"Oh, I see. Today, the Obama campaign emphasized the center-right qualities of the country, but a few days ago, the Obama campaign emphasized radical socialism."

Zing.

These are the 3 you chose as 'establishment types'?

Would you have expected ANY other answer from them?

as i said when i wrote this last night:

the whole thing is simply amazing! even though i was less nervous than most liberals were in the final weeks, it is still truly amazing to see it actually come to fruition, solidly, with what even fox news suggested was "a mandate." the people have spoken and elected a truly exceptional man, offspring of a Kenyan immigrant and a woman from Kansas. a self-made man, as most Democratic presidents are.

in the coming days you are going to here A TON about how america is a "center-right" nation. i'm not so sure about that. think of it this way- the democrat won the plurality of the popular vote in FOUR OF THE LAST FIVE presidential election. they also have nearly swept every competitive congressional race in the last TWO elections.

i don't know that it means the nation is a "center left" nation, but it does mean that the dominant political movement of my life is dead- Reaganism. trickle down economics and trusting big business to always do the right thing in a casino environment is over with. it has been thoroughly repudiated. government may not always be the solution, but it is not always the problem as many of the problems we are in could have been dealt with a lot earlier if the greenspans and norquists and delays and george w bush of this world lived on planet earth instead of some ayn rand fantasy world.

the only other positive big political event of my lifetime was the bringing down of the berlin wall. beyond that, though, what have we had to feel good about? impeaching the most popular president of the last half century (read the numbers), the horrific disputed election of 2000 that lead george bush who did not even win a plurality of the vote in the nation to rule as if he had received the kind of mandate president elect barack obama has indeed received. then the big bush disasters: 9/11, Iraq, Katrina, the financial meltdown.

this is truly a moment of great hope for this nation. the country is ready to turn the page on bush and reagan and chart a new 21st century path forward. america is ALREADY stronger than she was yesterday- on account of electing a man that the world can respect and that increases their respect for us. thomas jefferson and the founding fathers understood that it is important to be respected as a nation and nothing wipes away the hideous stain of george walker bush's failures better than electing a minority, a Democrat, a man of exceptional intellect and understanding and a man who truly believes that working together, all americans can create a better future. a community organizer, Constituional law professor, and the first president from illinois since abraham lincoln (whose 200th b-day is coming up soon- how fitting).

for the first time in my adult life, i am REALLY PROUD of my country. we face enormous challenges but have undoubtedly elected the right man at the right time to lead us. out of great crisis grows great opportunity, and a President Barack Hussein Obama will have the opportunity to positively effect the future of this nation like no man since franklin delano roosevelt.

a quick shoutout to john mccain who, although running the sleaziest and lease substantive campaign i've ever seen and disqualifying himself to the american people with his unconscionable choice of sarah palin for vice president and his erratic gimmickry surrounding campaigning and the financial crisis (and please, "joe the plumber," GO AWAY), he nonetheless gave a very good concession speech (over many loud booos from his crowd) and did reach out his hand to the next president and has begun to try to heal the many festering wounds he has attempted to profit on and expose. its hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube when you've convinced a good quarter to a third of the country that the president elect is basically the embodiment of all that is evil and wrong, but mr. mccain did take one step forward in trying to ease the hatred oozing from his side.

will the republican party reform itself and serve as a useful opposition to the democrats? so far the answer seems to be no: if sarah palin is the next leader of the gop that would be great for democrats and bad for democracy. already the cable news channels are trying to spin this away from what it clearly is- a thorough beatdown of republican orthodoxy. yet many in that movement still insist it was that they "went away from their principles." its simply another variation on the idea that conservatism never fails it is only failed- by apostates like george bush and tom delay who abandoned their principles.

no no no no no. sorry, but george bush was the most conservative (and worst) president since hoover. he is far MORE conservative than the nation. he had a free reign under extraordinary circumstances (9/11) to do whatever he wanted and had entire control of the federal government. and now everyone sees the mess that was left behind.

when republicans decide to tone down the culture wars, move into the 21st century by embracing well-accepted science, understand that the middle class needs more than a few crumbs for the ELITES to continue to prosper, stops trying to undo the new deal which the voters have reaffirmed over and over again, and embraces a diverse, multi-cultural world, they will not deserve the respect or votes of the american people.

