They're going to keep working that propaganda line as long as they can, to try to frame and corner Obama as much as they possibly can, lest the threat of a good example break out and Obama achieve workable centrist politics in this country. I really hope Obama is bolder, takes us left of center, but we'll see.

Either way, it's far, far too far to the "left" of the GOP, and they're going to howl as much as they're able to. But if Obama et al. are able to bring real improvement, prosperity, and results (e.g., "change") to the majority of Americans, then the Right can trumpet as much as they like about the US being a center-right nation, even as the country moves toward rejoining the rest of the First World, and banishing banana Republican politics once and for all.

And as for "center-right," they're just wrong about that -- most everyday Americans are to the left of their actual representatives in government, for pity's sake. The American public leads the politicians on issue after issue, and woe to the party that ignores this (Democrats, we're looking at you. Banish Reid-style politics of prostration, and be bold. Please).

A New York Times reader joked:

Okay, Obama might be a secret Muslim, socialist, left leaning, tax and spending, terrorist palling, liberal senator. But, at least he's not a Republican.

Bill Kristol wrote about this in today's Times. He cites as evidence that the country is still center-right that polls show 22% of the electorate identify as liberal, 34% as conservative and 44% as moderate. He doesn't give a lot of information about the poll. Regardless, using a poll like this to support the idea that the electorate is ideologically center-right is not an entirely illegitimate argument. The counter-example of party registration and number of elected officials seems like a better measure of the rightness or leftness of the electorate at any given moment.

But all of these ways of measuring the leftness or rightness of the electorate seem kind of besides the point, don't they. Labels take on importance in campaigns because there often is no better way to get voters to identify with a candidate than to give the candidate the same label as the voter. But labels are fickle and issues are complicated and I think we'd all be better served by not arguing about which direction we lean in from the center, and instead getting these issues aired out and acted on.;

Maybe those Liberal/Moderate/Conservative polls would have different results if the "Liberal" label was no longer treated like an insult.

If President Obama acts like he's afraid of being called a Liberal for the next 4 years then his election won't change much of anything.

Bonus points if Democrats (or anyone else) can convince the media stop bending over backwards to please the Republicans in order to avoid being called "Liberal".

Saying that this country is a 'Center-Right Country' is a fundamental contradiction if you are attempting to say that the majority of Americans are politically to the right of center. Unless you are looking at the political spectrum as something definitionally fix, like the visual spectrum of light, then the majority of the people are, by definition, the center. This leads me to the following deduction that either the speaker is:

A) Unaware of the logical contradiction, and showing their poor reasoning skills

-or-

B) Be leave in an absolute political scale

-or-

C) Be leave that they have 'knowledge' of the political stand of those people who did not vote and therefor did not state a position.

I prefer door 'A' myself. I consider the the whole statement rhetorical and of the order "I let you win."

The other two doors have at lest one thing in common, there is no room for debate. You can talk all you want and no facts will ever move them from their position. I'd rather go beat on a wall, it will have some effect on the wall, given time.

Punctuated by brief periods of Liberal backlash. Check your history.

Oh, we HEAR more from the loud mouthed activists who dominate national politics, talking head TV and radio shows, printed media and the like -- but Americans are quite obviously MUCH more concerned with what works, what doesn't work, and what's necessary.

Perfect example -- public attitudes regarding abortion, as measured for decades by opinion polls. Does it ever really waver from the obvious conclusion that Americans don't "like" abortion, but they feel it is and should remain a private matter? That it should be, as Bill Clinton famously put it, "safe, legal and rare"? No, it doesn't.

Just as with abortion, the American public has a good sense of where the balance should be, and will usually find that balancing point -- even if it takes a few years of wild swings one way or the other, over-shooting and correcting back in the proper direction.

I know so many people who have impossible and compounding levels of student loan debt, many for degrees they never used. I think the banks should be required to take a hit on some of this stuff. It is absurd to give banks zero -risk loans on things like fine arts degrees. The fact is that banks and the schools they are in cahoots with, push people to get degrees or education that they may not even need (take a look at the banner ads on Yahoo or the subway and bus ads in NYC). This is a perpetual tit for the SL industry. The reality is that there is probably far too much education ("schooloing" is a better term) going on than there needs to be. Adding some risk into the "money side" of this equation would help restore some balance and would also be humane.

Matt

and I forget the OP who showed it here on salon a few weeks ago (sorry!)

but ...

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/

Kansas is the geographical center of the US. Not the ideological center. Thank goodness.