Open Left - center-right nation

A Center-Right Nation? Not What You Think!

Paul Rosenberg — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 21:46:31 GMT

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....
As it turns out, the attitudes of all people across the spectrum combined together turn out to be incredibly close to those of the center-right, which could be used to justify calling us a "center-right" nation:

Spending Composite Index--Seven Items
Spending?	Progress- ives	Center- Left	Center	Center- Right	Conserv- ative	ALL
1: "Too Little"	87.3	83.9	71.8	69.2	50.0	69.4
2: "About Right"	8.7	9.0	15.5	16.6	15.2	14.0
3: "Too Much"	4.0	7.4	12.4	14.0	34.8	16.6
4: Lib Index	95.6	91.9	85.2	83.1	59.0	80.7
5: #1 + #2	96.0	93.0	87.3	85.8	65.2	83.4
Change in #4	--	3.6	6.7	2.1	24.2	--
Change in #5	--	3.0	5.7	1.5	20.6	--

There are just two problems with this, however.

First is the reason why this result comes about: because there's not that big of a difference between center-right and center-left--or even progressive, for that matter, compared to the difference between center-right and conservative. Center-right is actually part of a broad consensus from progressive to center-right, while conservatives alone are the outliers.

Second is the fact that even conservatives as a whole take an objectively liberal position--saying that there's not enough spending on these issue areas, whereas movement/Versailles conservatives would say that it's a bad thing to be spending anything at all.

Thus, even when we find some evidence that could support the "center-right nation" meme, it turns out that the meaning of saying that is far different, if not outright contradictory to what the Versailles talking heads mean by it.

Center-Left Nation Update--Party ID Since 1972

Paul Rosenberg — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 22:18:29 GMT

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...
As it turns out, though there are clear regional differences, they are generally less striking than the similarities. And though we don't have figures from the '40s, '50s and '60s, the figures from 1972 on show that Democratic majorities were never solely dependent on Southern voters during this time, even when those voters were still overwhelmingly registered as Democrats.

First up, in the Northeast--New England plus the Mid-Atlantic states--Republicans briefly outnumbered Democrats in 1992, but the Democratic advantage has been up around 1970s levels for a while now.

Second, in the South, the GOP's new stronghold--from the Southern Atlantic seaboard to Texas and Oaklahoma--they came close to surpassing the Democrats in 1994, but lost ground after that, with a post-9/11 resurgence in 2002.

Third, in the Midwest--from Rustbelt Ohio to the Great Plains--the Republicans pulled ahead of the Democrats in the early 1990s, but have since fallen behind again.

Fourth, in the West--Mountain and Coastal--Republicans pulled ahead during Reagan's second term, but fell behind again under Clinton--an early profile of GOP gains, followed by losses, than in any other region.

Summary

Again, this is not presented as definitive proof that America is center-left, but it is proof that we are not center-right on the level of partisan politics, which is the level this debate is all about. The Versailles rhetoric is out of touch with reality, once again.

Tables

Party ID--Nationwide
Year	Dem	Ind	Rep
1972	60.9	10.6	28.5
1973	55.8	10.1	34.1
1974	59.0	10.5	30.4
1975	55.5	13.7	30.8
1976	55.9	16.3	27.9
1977	58.0	11.2	30.9
1978	52.9	14.4	32.7
1980	51.7	16.9	31.3
1982	60.2	11.7	28.1
1983	52.4	13.0	34.6
1984	51.4	11.5	37.0
1985	49.8	9.3	40.9
1986	49.7	13.2	37.0
1987	56.4	10.8	32.8
1988	48.8	12.6	38.6
1989	46.1	13.0	41.0
1990	45.4	11.0	43.4
1991	44.2	13.1	42.7
1993	46.5	12.5	41.2
1994	47.5	13.0	39.5
1996	45.2	16.4	38.4
1998	46.5	17.8	35.8
2000	44.0	20.7	35.3
2002	43.4	20.0	36.6
2004	44.4	16.2	39.4
2006	42.3	23.5	34.2