G-d bless America. may obama live to serve out his terms(s) in good health. may he help bridge the divides that have made this a red-blue nation up until now. may he continue to understand and expand on the reality that it is not every man for himself- we are all in this together.

dr. king's dream is a big step closer to realization.

USA! USA! USA

We are a center right country. More right than center. Our Democrats are conservative by world standards. When we have universal health care and no death penalty, come talk to me.

The conservatives and Republicans I know truly do believe that they are the "silent majority" in this country. We could be at a point where there are abortion clinics on every corner, gay marriage is rampant, children are beaten for mentioned "God" or "Jesus" in the public schools, health care coverage for everyone, and an "open door" policy at the Mexican border, and STILL, the conservatives and Republicans would think it all was some fluke and that the (vast) majority of Americans were opposed to all of it.

They almost make poking with a sharp pointy stick far too easy.

Why should we believe anything Karl Rove says?

There was no "middle" in the Bush administration. If the country is truly center-right, why did Bush govern like a radical, fiscal spendthrift while simultaneously pushing the social policies and court appointees of an ultra-conservative?

These GOP pundits are just playing the old political loser's endgame of trying to fence the winner in so that, when the health care proposals, etc. begin to be floated they can start up the chorus of "radical socialist" and start laying the groundwork for the next GOP campaign strategy.

Piper, get your own blog.

And the nice thing about being a wingnut is that your worldview is non-falsifiable.

It all depends on where you put the left/right scale. By European standards we are center right ( or even hard right ). Obama seems to be pretty centrist to me, it is only because the US has a major libertarian streak, that sees centrist as hard left, and center right, as dangerously trending towards socialism, which skews our perceptions of this. But, of course for those whose goal was to maintain rule by far right government, it appeared to be a good tactic to paint the opposition as far left Molotov cocktail throwing commies.

Who could have expected the single most liberal senator ever (according to Goopers) could run a center-right campaign...

A lot of this is wishful thinking, but to be fair, Obama ran to McCain's right on taxes, emphasizing that most Americans would pay less in taxes under his plan than McCain's.

or maybe even center right in a lot of places.

Well, duh, Brokaw -- it is center right in a lot of places. It's also center left in a lot of places. It's also very left in some and very right in others. Way to say something utterly meaningless, dipshit.

But Haik (1:42) is absolutely right: by the standards of our fellow industrial democracies, we are center right even in our most liberal moments.

It's like watching Fonzi try to say he was wrong....comedy. The incurious right wing punditry is is still living in a bubble...

Give Karl Rove a bowler hat and bow tie...and a sidekick named Stan.

Well, to keep this in perspective, let me ask a question.

What nationally-recognized person is *too* conservative for the GOP?

I will give you David Duke, and the Reverend Fred Phelps (of Topeka's "G-d Hates Fags" Westboro Baptist Church fame).

Anybody to the left of, say, Rahm Immanuel is a left-wing fringe extremist whose opinions should be shunned. But even the most xenophobic, fascist, bigoted Americans are considered the GOP's "base."

This leaves a lot of pundits view of politics skewed -- when there's no limit to how far right you can go, how can you define the center?

So I'd like your votes here (sorry to Hijack the comment thread) -- who is too conservative for the GOP?

The floor is yours...

Steve Benen wrote: "I pondered yesterday what it would take for some establishment types to give up on this 'center-right' nonsense."

Actually, by the political standards of pretty much every other industrialized democracy on the planet, the US Democratic Party is a "center-right" party. They represent a "kinder and gentler" corporate rule, as opposed to the Republicans who represent the naked greed and corruption of the most ruthless and rapacious elements of America's corporate oligarchy.

The vapid "on-air personalities" and vacuous "pundits" of the corporate-owned, so-called "mainstream" media are nothing but sycophantic, fawning, obsequious courtiers to America's Ultra-Rich Ruling Class, Inc. and their job -- for which they are very, very, very well paid -- is to propagandize American public in furtherance of the corporate aristocracy's class warfare against everyone else.

Of course they are not going to "give up" on "this center-right nonsense". If anything, they will now redouble their propaganda to ensure that the interests and agenda of the corporate ruling class remain at the "center" of all aspects of public policy.

Gore/Feingold,

You don't like, it don't read it. No one's bringing me down today.

