In my previous diary, "Nate Silver Redux", I wrote about a "Composite Index" of the long-term national spending items on the General Social Survey underlying Obama's "progressive" policies as identified by Nate Silver:
The Composite Index
If we combine all of the above questions that were asked of the same people (split samples were used, so we can't include all the tables), we have seven spending items we can combine with a distribution of support that looks like this:
Spending Composite Index--Seven Items
Spending?
Progress- ives
Center- Left
Center
Center- Right
Conserv- ative
1: "Too Little"
87.3
83.9
71.8
69.2
50.0
2: "About Right"
8.7
9.0
15.5
16.6
15.2
3: "Too Much"
4.0
7.4
12.4
14.0
34.8
4: Lib Index
95.6
91.9
85.2
83.1
59.0
5: #1 + #2
96.0
93.0
87.3
85.8
65.2
Change in #4
--
3.6
6.7
2.1
24.2
Change in #5
--
3.0
5.7
1.5
20.6
What we see first in this table is a relatively slow gradation from progressive to center-right, followed by a sharp drop off among conservatives. The liberalism index only declines 12.5 points from progressive to center-right, but then plunges 24.1-almost twice as much-from center-right to conservative. The drop-off in total support (#1 +#2) is smaller, but the ratio is greater: a 10.2 point drop from progressive to center-right, followed by a 20.6 point drop (more than twice as much) from center-right to conservative. By both measures, conservatives are outliers.
But there's an interesting additional twist to this story....
The main objections to my diary "Center-Left Nation: Congress Since WWII" seemed to be two-fold: first that I was only using a single data source. Second, more significantly, that I was making an argument that ignored the racism of the Southern Dems. My answers were that (1) You only need one data source to disprove a thesis ("center-right nation"), and advance (not prove) another ("center-left nation"); (2) It was still true in the aggregate, as shown, for example, by the Congressional DW-Nominate scores.
I stand by those answers, but of course, they don't need to be the last word. And, indeed, they shouldn't be the last word. Hence, a look at party ID since 1972, from the General Social Survey (GSS). It should be noted that the figures here--which include partisan leaners--are not as strikingly Democratic as those from Pew, which is also a very reputable pollster, and I have no explanation for the discrepancy. But GSS figures are available going much further back.
(GSS polls not taken every year, see tables below for exact dates.)
So, the Democrats have lost their crushing 2-1 advantage enjoyed in the early 70s, but still have maintained an edge in every GSS poll since that time. And as for arguments about Southern racist Dems, well, that's what God made regional crosstabs for...
The Hoover Institution is one of the major conservative think tanks in this country, so this op-ed in the Washington Post today is pretty incredible for its honesty:
Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, in Outlook last week: The United States "is indeed, as conservatives have been insisting in recent days, a center-right country." On election night, former Bush guru Karl Rove opined on Fox News, "Barack Obama understands this is a center-right country, and he smartly and wisely ran a campaign that emphasized it." And it's not just conservative pundits and operatives singing this song. Take Newsweek editor Jon Meacham, who wrote an Oct. 27 cover essay entitled "America the Conservative," which argued that Obama will have to "govern a center-right nation" that "is more instinctively conservative than it is liberal."
The only problem: It isn't true. Or at least, not anymore.
Here's the stark reality: It is now harder for the Republican presidential candidate to get to 50.1 percent than for the Democrat. My Hoover Institution colleague David Brady and Douglas Rivers of the research firm YouGovPolimetrix have been analyzing data from online interviews with 12,000 people in both 2004 and 2008. It shows an overall shift to the Democrats of six percentage points. As they write in the forthcoming edition of Policy Review, "The decline of Republican strength occurs by having strong Republicans become weak Republicans, weak Republicans becoming independents, and independents leaning more Democratic or even becoming Democrats." This is a portrait of an electorate moving from center-right to center-left.
In my earlier diary, Midnight De-Regulation and the Myth of A 'Center Right Nation' -- Part 1: The Environment, I presented a list of Bush Administration midnight de-regulations of environmental protections, as an example of how unpopular center-right policies really are enacted in this supposedly "center-right" nation--so unpopular that they are done quickly and stealthily in the dead of night, with as few witnesses as possible-a dead giveaway of the real popularity of such policies. In this diary, I want shine a bit more light on the particulars of how this happens. I'll get into that on the flip. But first, just so you understand it's not just environmental protections that are being hit, here's a few other examples of last-minute changes Bush is pushing for on the way out the door:
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (Department of Transportation) - The rule would allow truck drivers to drive up to 11 consecutive hours. Because of the effects of fatigue, longer hours-of-service periods put both truck drivers and other motorists at risk.
Department of Justice - The rule would expand the power of state and local law enforcement agencies to investigate potential criminal activities and report the information to federal agencies. The rule would broaden the scope of activities authorities could monitor to include organizations as well as individuals, along with non-criminal activities that are deemed "suspicious."