Party ID--Northeast
Year	Dem	Ind	Rep
1972	53.2	12.6	33.9
1973	58.8	9.6	31.6
1974	62.3	8.4	29.7
1975	55.4	13.0	31.6
1976	54.4	15.7	29.7
1977	53.9	11.8	34.5
1978	49.4	13.6	37.0
1980	45.9	19.2	34.9
1982	55.6	14.1	30.2
1983	51.0	15.5	33.5
1984	52.5	12.5	35.0
1985	47.9	11.4	40.7
1986	53.0	10.9	36.1
1987	49.7	12.5	37.8
1988	51.5	14.2	34.3
1989	43.6	14.7	41.7
1990	46.4	10.4	43.2
1991	37.6	15.2	47.2
1993	49.3	12.1	38.6
1994	50.6	11.8	37.7
1996	48.1	18.9	32.8
1998	50.3	20.8	28.9
2000	47.4	25.2	27.4
2002	45.6	24.7	29.6
2004	49.2	14.4	36.4
2006	48.3	23.0	28.7

Party ID--South
Year	Dem	Ind	Rep
1972	71.3	8.6	20.1
1973	54.8	9.4	35.7
1974	59.5	8.6	32.0
1975	60.6	12.4	27.1
1976	55.6	16.9	27.4
1977	59.4	11.7	28.9
1978	56.6	14.5	28.9
1980	57.1	14.8	28.3
1982	66.8	9.8	23.4
1983	56.8	13.2	30.0
1984	55.7	11.0	33.3
1985	56.3	7.2	36.7
1986	56.0	12.6	31.5
1987	60.8	9.9	29.2
1988	51.0	12.4	36.6
1989	47.7	12.5	39.8
1990	51.6	9.2	39.2
1991	50.6	10.5	38.8
1993	44.9	11.3	43.8
1994	44.5	13.8	41.7
1996	43.0	14.7	42.4
1998	45.0	16.2	38.6
2000	44.0	19.5	36.4
2002	41.4	18.3	40.2
2004	44.8	16.1	39.2
2006	41.7	24.8	33.5

Party ID--Midwest
Year	Dem	Ind	Rep
1972	54.6	12.5	32.9
1973	54.6	10.7	34.5
1974	58.1	13.2	28.7
1975	46.9	16.9	36.2
1976	53.9	16.4	29.7
1977	59.5	9.4	30.9
1978	47.3	17.0	35.4
1980	50.5	17.8	31.4
1982	59.2	11.3	29.3
1983	50.4	12.7	36.9
1984	52.4	12.9	34.7
1985	47.7	10.6	41.4
1986	48.3	14.7	37.3
1987	61.4	10.0	28.6
1988	48.5	16.0	35.5
1989	44.7	13.2	42.1
1990	38.4	14.9	47.0
1991	42.6	14.8	42.6
1993	41.1	15.0	44.0
1994	47.3	13.0	39.8
1996	45.9	16.7	37.4
1998	44.6	17.0	38.4
2000	38.8	22.3	38.8
2002	43.1	20.6	36.4
2004	41.8	17.6	40.8
2006	39.8	22.2	38.0

Party ID--West
Year	Dem	Ind	Rep
1972	63.7	7.9	28.5
1973	54.9	11.6	33.5
1974	56.2	12.4	31.4
1975	61.1	11.1	27.9
1976	61.6	16.1	22.7
1977	57.0	12.0	30.5
1978	60.2	10.6	29.2
1980	50.0	16.4	33.2
1982	51.5	13.7	34.4
1983	49.8	10.3	39.9
1984	41.4	8.8	49.8
1985	42.3	9.3	48.5
1986	37.9	15.1	47.0
1987	45.3	12.0	42.8
1988	42.6	6.6	50.9
1989	47.8	11.6	40.9
1990	43.7	9.5	46.4
1991	41.0	13.3	45.4
1993	53.1	11.3	35.6
1994	50.0	12.9	37.1
1996	45.4	16.2	38.2
1998	47.3	18.1	34.4
2000	46.3	16.4	37.5
2002	44.7	17.3	37.9
2004	43.1	16.4	40.5
2006	41.2	22.9	35.7

"Center-Right Nation" Watch - Hoover Institution Admits It's a Center-Left Nation

David Sirota — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 21:15:00 GMT

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.

Read the whole admission here. It's dead-on.

Midnight (De-)Regulation and the Myth of A 'Center Right Nation' -- Part 2: Hiding The Ball

Paul Rosenberg — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 19:06:37 GMT

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.

Back in early September, OMB Watch Executive Director Gary D. Bass wrote an illuminating commentary, "Bush's Last-Minute Rush to Dismantle Public Protections". In it, he explained how the Bush Administration had actually pretended that it wouldn't be pulling this sort of last-minute shenanigans:

In May, White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten issued a memo that set deadlines for agency regulations during the remaining months of the Bush administration. Bolten said he wanted to stop last-minute regulatory activity - commonly known as midnight regulations. To avoid this, except in "extraordinary circumstances," Bolten said agencies should propose regulations that they want to finalize no later than June 1 and that all final rules should be published by Nov. 1.