Oddly enough the right wing pundits are, to a certain extent, correct. I don't know that I would characterize the country as center "right", but centrist for certain. Obama was certainly the most centrist candidate in the Democratic primaries (and after McCain got through redefining himself in the Republican primaries the most centrist candidate in the general election) and our last Democratic President, Clinton, is not lovingly referred to as the great triangulator for nothing.

The dirty little secret that these pundits are still hiding from the American electorate is that the Democrats have been the centrist party for over a generation now, since the election of Jimmy Carter at least. The right wing has succeeded in gaming the system and clouding the debate by characterizing the Democratic party of Carter, Clinton and, now, Obama as leftist and dangerously out of the mainstream, when it is the Republican party of Bush, Rove, Grover (bipartisanship is date rape) Norquist, Gingrich, and Delay that is extremist and dangerously out of the mainstream.

The extreme right wing of the Republican party managed to hoodwink the American populace for the last twelve years, first convincing them that Clinton was a dangerous radical who needed to be reined in by Congress, then Gore and Kerry. They tried again with Obama, but they didn't succeed this time. They've been trying to redefine the center for decades and seemed to almost have succeeded, but we seem to be back on track now.

They are right that most Americans inhabit the center of the political spectrum, but they are lying when they present themselves as being in that mainstream...that wide part of the river belongs to the Democrats and always has.

The word "truthiness" comes to mind.

Also, I've been working all day but have pundits been talking about Palin running in 2012? I know there has already been some talk of that. Those on the right who really think that is a good idea are, to be frank, idiots.

I, as a liberal, fully support a Palin 2012 run. There is enough footage of her making an idiot of herself to last through any campaign she may run in her lifetime. Palin 2012!!!

I don't think we really know what kind of country we are right now. I'm a moderate Dem and I have been so committed to defeating Bushism that anyone with a D next to their name was going to get my vote.

I want a government that works to solve the problems that people face, but I'm aware of the dangers of overreach. I think people are thirsting for an effective government that takes on hard issues and solves problems rather than kicking the can down the road. Effectiveness means more than partisan victories to me.

If people get health care, clean air, equal opportunity, a rational foreign policy and stable jobs, I'm not concerned with doctrinal purity. The wonderful thing about this election is that we can solve the problems with or without the input of Republicans--they'll need to decide if they will be a part of the solution or gripe in the wilderness for years.

I have a great trust in Obama's temprament and his political instincts.

I also know that if you claim your opponent is a quasi-Marxist during the election, you don't really have much standing to protest if the opponent then behaves in that manner. As far as I'm concerned, Obama has plenty of room on the left and in the center to solve this nation's problems.

I'm trying to think of an issue the majority of us are center right on... Medicare? Social Security? The environment? Progressive taxation? Healthcare? Reproductive choice? The Iraq War? Regulation? Consumer protection? Workers' rights? Um, nope, nothing yet...

Maybe they mean most of us are right-handed.

While it may be a good thing for Bay B. to observe the right of center thing, but she herself is off the charts in rightwingland, so her observation doesn't mean much. In fact, I bet she and her ilk can't even define what a "rightcenter" American is let alone aver what the common American is all about, especially since she is not one! -Kevo

The 'center-right' is completely outside the bounds of the Republican Party.
Even by current American definitions.

See, this is why they lost. They have no connection to, or understanding of the average American. Take a look at the makeup of the two audiences last night. White America could well be over. The diversity of Obama's crowd was as inspiring as Obama was. As in: very.

This whole 'center-right' thing is just a right-wing talking point. It doesn't matter if it's false, they will keep repeating it, hoping to play on a reader's ignorance.

The key here whenever one hears it, remind the person of the events of yesterday night -> namely the US election results.

Obviously, the political center of the US is dead center, not center-left or center-right, if you're standard of comparison is the US.

If you're going to make some other comparison, then you have to specify what you're comparing the US to. The US 50 years ago? The average European country? Western European? The average country in the world?

It's like asking if the average American is tall. The first thing you have to ask is: Compared to what?

Obama would be wise not to give the people who voted for him too much, or there could be blowback.

