Politics
Out of context: Reply #4482
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- ukit0
http://www.tnr.com/politics/stor…
Even before the final results, showing a Democratic sweep, were in, Washington's pundits were declaring that nothing had really changed politically in the country. In a cover story labeled "America the Conservative," Newsweek editor Jon Meacham warned that, "[s]hould Obama win, he will have to govern a nation that is more instinctively conservative than it is liberal." Meacham's judgment was echoed by Peter Wehner, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. "America remains, in the main, a center-right nation," Wehner wrote in the Washington Post.
These guys--and the others who are counseling Barack Obama and the Democrats to "go slow"--couldn't be more wrong. They are looking at Obama's election through the prism of Jimmy Carter's win in 1976 and Bill Clinton's victory in 1992. Both Carter and Clinton did misjudge the mood of the country. They tried unsuccessfully to govern a country from the center-left that was moving to the right (in Carter's case) or that was only just beginning to move leftward (in Clinton's case), and were rebuked by the voters. But Obama is taking office under dramatically different circumstances. His election is the culmination of a Democratic realignment that began in the '90s, was held in abeyance by September 11, and had resumed in the 2006 election.
This realignment is predicated on a change in political demography and geography. Groups that had been disproportionately Republican have become disproportionately Democratic; and red states like Virginia have become blue. But underlying these changes has been a shift in the nation's "fundamentals"--in the structure of society and industry, and in the way Americans think of family, job, and government. The country is definitely no longer "America the conservative." And with the Republican Party and big business identified with a potentially disastrous downturn, it could become over the next four years "America the liberal." That's what makes this election fundamentally different from 1976 or 1992. Unlike Carter and Clinton, Obama will be taking office with the wind at his back rather than in his face.
- +100TheBlueOne
- Bull-f*cking shit, it's cyclical. Spewing liberal propaganda. Obama won because of the uninformed "new voters"********
- I love how angry you are today.DrBombay
- Not angry at all, but those comments are crazy.********
- you're angry.DrBombay
- Dude, you were angry for eight years. I called the Obama win, the jokes on you with the guy. Your taxes are********
- going to go waaaaaaaaay up~!********
- stop talking like yoda.DrBombay
- LOL, this place is amazing, you guys are pissed even when you win. Now that's a Democrat for you********
- Actually you're the one spewing JazX... it give me warm fuzzy feelingsrobotron3k
- Just like the rest of the Republicans, you're lost and you don't even know it yet. Send me a postcard from the wilderness.TheBlueOne
- wilderness.TheBlueOne
- Not at all, how does this election not follow the frequency/cycle?********
- If Obama wins in 2012, remains to be seen, you think that someone like Biden will win? *choke********
- in 2016?********