This is a joke, right?

Right:

Now that the June 1 deadline has come and gone, it appears there are a lot of "extraordinary circumstances" to be found. Recently, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) proposed a rule that could have far-reaching impacts on women and family planning decisions. The rule allows health care professionals at institutions that receive government money to opt out of providing abortion and sterilization if such services create a problem of conscience for the provider. HHS would require the institutions to certify they are complying with federal laws that allow health care workers to withhold services on the basis of religious or moral grounds. Violations could lead to loss of funding.
After first leaking a proposed rule that would have defined many contraceptives as abortion, HHS published a rule that leaves ambiguous the scope of services that might be curtailed.
The proposed rule was published on Aug. 26, long after the Bolten June 1 deadline, and the Bush administration is gaming the system to get the rule finalized. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) reviewed the rule before it was released, as it does with all major rules. But OMB reviewed the HHS rule with unusual stealth: the review was done in hours, the same day HHS published the rule, ensuring that it would not appear on OMB's website until after the fact. Additionally, the comment period on the proposal is only 30 days, which is short for major rules in general, but very short for highly complex and controversial rules such as this one.

This is hardly surprising to those of us who've been paying attention to how the Bush Administration operates these past 8 years. Too bad that excludes virtually everyone in the punditalkrazy. But it is a sort of timely reminder that they will never stop pulling this shit up to the very last minute they are able to-and even beyond, if they can block any efforts to undo the evil they've done.

Bass goes on to cite two more examples of regulations in the Department of Labor (DOL). About the second one, he writes:

Another DOL proposed rule, this one from MSHA, violates the Bolten memo and appears to be heading swiftly toward finalization. On Sept. 8, MSHA proposed to require mandatory substance abuse testing for miners. The requirement would apply to miners who perform "safety-sensitive job duties" and their supervisors. (MSHA defines safety-sensitive job duties as, "Any type of work activity where a momentary lapse of critical concentration could result in an accident, injury, or death.") Mine operators could test for drug and alcohol use both as a condition of employment and at any time during employment.
Why would MSHA focus on drug testing when recent mine disasters have shown that miners face unconscionably hazardous working conditions including lack of adequate communications systems and rescue equipment? As Ken Ward reports in the Charleston Gazette, "Coal industry officials have long sought an MSHA rule to require drug testing of miners." Like with the other rules, MSHA will only take public comment for 30 days, indicating Bush officials - like former coal industry executive and current MSHA chief Richard Stickler - are trying to bestow a generous parting gift to the coal industry before a new administration takes over.

This is the same Adminstration, mind you, that has studious ignored massive serial mine safety violations on the part of mine-owners., and okayed highly dangerous operations. Their head of mine safety was an old industry hand, who was so distrusted that even when the GOP controlled Congress, he had to be appointed during a Congressional recess, because he couldn't pass public scrutiny in this center-right nation. Back in August, 2007, AP reported in fair and balanced fashion ("Utah Mine Collapse Puts Safety Chief Under Fire"):

As hopes for a rescue dim at Utah's collapsed Crandall Canyon Mine, critics looking for someone to blame are focusing on the stern-faced director of the government agency that oversees coal mine safety.
Members of Congress, union officials and worker advocates were skeptical before the Aug. 6 accident that Richard Stickler was dedicated enough to worker safety.
The former mine executive faced so much opposition when he was appointed to head the Mine Safety and Health Administration, President Bush had to bypass critics and install him during a congressional recess last October.
Now all three groups are pointing to mistakes they say Stickler has made in handling attempts to rescue six trapped miners. The situation grew more grim last week when three rescue workers were killed in a subsequent cave-in.
Stickler's career at the agency will be defined by the Crandall Canyon accident and his next big decision - whether to call off the rescue effort and entomb the six missing miners forever.
Critics think any investigation of the accident will ultimately ask why the agency signed off in June on a mining plan for the area where the collapse occurred.
Experts have said the terrain is risky for the type of mining the operators wanted to do. Concerns about the roof's stability after a cave-in damaged another part of the mine in March made the agency's approval even more questionable, they say.
Stickler probably never saw the Crandall Canyon mining plan, critics say.
A mine workers union and others say Stickler has failed to change the climate at the agency from one of "really coddling mine operators," said Phil Smith, a spokesman for the United Mine Workers of America, which opposed Stickler's appointment and is calling for an independent investigation of the accident.
"What we're not seeing is a change in culture," Smith said. "I think the Crandall Canyon incident reflects that."