Geez I would love for Palin to run in 2012. Wouldn't that just put the final nail in the GOP coffin? But it just ain't gonna happen. The people vying for control of the GOP are, for the most part, vile, venal and vapid, but they aren't dumb. Palin will be used as a major fund raiser the way that Quayle was during the eight year Clinton interregnum. But when Quayle started making noises about running in 1999, after wisely passing on 1996, he was quickly shot down by the big boys. I'm sure he was, politely, told that it wasn't his time. I also imagine that he now stumbles around mumbling something something about, "I coulda been a contenda." So will it be for Palin. She is a huge draw for the religious wingnut crowd and she will be used as fund raising machine. But the only people who believe that Palin could be elected President are people who sit 1000+ member megachurches and give all their disposable income to richly dressed television preachers. And they'll believe almost anything...as long as it isn't evolution.

I think Tom Brokaw wants very much for us to remember that there are some very important center-right people who pay his salary and therefore must be sucked up to.

As others have said, the right-wing-morons need to decide whether a) they were lying about Obama being "the most liberal senator" or b) the country is profoundly liberal, since they rejected the center-right candidate, and gave "the most liberal senator" a huge mandate.

However to quibble over the average, we seem to have a divided country. Just look at the regional breakdown of the electoral map. So it is center-right in the red areas, but not in the blue. Mixing it all together to get an average is the typical counterproductive urge to find a simple and single descriptive average.

The center of American politics is to the right of the electorate.

We are a center right country. More right than center. Our Democrats are conservative by world standards. When we have universal health care and no death penalty, come talk to me. Posted by: Haik Bedrosian

Agreed.

Over the last eight years, the Rethugs tooks us beyond the right and clear into the ditch. Obama's election, because we have veered so off-course, merely brings us back to the center. He has yet to reveal himself as "radical."

That being said, while the country has been steered far to the right politically for such a pluralistic polyglot society, we are not socially conservative. While something like 70% of American's claim to believe in god, only about 40% attend religious services of any kind on a weekly basis. I imagine that on any given Sunday, more people attend sporting events or watch them on television than attend church. And look at what's popular on television, in the theaters, or on the Internet(s). Are these the diversions of a conservative and godly nation? Hardly.

As Thomas Franks demonstrated so admirably in What's The Matter With Kansas? the conservatives, who own the media, have successfully sold the idea since the late 1990s that the big 'ol nasty Dems hate the common American. After a while, you lose patience trying to convince a certain very unsophisticated portion of that population that governing this nation and conducting positive foreign relations do not boil down to guns, gays, god and abortion. Someone bravely(?) admitted in another thread that he/she did not vote for Obama because of his stance on abortion. With all the problems facing all of us, not just the 20-odd% who are against abortion in all circumstances, we've got a lot of work to do before people holding such narrow and unsophisticated views are marginalized to the point of political insignificance.

As I wrote a couple days ago, if Obama has a successful first term and is re-elected with an even larger majority and when we put another Dem in the White House in 2016, then we'll know that the tide has turned.

It's pretty much a truism in DC that Americans are much more conservative than they vote.

There are about 3 zip codes near Arlington VA filed with people who think the world revolves around them. When they say America is center-right, what they are saying is their friends are center-right. The truth is the pundit/media class ought to get off their high priced couches and spend some time outside of DC.

A few things come to mind:

* As has been noted by others, the US political spectrum is such that what passes for a liberal here would be a conservative elsewhere. In terms of internal comparisons, though, Obama is anything but center-right; he is, pretty much by definition, a moderate liberal.

* I would describe the US as being more cautious than conservative. We seem uncomfortable with major change, which is why major changes usually take place in the context of major crises.

-Z

It seems strange to describe the nation as center-right. If we are right of center then where is the center? Are we describing ourselves relative to Europe? In that case, I think it is okay to say we are center-right, but I wonder why conservatives would want to define themselves relative to European politics. Shouldn't America be the center and Europe be center-left?

It all depends on what your definition of "right" is. Among political scientists America is technically a center/right country compared with other Western democracies for the simple reason that both Democrats and Republicans believe in capitalism. With apologies to John McCain, we have no socialists in the US. In Europe they have the real thing and they laugh uproareously at folks like Tom DeLay who think that support for progressive taxation is evidence of Marxism. "We knew Karl Marx," say Europeans, "Karl Marx was our friend, and you, Mr. Obama are no Karl Marx."

KP,
The answer is simple - split the American electorate straight downt he middle, 50/50. Wherever that line happens to be, the majority of the American electorate is to the right of that.

