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Published November 30, 2008, by Atlanta Journal-Constitution. 
Huge crowds like this one in Portland, OR, turned out to support Obama.
Innumerable commentators have sought to plumb the meaning of Barack Obama’s win. The strangest part of this discussion, however, has to be what some have said about the election’s ideological meaning. To hear some in the media, you would never know that Democrats had achieved such a clear triumph.
It’s a familiar pattern: When Republicans win dramatic victories, as they did in 1994 or 2004, we are told that the country has “moved to the right.” When Democrats win, however, we are told that the election revealed no ideological shift whatsoever--or even that the public was somehow rejecting progressive ideology as it voted for progressive candidates.
So commentators insist that America remains a “center-right” country, and Obama had better not “overreach” by pursuing a progressive agenda. This message is coming not just from conservatives (who have an interest in convincing people that the public is still with them), but from non-ideological figures such as NBC’s Tom Brokaw and Newsweek editor Jon Meacham.
Before the election, Republicans argued that Obama’s proposals on issues such as the economy and health care were so radical they amount to socialism. Now some of those same people argue that Obama ran as a centrist, and therefore has no mandate to pursue progressive policies (The day after the election, Karl Rove claimed, “Barack Obama understands this is a center-right country and he smartly and wisely ran a campaign that emphasized it.”). Both of these things cannot simultaneously be true.
The truth is that while Obama works hard to show respect toward those who disagree with him, the policies he put forth were extremely progressive. He proposed rolling back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest earners while giving tax cuts to the middle class. He proposed a move toward universal health care. He proposed new investments in renewable energy. He proposed an expeditious exit from Iraq. None of these proposals were secret, and they all have the public’s overwhelming support.
It seems awfully strange to tell a president just elected by a considerable margin that he has no mandate. So anyone who claims that Obama shouldn’t follow through on what he proposed during the campaign ought to be asked exactly which promises they believe Obama should break. And it raises this question: Just what would the American people have to do to convince us that this is not a center-right country, but a center-left country?
They might try electing a progressive as president, with more votes than any candidate in U.S. history. They might try electing strong Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate. They might also try electing more Democrats than Republicans as governors and giving Democrats a majority of state legislators as well. They also might tell pollsters that a majority of them support the progressive position on nearly every important issue currently at play in our national debate. Would that be enough?
Of course, they have just done all those things. Yet some insist that any Democratic success can’t possibly reveal a leftward shift. It must be an accident of history--in the case of this election, the economic crisis, and George W. Bush’s unpopularity. But both are inseparable from conservative ideology. There’s a reason Republicans aren’t loudly advocating the doctrine of deregulation they’ve championed for so long: because it has been revealed as the cause of our economic woes, not the solution. As for Bush, with the sole exception of smaller government (which Republicans always promise and never deliver), his tenure offered almost as pure an expression of conservatism as one could imagine. It featured tax cuts for the wealthy, a bellicose foreign policy, huge increases in defense spending, the appointment of Supreme Court justices ready to overturn Roe v. Wade, a fierce effort at deregulation, a consolidation of power in the executive branch--in short, nearly everything conservatives ever wanted. And the public couldn’t have been less pleased with the results.
Nonetheless, many people are now advising Obama to “govern from the center.” It begs the question of just where the “center” is. Today, most Americans vote for Democrats, want to get out of Iraq, want Supreme Court justices who will maintain Roe, hope for universal health care, support stronger environmental protections, want to address global warming, favor sensible restrictions on gun sales, and think labor unions are necessary to protect workers. It may not be this way forever, but at this point in history, the center of American politics looks a lot like the left.
Paul Waldman is a senior fellow with Media Matters for America, a liberal Washington advocacy organization.
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