Employment Standards Administration (Labor) - The rule would limit employee access to family and medical leave. Among other things, the rule would make it more difficult for workers to use paid vacation or personal time to take leave and would allow employers to speak directly to an employee's health care provider.
Department of Health and Human Services - The rule could reduce women's access to federally funded reproductive health services. The rule would require health care providers to certify they will allow their employees to withhold services on the basis of religious or moral grounds or risk losing funding.
The myth of a center-right nation is kept alive like most myths are--by the simple act of endless repetition. But like most myths, it doesn't do so well when you try a little reality testing. For example, if this really were a center-right nation, would the Bush Administration have to do so damn much dirty work behind closed doors, in undisclosed locations, or contracted out to somebody's horse-trainer's cousin? Or, to put a little finer point on it, would the Bushies really have to wait until they were halfway out the door to enact a whole slew of environmental regulations like the following, without congressional input?
Office of Surface Mining (Interior) -- The rule would allow mining companies to dump the waste (i.e. excess rock and dirt) from mountaintop mining into rivers and streams.
Environmental Protection Agency -- The rule would ease current restrictions that make it difficult for power plants to operate near national parks and wilderness areas.
Environmental Protection Agency -- Under the rule, concentrated animal feeding operations, i.e. factory farms, could allow farm runoff to pollute waterways without a permit. The rule circumvents the Clean Water Act, instead allowing for self-regulation.
Environmental Protection Agency -- The rule would exempt factory farms from reporting air pollution emissions from animal waste.
Think Progress catches conservative spokesman Brent Bozell insisting in the course of about one minute that Barack Obama ran as a "a liberal, left-wing Democrat" and then saying "Barack Obama won as a conservative." He also insists (of course) that America is a "center-right" nation.
Yes, Obama was a "liberal, left-wing conservative Democrat."
Digby has the goods on Democratic Villagers in D.C. asserting that Russ Feingold's opposition to the Iraq War - which is congruent with President-elect Obama's and the American electorate - should disqualify him from assuming the chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Because, in our "center-right nation," everyone loves the Iraq War.
Meanwhile, the New York Times' David Brooks dreams of a Barack Obama presidency whose primary aim is making wealthy suburbanites like him happy, in this a country whose landslide election of a man billed as a redistributing socialist displayed absolutely "no sign" of a "movement to the left."
UPDATE:Commenter Haggai makes a great point:
DC insiders tend to say ridiculous things, but I'm not holding my breath for anyone else to say that opposition to the Iraq war is more disqualifying for being the Senate Foreign Relations chair than it is for being president. That's some powerful stupid.
"My own hunch is that Obama is smart enough not to want to govern as a liberal," said Peter Wehner, a former Bush administration official.
That's a new wrinkle in the "Center-Right Nation" meme - that after having campaigned as a progressive, and after winning an election in which exit polls show most voters said they understand that Obama is a progressive, Obama would be showing intellectual stupidity by actually governing as a progressive.
As I (and many others) predicted a while back, the Partisan-Industrial Complex in Washington, D.C. has deployed its quadrennial Mandate Manipulation Machine to make sure that the 65 million Americans who voted for Barack Obama remember that America giving more than 340 electoral votes to an African American billed as a Islamic Marxist terrorist means there is no mandate for real change in this, a country obviously more conservative than ever.
A cursory glance at the newspapers today shows the media teeming with stories quoting incoming Obama administration officials, Democratic Party leaders and spokespeople for corporate front groups insisting that actually, no real change can be made, and what small-bore changes can happen, will have to happen in the very distant future, not soon. My favorite was the one-two punch from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean. Upon hearing of his bigger senate majority, Reid said on Tuesday, "This is not a mandate for a political party or an ideology." A day later, Dean told reporters, "I don't think it's a mandate for the New Deal." Awesome - what a way to project inspiring strength and confidence.
David's been doing excellent push-back against the "center-right nation" meme that's exploded post-election, just like 2006, but on steroids. While it's vitally important to keep up this fight, I'd like suggest opening up a second front--to wit, thinking about how to coopt all the building centrist narratives. Doing so goes back to one of the most important 2004 post-election analyses, Chris's "Eureka! Or How To Break the Republican Majority Coalition", in which he distinguished a form of moderate that really didn't fit on the traditional liberal/conservative spectrum. He identified these moderates with states that had a history of strong support for third parties, whose outward ideologies varied from populist to progressive to socialist to Perot's reform party.
At the time, Chris wrote:
While it is currently non-ideological, this segment of the population, which has existed in large numbers since at least the 1880's, has an outlook on politics that is far more closely allied with liberalism than conservatism because of its emphasis on reform. It is, to put it one way, latently liberal. This segment of the electorate can be swung toward the liberal camp, thus breaking the Republican majority coalition, if the pragmatic, non-dogmatic, reformer, anti-status quo, entrepreneurial aspects of liberalism are foregrounded and turned into a national narrative and platform.
