The Liberal Mandate
Published November 6th, 2008I positively bristle when people try to characterize the US as a center-right country. I was offended by conservatives who called George W. Bush’s 2004 win (by 1% in the popular vote, 3.5M votes, and a one-state 286-252 electoral victory) a conservative mandate. Don’t remember that? Let’s get a quick taste of what was said:
Q: Bob Novak, is 51 percent of the vote really a mandate?
NOVAK: Of course it is. It’s a 3.5 million vote margin. But the people who are saying that it isn’t a mandate are the same people who were predicting that John Kerry would win. … So the people who say there’s not a mandate want the president, now that he’s won, to say, Oh, we’re going to accept the liberalism that the — that the voters rejected. But Mark, this is a conservative country, and it showed it on last Tuesday.
Well well well. It’s 4 years later. Two years after the “mandate” the US handed Congress back to the Democrats. And two years after that, they gave the presidency to a Democrat and strengthened the Democrat balance of power in congress. Barack Obama, President-Elect of the United States, won with 53% of the vote. He trounced McCain in the electoral college - the final tally likely to be 364-174. Obama won by over 7.5M votes. A Democratic president, a victory in all ways far larger than either of George W. Bush’s victories. More seats in Congress than the Republicans ever had during W’s terms. If W had a mandate - then this is a wholesale rejection of everything the Republicans stand for, right? I mean, it’s not even close! What might Bob Novak say now?!
The first Democratic Electoral College landslide in decades did not result in a tight race for control of Congress.
When Franklin D. Roosevelt won his second term for president in 1936, the defeated Republican candidate, Gov. Alf Landon of Kansas, won only two states, Maine and Vermont, and Democrats controlled both houses of Congress by wide margins.
But Obama’s win was nothing like that. He may have opened the door to enactment of the long-deferred liberal agenda, but he neither received a broad mandate from the public nor the needed large congressional majorities.
Oh. Well….what the hell? See, this is why I have no respect for these talking heads. Let’s just take a brief historical look at this “conservative, center-right” country and what it has done. More people have voted for a Democratic President in every election starting in 1992 except in 2004. That’s more people voting Democrat in 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2008. There was a slight, 1% deviation in 2004. The Republicans controlled Congress from 1994 to 2006, but never with the number of seats the Democrats now hold. Where is the evidence for a center-right country? If anything, it’s center-left. But no conservative will ever admit to this. It’s too unpalatable for them to realize that they are a minority in the big picture, dinosaurs struggling to hold on.
Conservatives in this country have always spoken loudly and tried to hold back the floodwaters of a progressive country. They have fought tooth and nail against civil rights for 50 years. And every time they lose (African-American rights, segregation, abortion rights) they continue to rail against “evil” until no one listens anymore - and then the move on (gay marriage). But they are going to lose. THEY ALWAYS LOSE in this. Social forces are consipiring - and will continue to conspire - against them.
What is my point here? It may not be what you think. I do not believe that this election is a liberal mandate. I think it is a complete rebuke of the current Republican party - which is unfortunate for McCain, but he betrayed all that he previously stood for. I believe that most Americans, after having seen what George W. Bush has done to this country over the past 8 years, trust the Democrats to do a better job representing the rights of everyone. They have given the Democrats the keys, for the next 2-4 years, to the entire government. While it is not quite unstoppable, it is absolutely formidable. I truly hope that the Democrats realize this - that they must work with the Republicans where possible - to properly govern with this much power. But I certainly hope that on many issues they will enact laws that I believe will better this nation and protect the citizens in spite of Republican efforts otherwise. Additionally, Obama will be nominating Supreme Court judges if there are (and I’m betting there will be) any vacancies in the next 4 years.
This is a lot of power. I hope conservatives are not scared by this, but I hope they understand how liberals felt between 2000 and 2006. They’re going to find out what it means to be in the minority - an even smaller minority than the left faced in those 6 years. I hope they can look back at recent history and understand why this happened and why their time in power was so tenuous - it is because this country is NOT center-right. It is centrist. And that is a good thing. But it is important for the conservatives to realize this, that a centrist country wants progress on many different fronts to make a better America, that there are millions who agree with the Democrats. There are millions who agree with the Republicans as well - but when things go wrong - it is the Democrats who the country turns to for fixing. That has been true for almost all of the 20th and 21st Centuries. Because the Republicans, when they win by the slimmest of margins - govern as if they are the only party around.
I sincerely hope the Democrats do not do that. The vindictive part of me wishes they would - but I know that would be just as damaging. I hope they prove my belief that they are better, more fair, more thoughtful leaders.
For what it’s worth, I answered “disappointed” rather than “scared” for my polling group when they asked how I’d react to an election of Obama. It’s going to take a little longer than I think they were referring for Democrats and the Obama administration to give ruining this country their best shot.
People voted their pocketbooks and Obama was given his mandate because of economics. One reason that Obama was elected, according to the polls, was economics. If the timing had been off you would have still had to bite your tongue, as you apparently have been doing for the past two terms. How long would you have to be biting your tongue for what you want to say not to be true?
Disappointed is an acceptable reaction to your party/ideology’s loss. But frightened - that takes much more.
Every time people “vote their pocketbooks” - a Democrat wins. Why is that? Why, given that the Republicans always claim to have the better economic policies, are the Democrats the ones that usually get the economy moving? Why do the Democrats so often benefit from poor economies?
You assume, had the economy been better, that McCain would have won. I don’t necessarily believe that - not with Palin as his pick, not with the way he ran the campaign. If he runs more like he did in 2000, with a strong economic-minded VP, then I think he wins. But given how he played it - I doubt he would have won.
You can’t act as if the economic meltdown happened in a vacuum. In 2000 the R’s claimed they would have the majority forever. It lasted less than one term. They claimed they had all the solutions, they had full control of the government - and things fell apart all around them anyway. I had to bite my tongue because it was necessary to see if they were right, if they really did have the answers and that the country really was shifting definitively right of center.
That, clearly, is not what happened. So lets see what the Dems do with the keys now.