As for the mine owner, did he take any sort of responsibility?

Not exactly:

At the mine on Wednesday, co-owner Robert Murray said he would forever seal the mine and not touch any part of it for mining.
Murray, chief executive of the Murray Energy Corp., made the comments after outrage swept this mourning community when he suggested on Tuesday that he might rename the mine, Crandall Canyon, and resume operations in another area.
Murray said Wednesday that those initial words had been misinterpreted. Instead, he said, he may mine coal reserves in different mountains several miles from the Crandall Canyon site, at an unspecified date.
"I have no plans to ever reopen the mine," said Murray, in a telephone interview. "I never had any intention of going back in physically. It's done. It's closed."
"Crandall Canyon is finished in name, and all possible entryways into Crandall Canyon are done, too," he said. "It's alive, and it's an evil mountain."

That's right: It's not his fault! The evil mountain did it!

And they want to test miners for doing drugs! That's how they'll keep them safe.

Another example Bass cites amounts to a de facto gutting of the Endangered Species Act:

In another "extraordinary circumstance," on Aug. 15, the Department of Interior proposed a change in the way government agencies comply with the Endangered Species Act. The proposal would allow officials to approve development projects that could impact endangered species without consulting federal wildlife and habitat scientists.
Interior's proposal missed the Bolten memo's deadline by two-and-a-half months. OMB spent only three days reviewing the proposed rule, whereas the average review time this year for Interior rules is 64 days. Like all the others, the comment period will only be 30 days.

Out in the real world of this so-called "center-right nation," an awful lot of environmentalists at the local level are Republicans. Thanks to this new regulation, they won't be sticking their noses into government business as their local wildlands are bulldozed over. There are just too many conservative socialists running around out there. Can't let them take over everything!

Ah, and then there's the never-ending expansion of spying on everyone:

The hits just keep on coming. On July 31, the Department of Justice proposed a rule - again, after the June 1 deadline - that may result in additional domestic spying by allowing state and local law enforcement agencies to gather and include terrorism-related information in their federally funded criminal intelligence data systems, and to share such information with federal officials. The data would be held in the information systems for ten years instead of the current five years. Civil liberties experts noted that the rule, the first revision of police intelligence gathering since 1993, would result in local and state law enforcement conducting intelligence gathering for the federal government. In short, the proposal makes it easier for state and local police to spy on Americans. Like the others, this proposed rule only allows one month to comment.

I just can't understand why they have to be so secretive about all this? Haven't they heard? America is a center-right nation. We're all cool with anything they want to do. That's why we gave the Republicans such a resounding victory at the polls two weeks ago. Where have they been?

Midnight De-Regulation and the Myth of A 'Center Right Nation' -- Part 1: The Environment

Paul Rosenberg — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 18:34:10 GMT

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.

List continues on the flip...
More Bush Administration environmental "midnight regulations":

Department of the Interior -- The rule would alter implementation of the Endangered Species Act by allowing federal land-use managers to approve projects like infrastructure creation, minerals extraction, or logging without consulting federal habitat managers and biological health experts responsible for species protection. Currently, consultation is required.
Environmental Protection Agency -- The rule would change EPA's New Source Review program, which requires new facilities or renovating facilities to install better pollution control technology, by subjecting fewer facilities to its requirements.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Department of Commerce) -- The rule would transfer the responsibility for examining the environmental impacts of federal ocean management decisions from federal employees to advisory groups that represent regional fishing interests. The rule would also make it more difficult for the public to participate in the environmental assessment process required by the National Environmental Policy Act.
Environmental Protection Agency -- The rule would reclassify thousands of tons of hazardous waste as fuel, allowing it to be burned instead of sensitively disposed of. The emissions generated by burning the waste would be more toxic than emissions from burning fossil fuels. The chemical industry is advocating for more categories of waste to be reclassified.
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.
Bureau of Land Management (Interior) -- Capitalizing on a recent decision by Congress to let the ban on oil shale development to expire, the BLM rule would open 2 million acres of western land to leasing. Environmentalists say oil shale development, which involves extracting liquid oil from solid rock by heating it, increases greenhouse

The point here is blindingly simple: environmental protection is quite popular with the American people, but it is vehemently opposed by the powers that be atop the Republican hierarchy, particularly top funders of movement conservative front groups and the like. And so these massively unpopular sorts of anti-environmental actions must be taken in the most obscure, unaccountable, low-profile manner possible.

