Obama's mandate and the center-right myth

[ProSense]

Podesta: Obama Given ‘Real Mandate For Change’

John Podesta, President and CEO of the Center for American Progress (currently on leave to head the Obama transition), explained this morning on Fox News Sunday that President-Elect Barack Obama’s victory last week constituted a strong endorsement by the American people of a “progressive philosophy” and has given progressives a “real mandate for change.”

Later in the program, however, Reps. Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Mike Pence (R-IN) argued that last week’s election was not a mandate. Despite the decisive election of Obama and other progressive candidates across the country, Cantor and Pence maintained that Americans were not endorsing the progressive platform:

CANTOR: This was not some kind of realignment of the electorate, not some kind of shift toward some style of European social, big government type of philosophy. <…>

PENCE: I don’t think this was a victory for a progressive, or a liberal victory, I think this was a victory for Barack Obama.

Watch a compilation:

(http://thinkprogress.org/2008/11/09/podesta-progressive-victory/">Podesta: Obama Given 'Real Mandate For Change')

Pence and Cantor are wrong. Last week Americans decisively elected a progressive president and gave progressives a majority in both houses of congress. Exit polls from last Tuesday show that “51 percent said government should do more to solve problems, the first time even a narrow majority said so since exit pollsters started asking the question in 1994.”

Indeed, while America remains a centrist nation, last week’s election demonstrates that the center is moving to the left. Polling shows that a majority of Americans favor progressive solutions to our nation’s problems including, instituting universal health care, expanding environmental protections, rebuilding the middle class, and ending the Iraq war.

UPDATE This morning, MSNBC discussed and cited ThinkProgress' work on debunking the "center-right myth." Watch it:

more

Pelosi And Dean Beat Back Conservatives’ Claim That America Is Still ‘Center-Right’

The Progressive Majority: Why a Conservative America is a Myth

[ProSense]

1. And now a message from the idiot right

John Fund: Obama vs. Pelosi -- The president-elect meets the enemy.

Conservatives can't come to grips with the reality that they lost big so they're desperately trying to spin the election. Americans rejected the right.

[ProSense]

2. No comment? n/t

[ProSense]

3. This is surely disappointing for the people, like conservative pundits, who

are trying to fabricate tension between Obama and Pelosi.




edited word.

[ProSense]

4. Here is something to read

Same-sex Marriage: The Good News from the 2008 Election

[ProSense]

5. The most hilarious conservative self-reflection

from the Weekly Standard, We Blew It:

Let us bend over and kiss our ass goodbye. Our 28-year conservative opportunity to fix the moral and practical boundaries of government is gone--gone with the bear market and the Bear Stearns and the bear that's headed off to do you-know-what in the woods on our philosophy.

<...>

In how many ways did we fail conservatism? And who can count that high? Take just one example of our unconserved tendency to poke our noses into other people's business: abortion. Democracy--be it howsoever conservative--is a manifestation of the will of the people. We may argue with the people as a man may argue with his wife, but in the end we must submit to the fact of being married. Get a pro-life friend drunk to the truth-telling stage and ask him what happens if his 14-year-old gets knocked up. What if it's rape? Some people truly have the courage of their convictions. I don't know if I'm one of them. I might kill the baby. I will kill the boy.

The real message of the conservative pro-life position is that we're in favor of living. We consider people--with a few obvious exceptions--to be assets. Liberals consider people to be nuisances. People are always needing more government resources to feed, house, and clothe them and to pick up the trash around their FEMA trailers and to make sure their self-esteem is high enough to join community organizers lobbying for more government resources.

If the citizenry insists that abortion remain legal--and, in a passive and conflicted way, the citizenry seems to be doing so--then give the issue a rest. Meanwhile we can, with the public's blessing, refuse to spend taxpayers' money on killing, circumscribe the timing and method of taking a human life, make sure parental consent is obtained when underage girls are involved, and tar and feather teenage boys and run them out of town on a rail. The law cannot be made identical with morality. Scan the list of the Ten Commandments and see how many could be enforced even by Rudy Giuliani.

[BumRushDaShow]

6. Thanks for the variety of links!

Will be reading them right now! :hi:

[ProSense]

7. Center-left nation:

Interesting point: Some of those among the 43 percenters could be against Bush's expansion of powers as opposed to believing that government is doing too much for the American people.

Either way, 51 percent clearly want more good government.

[Kat45]

8. Yet they thought bush had a mandate. n/t