If universal health-insurance and a massive green renovation in infrastructure is the new center-right, I will take it.

Maybe they mean European center-right?

Perpetual hymn of an open book.

Like an iced
dream my mind
disappears in
the heart of
an innocent
nurse, when a
clamour appears
and a delicate
blackbird discovers
a glimmer.

Francesco Sinibaldi

The GOP message machine is spinning hard to stop progress:

Stop healthcare.
Stop good paying jobs.
Stop the regulation needed on Wall St.
Stop the rip-off of the taxpayer that the economic crisis has become - privatize profit, socialize loses).
Stop equal rights for all.

The GOP is anti-American.

Opps, muffed that fourth bullet. Let's get it right:

Stop an economic recovery for the people and create a massive money giveaway for the rich.

There we go...

I've posted evidence and support of what the right-wing means when they say America is center-right. And they're right, relative to political philosophy: only 1 in 5 Americans self-identifies as liberal. Close to 2 in 5 self-identifies as conservative.

And I've told you this more than once.

And I've told you that having this food fight over these terms is a mistake.

But you can't let it go, because way down deep you'd rather lay claim to a title than solve real problems.

Which is a considerable disappointment to me.

I'll condense my previous arguments thus:

What is this "center" that our nation is to the right OF?

Isn't the nation the center?

Previously, we used to say that the nation has "moved to the right" (or to the left.)

To the left or right of what?
Of where it was before moving.

This term "center-right" is currently ill-defined and I suspect it will remain so for fear of admitting that the center can move in more than one direction. Occasionally curious voters might be led to wonder whether such movement might be preferable. Choice is dangerous to those that prefer their word go unquestioned, lacking justification for their world views.

Wonder who came up with the "center-right" meme? If they repeat "center-right" nation over and over again, then sooner or later people will believe it. Before long, they will identify with it and rally behind the talking point, even if they don't quite understand what "center-right" means. The label will serve to attract Republican-leaning voters and organize them to oppose Obama's "too far left" agenda. It sets the foundation for opposition to Obama's healthcare, economic, environmental, energy, and foreign policies policies. To the GOP, it's all about the game.

On average, we are center right or even worse. The pendulum has swung this time slightly left of center. It used to go as far left as FDR or JFK and LBJ. No more. Not even close. In many ways Eisenhower was to the left of Democrats today. Think we'd build an interstate highway system now?
Not on your life. And what did Eisenhower say about the military/industrial complex, about how every battleship that's built is a theft from humankind. Nobody would dare talk like that today.

We have completely abandoned government as a solution to the nation's problems. Obama's health care plan is privatized from the start. He hasn't even suggested a single payer option. His energy plan is very modest, and is intended to tweak the private sector, not to involve the government in a massive program to shift our energy sources from fossil fuels to renewables.

The proof will come in the next four years. If Obama is successful, maybe the Democrats will come out of the closet and stop being ashamed of the "liberal" label. But that's an awfully big if.

Center left would mean that over a long period of time, a generation at least, we are somewhat progressive on average. We have been anything but that over the last thirty years. Look at what's happened to the distribution of wealth in this country. Nobody dares, even today, to call for big government solutions. No one dares to challenge the compensation of CEOs, which has risen from 20-30 times the average worker to as much as 500 times, not even when they run their companies into the ground. Show me one CEO who has paid a price. It's outrageous what these people get paid, and nobody dares question the system that produces such obscene results.

Yes, the pendulum has swung, finally. But not to the far left, as you might expect after Bush's eight years. Only a bit over center, and when it swings back, which it will, the average will wind up right of center.

One little point, but indicative of a lot of other problems in the journalistic universe:

David Sirota makes the following statement: "The media has exponentially increased the amount of times it claims that this country is a "center-right nation . . . "

My question: What was the exponent in this exponential increase? Or to be blunt about it: The term "exponential" has specific meaning that is known to millions of people and has been learned by millions more, and it has nothing to do with the increase measured by Sirota. This is an example of "innumeracy" as described by Poulos in his book about mathematical illiteracy. When journalists toss this term around in an attempt to sound knowing, they reveal their lack of knowledge of basic math, and suggest that they are ignorant of just about all science and technology.

Long ago, I published a column in American-Reporter that started, "My savings account is growing exponentially, but it is also growing very slowly." The point is that the word exponential, a critically important term in many disciplines, simply means that things grow or decrease in proportion to time, or in proportion to whatever other scale they are being measured on. The human population of Europe or of the western hemisphere probably grew exponentially for several thousand years, which might mean that it went up by a few tens of thousands of people during that time. It all depends on the rate of growth and the generation time. You can watch an exponentially growing colony of cells grow to a mass so small it could hardly be measured even after a month, or you can imagine a single bacterium replicating to a number high enough to fill all the oceans in the world in less time were it given the nutrients.

Why is this of any interest? It shows that the profession of journalism is, on the average, so full of technically ignorant people that it hasn't managed to communicate what terrible usage this use of "exponential" actually is. I suspect that Kevin would have been a little more careful about using this quote.