Yet, despite the fact that such policies can't remotely stand the light of day, we are told, in effect, that this is precisely what the American people want, because, after all "this is a center-right nation".

Environmental regulations aren't the only ones involved, of course. But support for environmental protections is so broad and so strong that it serves as perfect exemplar of just how wrong-headed the "center-right nation" narrative really is.

For more information, the original of this list (with more info on the items, and more items in other areas) can be found on OMB Watch's RegWatch blog here.

"Center-Right Nation" Watch - Eugene Robinson Joins the Pushback

David Sirota — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson becomes the latest in the elite media to start echoing the blogosphere's pushback against conservatives' "center-right nation" meme.

"Center-Right Nation" Watch - Bozell: Obama Ran As a "Liberal, Left-Wing Conservative"

David Sirota — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 01:51:00 GMT

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."

You really cannot make this stuff up.

"Center-Right Nation" Watch - Feingold's War Opposition Should Disqualify Him From a Chairmanship

David Sirota — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

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.

Yes, indeed - that is some powerful stupid.

"Center-Right Nation" Watch - Being Liberal Is Not Smart Edition

David Sirota — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 01:41:48 GMT

From the Washington Post today:

"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.

(h/t dday)

The Mandate Manipulation Machine Enters Stage Right

David Sirota — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:15:00 GMT

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.

Funny, how three days shifts everything.
On Monday most of these people were telling us this was "the most important election of our lifetime" because of the policy changes it promised. By Thursday, with the election over, power safely in the hands of Democrats, and plum government jobs being doled out to old Washington hands, the very same people - as if relieved to finally be able to let out a taboo secret - are saying this "most important election of our lifetime" may actually mean no significant policy changes at all.

Of course, the motives of different Mandate Manipulators vary. For example, Reid and Dean (and Obama aides) may sympathize with progressive goals, but they may also fear taking the blame for failing to deliver legislative progress from a public that now expects such progress from Democrats. By contrast, the DLC and Third Way despise the very goals of economic progressivism. And, of course, movement conservatives like Bob Novak want to crush any progressive legislation in its infancy, willing to claim with a straight face that while Bush's narrow 2004 election victory was a mandate, Obama's huge 2008 election victory is not.

Regardless of the myriad impulses, the sail-trimmers, bet-hedgers, and expectation-downplayers are already doing their damndest to demoralize the progressive movement, whether accidentally or deliberately, with a "more things change, more things stay the same" meme. But there are three important things for us all to remember.

First, the behavior is entirely - almost boringly - predictable. There is an entire industry in Washington, D.C. that exists solely to distort, squelch and pulverize mandates in the immediate aftermath of biennial national elections. For example, the Democratic Leadership Council and Third Way - both corporate front groups - exist exclusively to promote their agenda in the three-month window between a presidential election and an inauguration. Their mission is making sure no matter what happens in a given election, it is portrayed in the elite media as a validation that America resoundingly voted for continued corporatism, militarism and ideological conservatism. Not surprisingly, there is also an entire elite media apparatus more than happy to parrot the propaganda, primarily because the elite media is predisposed to repeat conservative talking points (especially on economic issues), regardless of the actual data.

Second, the feverish intensity and speed of 2008's mandate manipulation is, in a way, a good sign. Usually, there is a pause of a week or so for the Establishment noise machine to ramp up, write its talking points, and then begin its misinformation campaign. But this year, the distortion actually began preemptively, with the Punditburo taking to newspaper columns and the airwaves to insist that regardless of what happened in the election that hadn't even taken place, America remains more conservative than it has ever been (see my ongoing "Center-Right Nation Watch" series).

Once Tuesday delivered a huge progressive landslide, that pre-election hysteria has turned into a full-on panic - suggesting that even the most arrogant let-them-eat-cakers inside the Beltway are genuinely afraid that there has been a paradigm shift in American politics - one that threatens the current Establishment's very relevance and authority. And so the Mandate Manipulation Unit has gone into a reactive overdrive with everyone around Obama (and aspiring for a White House job) delivering a "nothing to see here, folks!" message. Yes, after "the most important election of our lifetime" we should expect to see nothing exponentially different from our government come 2009.

Finally, and most importantly, the progressive movement that worked closely with Obama now has its own capacity to counter the mandate manipulators and crystallize the real message of the 2008 campaign. Indeed, this is a new and critical development. From the Campaign for America's Future, to labor unions, to the Progressive States Network, to Public Citizen, to blogs, to high-profile congressional spokespeople, we have our own collective microphone and infrastructure.