Add Juan Williams to the list of goofs signing on to the "center-right" baloney. He went on a soliloquy on Fox News last night about how great it was to see an African American president, but couldnt get through it without the ridiculous claim that it's a center-right country.

The first time I remember this phrase starting to become popular was when George Will said it a few months ago on This Week. I found it odd that he just said it with no substantiation nor any argument from his fellow pundits.

Utter nonsense.

(I appreciate what others are saying in regard to comparing the US to Europe, etc, but my understanding is that the comparison is to the US throughout history.)

Self-identification from exit poll data yesterday:

34 percent conservative, 44 percent moderate, 22 percent liberal

That's a center-right country.

> That's hardly a reason, though, for anyone to
> take their opinion seriously.

Given that you are proven factually incorrect by the simplest of data, why should anyone take you
seriously?

The whole concept of center right is kind of foolish.

A country is always "centered" isn't it? What is this center we speak of if not the sentiments of its people?

If the country is center-right, that implies the government is to the left of the country (adhering to what USED TO BE the center) and the country will correct the problem by moving the government to the right to match the country and re-center it.

To claim perpetual center-right status on the nation is to propose some possibilities, a few of which are surreal.

1) The government will be perpetually moved to the right and the country will become more conservative until we end up with fascism. (Arguably a possibility before 2006, by what we saw.)

2) The government is never changed to be more conservative in order to match the country and the representatives we elect don't appreciatively change in ideology regardless of the country's sentiment. This suggests elections are a waste of time and makes one ask why pundits seem to care so much about them.

3) Elections DO move governments towards the sentiment of our country and Obama and his coattails are more conservative than their predecessors. This is a surprising assessment.

4) The right center country elects left leaning representatives which results in a more conservative government. Perhaps out of spite the conservatives will somehow force the lefties to adopt their even more conservative suggestions and maybe the lefties cave in trying to curry favor with the electorate they're told is "center right"? (We've seen behavior that fits this description especially fresh off 9/11: See "Patriot Act".

On the other hand, perhaps it's the premise that may be flawed.

For fear of their heads exploding, many conservatives will be incapable of exploring this last possibility.

I really like the framing that in 4 of the last 5 presidential elections, Democratic candidates have won the popular vote. I haven't seen it put that way before, and I think it's a very simple and effective push-back to the center-right myth.

Of course, the other way of saying the same thing is that the Republicans have only won the popular vote once since 1992.

Center, left, right, up, down, it may not matter. Please, hate radio already is ramping up divisive racial and economic fright. Maybe some pleasant exchanges will happen initially but after Obama is in the Presidential driver, decider seat; opening up the books to see the real devastation, reality is going to be clear, Bush and Company will be identified as the defacto standard of corruption in this new millennium.

Bush and Company will say one thing but in the background do the opposite. Your brains have to be a box of rocks if you believe other wise; they have no intention to co-operate. Obama should make a declaration that any or all shredding of documents from this point forward will be considered as corruption cover up.

The Neo-Con Republicans will stay the course until one of those stakes is driven through the center of the Neo-Con Republican collective, killing it forever. You should have heard Man/Cow on WLS ABC radio. Just explicit down right hate and bias. Limbaugh the same, Miller the same, Savage will probably eat his poodle. Here is my point, and I am witness for the last decades these networks worked in political bias and hate related subjects 24X7, knowingly and deliberately causing duress and confusing the electorate to keep power.

If anything the American Broadcasting is complicit with this problem America is in along with the first line Journalist and station managers and corporate leadership. They are all a collective of the sick society America had to endure for the last eight years. With a lot of laughter while writing this CNBC the money station said “Now Obama needs to go across to the Treasury department and count the money there, and likely find out there isn’t any.�

Then MSNBC Andrea Mitchell wife of former chairman of the Jekyll Island group that created the Federal Reserve is going to talk about money? Ladies and Gentlemen here we have the wife a decades long money point man Allen Greenspan, who did screw our economy for decades, now, Andrea is going to talk money? That is funny too funny to absolutely insane. Actually Mitchell and Greenspan should be in orange suits hand cuffed answering to a Senate committee investigation begging for a light sentence in corrupting America with Bush and Company.

Who is going to be the Attorney General? Because there is a whole lot going down. Also who is George going to pardon? This should be something. And here is the thing people, if Obama gives them a pass, these Neo-Con Republicans will strike back after the Democrats like the angles of hell, which they are.