So familiar? Maybe even prophetic? Not only that, but put this way it exposes precisely why those pushing the "center-right nation" narrative are just as opposed to Obama's message as they are to ideological progressives. For they are not only arguing against traditional progressive politics, but against any disruption to the status quo.
The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus - a reliable parrot of conventional wisdom - joins the Punditburo's insistence that the largest progressive mandate in contemporary American history means that obviously - clearly! - America remains more conservative than ever:
"The experience of President Bill Clinton's rocky early months -- remember gays in the military? the BTU tax? -- suggests the steep political price of governing in a way that is, or seems, skewed to the left. This risk is particularly acute for Obama, whose opponents have painted him as a leftist extremist."
The standard lie about Clinton's failures aside (it was NAFTA, stupid), the last sentence is particularly odd. Obama's "opponents have painted him as a leftist extremist." Yet, that supposed "leftist extremist" won the largest presidential mandate in the last generation.
And somehow, having done that, we are supposed to believe that means he should tack to the right.
William Galston, one of the ideological leaders of the Democratic Leadership Council, takes election day today to write a piece in the New Republic insisting that a President Obama should ignore his own voters and abandon most of his big progressive campaign promises because America - no matter what happens on election day, no matter what the polls on issues say - will always be a center-right nation:
Yesterday, Digby wrote about Matthew Dowd as an example of someone who had disappeared his own Bushian past, and was now sternly warning against Obama getting too carried away, and governing too far left, like Clinton did when he took office. She quotes Dowd:
I think everybody, including Bill Clinton himself, said that the mistake he made when he first took office was that he governed way too far to the left when he started and that after the Republicans took the house in 1994 he moved more to a centrist policy. that's when his numbers went way up, that's when he preserved his reelection. And if Barack Obama starts the same way Bill Clinton does that is a huge problem, I think.
It's good for the Republican party if he does that. But I think Barack Obama is going to have to govern to the center which is where the majority of the country is.
The history of 1992 contains a clear warning that a centre-left coalition can fall apart quickly if the policies are seen as too far left. In 1993, Mr Clinton raised taxes on the wealthy, adopted the "don't ask, don't tell" policy in the military, proposed and lost universal healthcare and adopted gun safety measures, banning assault rifles. (emphasis added)
This narrative is utterly and totally false. And that's completely apart from the fact that 2008 is nothing like 1992. But the biggest lie involves how the false narrative about 1992-94 obscures the connection between then and now.
The history of 1992 contains a clear warning that a centre-left coalition can fall apart quickly if the policies are seen as too far left. In 1993, Mr Clinton raised taxes on the wealthy, adopted the "don't ask, don't tell" policy in the military, proposed and lost universal healthcare and adopted gun safety measures, banning assault rifles. (emphasis added)
Penn is following Schoen's lead in making the Democratic side of this Establishment argument - using the manufactured storyline of Bill Clinton's supposed actions to claim that if a President Obama governs as a progressive, he will end up like Clinton in 1994. Not only is the storyline wholly fake, it implies that nothing has changed in America since 1994. That is, it implies with a straight face that the Bush years and the backlash to those years did nothing to move the country in a progressive direction.
Give all of these hacks credit. Out of their hysterical fear of waking up to irrelevancy on November 5th has come a disciplined strategy of lying - lying about where polling data shows the country is on issues, and lying about what an election of Obama actually means in such an ideologically polarized context.
Look, I'm all for Obama governing as a "centrist" - as long as he recognizes that the actual "center" of American public opinion is far different from the "center" as defined by corporate-hired pollsters like Penn, and the rest of the Establishment Punditburo.
And that's what's really going on here - the Establishment is attempting to anchor the definition of the "center" right where it si right now. And as dishonest as the arguments from shills like Penn are, those arguments are going to only get louder after election day. If they are allowed to distort whatever election mandate happens on November 4th, they will kill progressive change before it is ever born.
Doug Schoen is the DLC-affiliated pollster for Republicans like Mike Bloomberg - the guy who bashes progressive organizations from the right, the genius strategist who makes his name on perpetually telling Democrats to capitulate to Republicans on major issues (Think about where Barack Obama would be if he had followed this genius's advice and supported the Iraq War, for instance).
Yet, because the media rewards anyone who is a reliable progressive basher, Schoen is still billed as a political "expert" on the pages of fringe publications like the Wall Street Journal's editorial page (not to be confused with the much more credible news section of that same paper):
"This election is not a mandate for Democratic policies. Rather, it is a wholesale rejection of the policies of George W. Bush, Republicans, and to a lesser extent, John McCain...As New York Sen. Chuck Schumer has made clear, we don't have the money or flexibility to do everything Barack Obama wants to do...If the Democrats govern as if there is no Republican Party, they are likely headed to the kind of reaction that Bill Clinton faced when he made the same misjudgment after the 1992 election victory."
Laughably, Schoen contradicts himself in a span of two sentences.