And we are already seeing the benefits of that capacity. Just today, for example, OpenLeft has launched a petition drive asking Obama to respect the election mandate by refusing to appoint free-market fundamentalist Larry Summers as Treasury Secretary. Likewise, check out this statement from Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown's (D) - the most powerful Democrat from the most politically important state in the country:

Sen. Sherrod Brown, a liberal Ohio Democrat, argued that Obama should strike quickly to seize the economic downturn as a way to enact bold liberal programs in the mold of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. "He won because we wanted to take the country in a very different direction from George Bush, and clearly George Bush represented the end of the conservative era," Brown said. "The voters said we want ... a progressive alternative."

That's right, we no longer have to sit on the sidelines and watch the professional ruling class in Washington claim this election as their own property - we actually get to have a say, even after the election is over, even when D.C. wants to put us in our place by telling us to simply shut up and go away.

Now, you might be wondering - why is the post-election debate over a mandate important? Simply put, because it sets the parameters of the political debate for the next four years. How the mandate is depicted - and distorted - impacts what the next president will have the political capital to do, and not do. Political capital, after all, is really an intangible matter of perception. If the president is perceived to have an electoral mandate for far-reaching change, then he will have a lot of capital to reach for that change (especially if we successfully pressure him). But if the president is perceived to have an electoral mandate merely for small-bore incrementalism (as the Mandate Manipulators always insist), then he will be under enormous pressure to reach only for incremental reform.

This is why conservatives were so adamant about claiming a mandate in 1980 and in 2004 - they understood its critical connection to policy. This is also why Establishment voices are so adamant about downplaying a mandate today - because the empirical data from the election suggests that 2008 provided an overwhelmingly anti-Establishment mandate on everything from financial regulation, to trade, to health care to the Iraq War. If that mandate is permitted to be recognized, acknowledged and appreciated in the public debate, it might force significant policy change on those issues.

That's the kind of change we all voted for this week - but as Obama himself said in his victory speech, "This victory alone is not the change we seek - it is only the chance for us to make that change." Helping Obama turn that chance into something more is now our charge in the months ahead.

Beyond the "Center-Right Nation" Meme--Bringing Two Outsider Forces Together

Paul Rosenberg — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 22:00:00 GMT

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.
I'm planning a more extensive treatment for this weekend, but the essential argument is relatively simple: The American people never moved to the right along with the political elites after Reagan's election in 1980. However, the Democrats failed to craft an effective new counter-narrative to consolidate their allegiance. At long last, that may have begun to change.

In the interim, however, neither party created an effective political program. Although Reagan was an inspirational orator for the intellectually disengaged, Reaganism never worked in any fundamental sense. Its economic promises never paid off, as the economy basically stagnated, while income inequality skyrocketed. Its foreign policy looked to be more successful, as the Soviet Union crumbled, and the Cold War ended, but that really owed more to the Soviet Union's senescence, and the continual redefinition of what Reagan's foreign policy was. Worse, it had nothing lasting to say about what should come next, but instead inadvertently planted the seeds that would eventually yield 9/11.

Thus, we had two failed wings of insider politics as the Reagan era came to a close, but it took the inevitable post-Reagan recession that dogged Bush I to make that dual failure particularly salient, and propel Ross Perot's 1992 presidential bid. Clinton, too, ran against this dual failure, but he failed to assimilate Perot's support, when he chose to embrace the Reaganite free trade path.

The Republicans, in turn, made a counter-play, embodied in the reformist agenda of the "Contract With America," but this was much more PR than substance, as the power gained by Congressional Republicans went increasingly toward social conservative agendas that held little interest for Perotista reformers. 9/11 deferred the day of reckoning, but it has finally come, ushered in by Obama's compelling--if somewhat ambiguous--call to reform.

The "center-right nation" narrative seeks to frame Obama--and the reform ideology--in opposition to ideological liberalism. But if there's anything the reform ideology stands opposed to, it's the very people peddling this narrative, and their dogmatic insistence that nothing fundamental should be changed.

The reality is that ideological liberalism and the reform ideology lie on two different axes. They are independent of one another, not opposed. This means they can be harmonized to make each other stronger, or they can be played off against each other to make each other weaker. But what cannot happen--at least in the current political setting--is that the reform ideology becomes stronger while the liberal ideology becomes weaker--much less that the reform ideology becomes stronger because the liberal ideology becomes weaker.