I hope Biden is right and Obama has a spine of steel, he needs to be strong these people never give up.

I believe we're center right, and that the scale has shifted dramatically to the right since Reagan. We still don't have universal health insurance, and Obama's plan still doesn't achieve that goal. Gay marriage has even been rejected in California. Democrats, and Obama in particular, are very timid about suggesting a greater role for government. This was not a sweeping victory for liberal policies, but a repudiation of Bush's right wing extremism and the disastrous results over the past eight years.
Even so, Obama's victory wasn't crushing, and the Democrats fell short of their goals in the Senate and House.

McCain ran a terrible campaign, with no focus, no vision for America at all, and he picked an incompetent for vice president, and yet he lost by only six to seven points, and had actually pulled ahead for a short period. Who knows what would have happened if Wall Street hadn't melted down when it did? There is no doubt that was the turning point in this election.

Imagine if the Democrats had performed like the Republicans over the past eight years. They would have been slaughtered in the election.

I was moved, as any real human being had to be, by the huge euphoric demonstrations last night, but what were they celebrating? A return to the great liberal policies of FDR and Lyndon Johnson? Hardly. I think it was part relief that this long national nightmare has finally ended, and part pride that we'd finally elected an African American to be our president.

I'm not hearing any voices demanding that we complete Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society."

Of course, if yesterday's "Radical Socialism" is today's "center right", perhaps we're on the right path?

"Barack Obama had the highest vote percentage of any Democratic presidential candidate in 40 years."

Isn't it misleading to say this? After all, there was no major third party candidate in this election. Bill Clinton would almost certainly have gotten a majority of the vote in 1992 and 1996 if it wasn't for Ross Perot (although G.W.Bush's supporters often claim that Perot was responsible for Clinton's 1992 election, voter surveys showed that the Perot voters would have split about evenly between Clinton and Bush that year).

I now fully understand has an unyielding grip on the political narrative.

In light of the resounding message the electorate has delivered to government over the course of two elections, the Buchanans, Roves, and Brokaws spout their disillusionment and the left gets is undies in a bunch.

It's like we take pride in being ignorant (to the fact the we need not listen to them). What are the democrats saying? What are progressive priorities? These are the conversations the blogs should be having.

The only thing that gives this idea any credibility is that the Democratic Party is certainly to the right of where they once were.

Would not a definition of terms be helpful? For example, could being 'center-right' mean nothing more than placing a non-negotiable value on personal responsibility? Taking a broader view, can anyone anymore really speak meaningfully of privileging the private sector and market-based solutions over the public sector and state-managed solutions? Don't public and private require and depend on each other? As we have seen, both in recent history and long-established practice, they are much entwined and intermingled, not mutually exclusive and opposite.

Polls clearly show majority support for liberal positions on a number of major issues, including universal healthcare. If this liberalism has not adequately been reflected in our politics, this might be due to undue special interest influence, despair and non-voting, or perhaps unfair electoral advantages. White, rural America may indeed be 'center-right.' In fact, I would be curious to know if there is a known demographic tipping point, a population count or density beyond which a community is no longer reliably part of the Republican base.

The future of politics is not ideological.

The politics of the 21st century will increasingly revolve around the struggle of human societies to survive the global ecological catastrophe that is now virtually inevitable as a result of anthropogenic global warming, ocean acidification, depletion of fresh water supplies, degradation of arable lands, deforestation, mass extinctions, and our myriad other assaults on the Earth's biosphere.

The accelerating ecological collapse will interact synergistically with the accelerating depletion of abundant, cheap fossil fuels to threaten the viability of human civilization itself.

The solution to this existential threat to human civilization is a rapid transition from an energy economy based on mining and burning increasingly scarce supplies of costly, toxic fuels to a new post-carbon energy economy based on harvesting an endless, abundant, ubiquitous supply of free, clean wind and solar energy.

This is a much more far-reaching change than most people realize: equivalent in importance to the invention of agriculture or the first Industrial Revolution.

It is not a "liberal" vs. "conservative" issue. It is about a fundamental, pervasive change in the basic ways that the human species "makes a living" on this planet, and offers the promise of a sustainable, technologically advanced human civilization that may endure for tens to hundreds of thousands of years, or longer, as an integral part of a rich, diverse, resilient living Earth.

