawing board and re-examine a few of our ideas, maybe, in the light of new evidence, alter them a bit.'
So why should I think you are remotely credible about, well, anything?
I'm late to the party but...I'd like to flip the question..
Megan asks:"If the country is so progressive, how come Bush won the popular vote four years ago?"
I'd like to ask, after listening to Karl Rove and most Fox Commentators
"If this country is so Center-Right, how come Democrats have won the popular vote for the Presidency in four of the last five elections?"
yes.. I know the Caveats about the Clinton years.. but just saying..
SoV,
This may be a shock to you, but Rush Limbaugh has been saying for years that Bush was not a conservative. Limbaugh was also a vociferous opponent of Bush's biggest deviations from conservatism, e.g., the expansion of Medicare. Like most Republicans, Limbaugh liked Bush as a person agreed with some of his policies (e.g., the war in Iraq, the tax cuts), and preferred him to the Democrat alternatives. But he also vociferously opposed Bush's big government policies such as Medicare Part D.
Sigh. Did he make these accusations prior to 2005? If not, he should shut his yap. If he did, well, at least he's being consistent.
You guys who have suddenly 'discovered' this in the last few years, but were strangely silent in 2003 about Bush's lack of conservative credentials? Just shut up. You have no standing to advance this argument unless you can convincingly show that you were saying the same thing three years ago.
Funny how all the conservative types seem to be unable to understand this simple point. [sarcasm]Of course the fact that they don't get it is just 'by accident', right?[/sarcasm].
I'm really fond of data, as it allows us to rise above the BS and get a bit closer to the heart of the matter. (As an economist or econophile, the author should be, too, but perhaps she decided to give her spreadsheets the day off when she authored this.)
Not all of the numbers are in, but it's becoming apparent from what has come in thus far is that voter turnout surged. In the red-to-blue conversion states such as Virginia and North Carolina, the number of votes cast for Obama was substantially higher than it had been for Kerry, while McCain kept much of the Bush vote count in Virginia and actually outperformed it in North Carolina.
The hard right and center-right factions didn't go anywhere, but their numbers have been exaggerated because they have traditionally turned out to vote in larger numbers than their moderate to liberal counterparts. That has changed -- this year, unlike before, the center-left that had been sitting on the sidelines disaffected by the political process turned out in droves.
Combined with a few conquered swing voters, it was these new voters who put Obama into the White House. The key to future Democratic success would appear to continue this trend toward an internet-based, inclusive electoral process, engaging the regular folk so that they feel that they have an investment in the system. The Republicans will have to continue their efforts to discourage people from voting and/or convert some of these new voters into the Republican cause if they wish to retake that ground.