This scenario is impossible for a very simple reason: both ideologies share a common enemy--the very people who are pushing the "center-right nation" narrative, and telling us that no matter what, nothing fundamental can be changed. We need to have a very healthy, robust dialogue about how to harmonize the two ideologies. Doing this will make it increasingly manifest that they combine to represent a substantial super-majority of the American people. But to have that sort of dialogue, we must first tell the peddlers of the "center-right nation" narrative to kindly STFU.

I'm not so arrogant as to say what the Obama victory means. Obama himself has already said that it means an opportunity for fundamental change. I can only say that he's right: it means we have a chance. A chance at what is up to us collectively. No one has the answer.

"Center-Right Nation" Watch - Ruth Marcus Edition

David Sirota — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 14:29:08 GMT

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.

Say what?

"Center-Right Nation" - Election Day Watch

David Sirota — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:06:20 GMT

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:

The not-so-good news is that expectations are sky-high and that some of his supporters will press him to throw caution to the wind and emulate FDR's first 100 days, or LBJ's feverish legislative pace in 1965 and 1966. This is a temptation Obama would do well to resist. Despite today's crisis environment, there are economic and political limits to government activism that the president-elect will ignore at his peril...
The more ambitious the agenda, the more likely it is to fall victim to entrenched political realities, and failing to strike a workable balance between ambition and political feasibility would invite a repetition of the 1994 mid-term disaster that left Bill Clinton on the defensive for the remainder of his presidency.

Galston joins Doug Schoen and Mark Penn in forwarding two pernicious memes. The first is the Dirty Fucking Hippie meme, cloaked in the declaration that "some of his supporters will press him to throw caution to the win." That is, those who support Obama are crazy leftists who a President Obama, if he is Serious, must ignore.

The second meme is the "Bill Clinton Initially Failed Because He Tried to Govern Like a Marxist" story. This is used as the basis to claim that history proves Obama must tack to the hard right if he wins.

Of course, the real story is what a Republican corporate lobbyist told the Politico yesterday:

He recalled the arrival of President Bill Clinton in 1993. Rather than going after business, Clinton presented a moderate image and reached out to the corporate community.
Clinton's goal was to "co-opt a portion of the business community" through his positions on free trade and other issues, said this lobbyist. And the strategy worked pretty effectively with global corporations.

That's what actually happened - Clinton did exactly what Galston and his fellow conservatives want Obama to do: He tacked to the corporate right with things like NAFTA, demoralized his base, and then his party got crushed in the mid-term elections, crippling the rest of his presidency.

The same thing could happen to a President Obama if he follows that path. But as we've seen over the last two weeks, there is building pressure on him to follow that path. Indeed, just this morning on Fox News, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) said the most important thing for a President Obama to do is appease McCain voters.

Fingers crossed for the election tonight - but even more work starts tomorrow, should we win.

The Orwellian "Center": Rewriting 1992-1994

Paul Rosenberg — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 23:15:00 GMT

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.

This almost identical to the line taken by Mark Penn cited by David earlier:

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 short version is that Clinton was a centrist, and his worst mistakes came from leaning too far to the right--most notably, pushing NAFTA. The assault weapons ban, in contrast, was hugely popular, (for example, 80-18 in a 6/94 ABC News Poll, and 79-19 five years later in 5/99), while the problem with his health care plan was his attempt to be too accomodating to insider interests, and failed to mobilize the considerable grassroots distress with the system at the time. Far from being an extreme measure, "Don't Ask/Don't Tell" was a political comprise after Clinton got ambushed over his initial executive order. Finally, Clinton's turning point in his political comeback came from Gingrich's extremist attempt to shut down the government. Rather than crumpling, Clinton stood up to Gingrich, and his political fortunes improved from there on in. Clinton was a master at mixing progressive and moderately conservative narratives, but his actions that turned the tide were clearly progressive--and popular.

Let's move on to the issue of connecting that time with our own. When Clinton was elected in 1992, the dominant narrative at the time was that Clinton had shifted the party to the center--and this was going to be its salvation, nmaking the party "relevant" again. This narrative was already suspect, given that Clinton had run an economic populist campaign ("Putting People First", "It's the economy, stupid", etc.) that was far more openly ideological than either Walter (I'm going to raise your taxes) Mondale or Michael ("It's about competence, not ideology") Dukakis--but when it came to governing, rather than campaigning, that narrative was on firmer ground.

