Anyone following the rightwing media in this post-election period will have noticed the nearly ubiquitous claims that “America remains a center-right (or conservative or Reaganite) country.” Running alongside this claim is another, related, that “Obama has no real mandate to move policies to the left.” They’ve got the drumbeat going on this one and it’s interesting to tease apart what they are trying to do.
First, let’s just note how inconsistent it is with the conservative movement’s responses to the last two presidential elections (where margins were less and as those presidential victories were not accompanied with anything like the broad gains Dems made in both houses and down through state levels on Nov 4). We’ll note as well that even given the above, the Bush administration proceeded to launch into massive policy changes, domestic and international, because…well, they had “a mandate”.
MR. RUSSERT: Mary Matalin, let me show you another Electoral College map. This one is based on population and vote rather than land, and you’ll see there how evenly divided the country is. George Bush did win 51 percent of the vote, but 48 percent of Americans said, “No, we prefer not to have George Bush re-elected. We want John Kerry.” And yet the White House is being very forceful in saying, “We have a mandate. We have political capital.” Is that accurate, and is it fair to the 48 percent of Americans who did not support George Bush?
MS. MATALIN: Yeah, it is accurate, because that map doesn’t tell the true story. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6485241
So, what’s up here? First, it’s a completely predicatable marketing or propaganda strategy to control the post-election narrative and devalue the Democratic advances (or, as in the Matalin example above, to over-value the 2004 Bush win). But there’s another less transparent and more interesting element in here too.
The conservative movement holds, perhaps as its most fundamental premise, that it alone represents the single true or valid understanding of proper American governance. “Liberalism” on the other hand, is invalid because it is un-American. These two notions are held as axioms.
But modern conservative movement types run into a big problem when voters don’t behave as they are supposed to behave. How can they still maintain that something other than their version of conservatism is Americanness epitomized if/when American voters turn in a different direction? Well, they have a few options: suggest the election was perhaps stolen (Acorn!); suggest the voters were hypnotized or deluded (Obama as false messiah, charming empty suit, kool-aid addiction); or just deny that the electoral result has any real meaning or that it presents any evidence for a shift in the electorate’s allegiance to Reaganite conservatism (who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?)
You’ll notice in the many claims by conservatives right now that ‘the nation remains center-right” that usually there is no evidence forwarded to support the claim. But where ‘evidence’ is presented, it is uniformly the one Tony Blankley presents in his Washington Times column (helpfully linked at National Review)…
It is revealing that the exit polling disclosed that the public self-identified itself as 44 percent moderate, 34 percent conservative, 22 percent liberal… http://http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/nov/11/to-battle-stations/
Of course, after nearly three decades of the conservative movement’s black PR campaign to define ‘liberalism’ as smelling like Satan’s dirty underwear, such self-identification polls aren’t very useful, except for PR purposes. A far better measure is to inquire of citizens what type of policies they wish to see government advance. Which gets us to these Pew studies…
graphs
Increased public support for the social safety net, signs of growing public concern about income inequality, and a diminished appetite for assertive national security policies have improved the political landscape for the Democrats as the 2008 presidential campaign gets underway.
At the same time, many of the key trends that nurtured the Republican resurgence in the mid-1990s have moderated, according to Pew’s longitudinal measures of the public’s basic political, social and economic values. The proportion of Americans who support traditional social values has edged downward since 1994, while the proportion of Americans expressing strong personal religious commitment also has declined modestly. more here… http://people-press.org/report/?reportid=312
h/t to Digby for Pew reference
edit: Krugman, as ususal, says it well and simply…
Hopeful signs on health care
This is very big news. One of the key questions about the new Democratic majority was whether Congress would try to play it safe, backing down on big ideas about reform, especially on health care. You can view the whole chorus about how we’re still a “center-right nation” as an attempt by the usual suspects to scare Democrats into scaling back their ambitions.
But now Max Baucus — Max Baucus! — is leading the charge on a health care plan that, at least at first read, is more like Hillary Clinton’s than Barack Obama’s; that is, it looks like an attempt at full universality. (The word I hear, by the way, is that Obama’s opposition to mandates was tactical politics, not conviction — so he may well be prepared to do the right thing now that the election is won.)
So this looks very good for the reformers. There’s now a reasonable chance that universal health care will be enacted next year!
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/hopeful-signs-on-health-care/