If we fail to make this transition within the next few decades (at most), then human civilization and perhaps the human species itself is doomed to extinction.

The fake, phony, trumped-up, corporate-sponsored pseudo-ideology that is called "conservatism" in the USA today has exactly nothing to offer to the struggle to succeed in the transition to the free-energy, New Industrial Revolution of the 21st Century. It is irrelevant and obsolete except as a refuge for weak-minded, ignorant, gullible fools.

Intelligence and education trump spin, half-truths, ignorance and lies in the long run. (But only for a while.)

We are center-right - case in point, Prop. 8 failed in California, supposedly a liberal state. Also, the white population is still center-right - Obama got 43% of the white vote, which is the most for a Democrat since Carter, I think, but still not a majority. It's changing, but we're still center-right.

BTW, Obama got 54% of the white youth vote.. I'd imagine the numbers are the same for Hispanic & Asian.. a sign that the next generation will move the country center-left.

We may have "center right" leadership but the country is definitely NOT center right. Apparently Steve Benen has a short memory as he himself posted sometime last year an article that showed the the nation polling as primarily progressive liberal on all the main issues.

There is a big difference between conservative "middle" and liberal "middle". Greenwald has demonstrated that one cannot be too far right...there is no such thing. But just disagreeing with the right is considered by these establishment media darlings to be extreme left.

The right has turned the word "leftist" to equate with terrorist...but think about it. What would be considered extreme left?? Would that be Marism or communism according to the right. Now ask yourself what would be the definition of extreme right?
So it's easy to see that the majority of the country is center left but every millionaire (which includes the media darlings mentioned in the article) and the lobbyist controlled leaders in congress all want us to believe the country is center right as a means of protecting and increasing their wealth and their hold on government leaders. The majority of the American people all poll progressive liberal or center left on the issues no matter how the right tries to demonize terms like liberal or leftist so people just don't like being referred to in those terms, but that is what they are...a liberal majority and center left(which is anything not far right in the wingnuts logic).

If Buckley was a far right conservative...what the hell does that make Bush/McCain/Palin???

Maybe I missed someone saying this earlier, but the one person I heard last night rejecting the "center-right" truism was Jeffrey Toobin.

If Buckley was a far right conservative...what the hell does that make Bush/McCain/Palin???
Posted by: joey

Buckley was a paleo-con and Cheney used to be one until his eight years in the private sector wilderness. Buckley was somewhat effete, cultured and literate. Things that never came even within atom bomb proximity to the Bush administration.

Bush has never laid out a discernible political philosophy. Developing one takes reflection and thought.

Palin's is nothing but a political opportunist. She'd get eaten alive outside of a primarily rural red state. And she, like Bush, isn't deep enough to have anything approaching a world view.

I hope we can look forward to a prolonged and acrimonious debate among media commentators over this important issue. It is at least as important as the contemplating the shape and size of the President's penis, and promises to be less damaging to the democratic process. The more newspapers sold on the back of this kind of fake controversy, the better.

Posted by: a

"Self-identification from exit poll data yesterday: "34 percent conservative, 44 percent moderate, 22 percent liberal....That's a center-right country.

>>>That's hardly a reason, though, for anyone to
take their opinion seriously.

Given that you are proven factually incorrect by the simplest of data, why should anyone take you
seriously?
=========
i saw a different exit poll at cbs earlier:

they asked "are obama's politics too liberal, too conservative or just right?" [kinda like the three bears].....

the response 42% said too liberal, 4% said too conservative [my choice] and 50% said just right....

sounds, by american standards, center-left to me....

advantage, steve.....

Jeff II*** Well said

I'm sorry but the US is most obviously center right relative to my country (Canada) and many, if not most, liberal democracies. From outside, it is patently obvious.

It's not the polling on issues that really matters - its the government you get. The government you've had for the past 30 years on many issues and even before that on some. 45 million unensured sure looks centre right to the world. You historical racial strife looks right-wing to us. As does "left-leaning" California voting YES on Prop 8. As does the persistence of capital punishment (US almost alone among developed nations). As does the fact that 39% taxation level could be called socialist and not be laughed at by 95% of the people. So, while I'm all for your progressive advancement, progressives really must accept the truth state of where your country is idealogically before you can effectively bring about change.