Indeed, the biggest issue in terms of the larger political dynamic at the time was NAFTA--which Clinton passed in sharp opposition to his party's base and Congressional majority. In Three's a Crowd: The Dynamic of Third Parties, Ross Perot, and Republican Resurgence, Ronald B. Rapoport and Walter J. Stone argue persuasively Clinton's embrace of NAFTA, and the humiliating treatment of Ross Perot that accompanied it, opened the way for Republicans to court the Perot vote and ride it to victory in the Congressional elections of 1994. The NAFTA vote was most instructive on this point:

In the House, Dems opposed NAFTA, 156-102, while Republicans supported it, 132-43. In the Senate, Democrats opposed NAFTA narrowly, 28-27, while Republicans embraced it, 34-10. These votes were in late November, 1993. They signalled the exact opposite of what the current Orwellian narrative claims about Clinton's first term.

Gingrich responded by crafting the "Contract with America" specifically with Perot voters in mind. It had none of the religious right agenda in it. Although most Americans never heard of the "Contract"--and most who had heard of it knew little about it--it served a useful function in terms of message discipline, and impacting Versailles narratives. Yet, little of it got passed into law, and congressional Republicans moved decisively toward the social conservative direction--something most Perot voters weren't particularly keen on.

What happened, in essence, was that Clinton's ill-advised move to the corporate center created a huge populist opening for the GOP to accomplish a political realignment, by adopting Perot's reformist agenda--only they didn't really believe in it. The reformist swing vote is still out there--as Chris noted back in his post-2004 election analysis, and Obama has tapped into as part of the story of how he won the nomination--as I diaried in May--and is positioned to win it all tomorrow. This reformist vote is not particularly ideological in left/right terms, but it does have an inherent potential progressive affinity, as Chris argued back in 2004.

Just as Clinton made a fatal mistake, losing potential reformist support by championing NAFTA and betraying his economic populist roots, Obama could similarly create an opening for the Republicans--not by moving too far left, but by paying too much attention to the Versailles conventional wisdom, and trusting it, rather than his own distinctive progressive instincts--instincts that are different from Clinton's, but similar in their potential for connecting with folks that the Versailles punditalkcazy will never understand.

"Center-Right Nation" Watch - Mark Penn Edition

David Sirota — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 20:16:36 GMT

Mark Penn joins fellow corporate pollster Doug Schoen, Peggy Noonan, Charles Krauthammer and Jon Meacham as the latest member of the Punditburo to insist that no matter what happens on election day, America is a center-right nation, and therefore a President Obama must not govern as a progressive. Here's the excerpt from Penn's screed in the Financial Times:

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.

"Center-Right Nation" Watch - Doug Schoen Edition

David Sirota — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 18:45:00 GMT

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.
He says a Democratic victory on Tuesday will mean no mandate for Democratic policies, even while admitting an Obama election would be "a wholsale rejection" of conservatism. That's like saying the 1980 election was a rejection of liberalism, but not an embrace of conservatism - an assertion that no pollster would ever make without expecting to be laughed at. In our (unfortunately) binary politics, referendum elections like this year's by definition couple rejection of one party and ideology with the embrace of another party and ideology.

Schoen knows all this - and so his column is yet another preemptive effort to claim that a Democratic victory on Tuesday obviously - self-evidently! - means America is more conservative than ever. While he doesn't employ the exact phrase "center-right nation" as the rest of the Punditburo has, he's echoing the same message: Namely, that no matter how big a progressive victory may occur on election day, no matter how many polls show Americans are progressive on issues, a President Obama will face "the kind of reaction that Bill Clinton faced when he made the same misjudgment after the 1992 election victory."

Of course, Clinton did not make a judgment that America was progressive after his election, nor did he decide to "govern as if there was no Republican Party." Indeed, before he ever tackled health care, his first legislative initiative was joining with the Republican Party to pass NAFTA (and I'm not picking on Clinton here - I'm just stating the undebatable facts).

But Schoen's version of the Clinton storyline is considered the assumed truth today, after a 15 year effort by conservatives and "centrists" to create a progressive-rejecting narrative out of it. Should Obama win, that same narrative will be used by the right to deter an Obama administration from pursuing any transformative progressive policies. It's actually brilliant from a marketing standpoint - self-declared conservatives like Krauthammer and Meacham tell Republicans we still live in a "center-right nation," while so-called "centrists" (read: corporatists) like Schoen use historical revisionism about Clinton and cite the Innocent Bystander Fables of people like Schumer to deliver the same message to Democrats.

Come November 5, this propaganda is only going to get worse.