Editors should be taught how this word is misused, and insist that reporters who wish to use mathematical terminology get it right or at least ask somebody to review their terminology.

The claim that the USA is a "center-right" country always struck me at odd.

The claim is completely dependent on where one defines "center" as. And this seems to be a completely arbitrary decision.

The basic rality here is that the GOP is in denial.

The idea that each individual in the country didn't want some sort of security net FOR HIMSELF OR HERSELF has always been wrong. It was only the poor whites - mainly in the South - that the GOP pandered to with their Southern Strategy since Nixon's day that didn't want a security net, and then it wasn't about THEIR security net - it was having one for the blacks. As long as the GOP pandered in code, saying in effect, "Those [n-word people] are lazy and no-good, and are taking away YOUR security!" the country APPEARED to be center-right, because that large segment was voting against their OWN best interests (which always befuddled the hell out of rational people across the country).

The only change now is that SOME of those people aren't responding to that encoded message anymore. People WANT health care! And once they have it, they will like having it. See the story above, "THE RIGHT, HEALTHCARE, AND POLITICAL SURVIVAL" bu Hilzoy.

We all DO want good roads, good bridges, good water treatment, good sewage, snow removal, good police departments, good national and state parks, good fire protection, and a good Social Security System. We ALL want a government big enough to protect us - not only from Al Qaeda, but also against pollution and bad prescription drugs, and from salmonella, AND from being totally bullied by corporations. Lefty, lefty, lefty - all leftist ideas.

So what if some of us want guns and some don't? Some f us want to watch shoot-em-up movies, too, while some want chick flicks. Big deal, people!

But guns or not, we all want to have a sane and secure life, for ourselves and our children and grandchildren. There are very FEW who want all that only for the rich - and guess who those are?

But, guess what? If the Trickle Down Theory had actually WORKED, and thus provided great numbers of us with better jobs and a house on the lake and an ATV and an RV, why, we ALL would love the GOP and Friedmanism and Reaganism. But the truth of the matter is this: The Trickle Down Theory is exactly what Dumb Ass Dubya's father called it 20 years ago: Voodoo Economics.

So, what we have is a population that has found out Free Markets, left to themselves, are a BAD freaking idea. We may have found it out too late, but it IS where we are right now.

And having learned that lesson, WHY would any of us (except the pundits in the pay of the corporate bosses and under their control) continue to support the conservative point of view? Guns? Abortion? Okay. But economically? Hell freaking NO.

This all started (the move away from conservative ideas) in the spring of 2005, when Bush tried to cash in his "political capital" and floated the "let's privatize Social Security" idea. One by one, people began to realize that not only was their father's pension gone, and their father's earning power gone, but now they wanted to threaten the last vestige of security, by letting the gamblers on Wall Street get their clutches on Social Security. Yes, one by one, people started peeling off, sliding to the other end of the bench, and out the door.

Individual people began to think that the conservatives didn't have Joe Main Street's best interests at heart. And when Katrina hit 6 months later, the trickle became a flood. And no amount of Reaganisms was going to stem the tide. Bush and his handlers f___ed it all up. His handlers thought the permanent Republican majority was a done deal after the 2004 election, so they made their moves. They had the WH, the Congress, and soon to be the SCOTUS, and once they did, it was going to be Insanity, Incorporated. Joe Main Street was screwed.

But they moved too soon. They told Bush, "Now is the time."

But it wasn't.

THANKS BE TO GOD AND ALLAH AND YAHWEH AND KRISHNA that they jumped the gun. Because one more GOP President and it WOULD have all been over.

The Republic was saved by an eyelash. Obama's victory is as much the FAILURE of conservatism and the free market as anything else. But what killed the free market idea wasn't that it was a bad idea. It just couldn't get past the greed inherent in it.

Greed has driven the country toward the left, toward more collective, more protective, more INCLUSIVE thinking. That we elected a black man President is proof of that.

But the pundits have to continue parroting their talking points. Rest assured, a "center-right America" is on the top of those points these days. And it is the last gasp of their amazingly wrong-headed voodoo economics.

It is only fitting and proper that the son of the man who coined that phrase should preside (as in "President") over the demise of the Trickle Down Theory in favor of "Let's all pull together, since we are all in the same boat."

If recognizing that we are in the same boat means we are a center-left country, then call me a southpaw.

Ohm and one more thing we all want: When we invest money in stocks or bonds that we have someone watching the hen house besides the foxes (and besides FOX).

And re: privatizing SSS:
(Gawd, can you imagine a Social Security System wherein the janitor in your building has to decide what stocks to move into? Where the short order cook has to know about residuals? Where the apple pickers need to know which stocks are moving up or down today? WTF?

What a system to rape, pillage, and plunder that would have been! The traders would sure as hell have gotten bigger yachts, that is all I have to say.

Sirota is indeed estimable. I'm going through his book "The Uprising" now, with the sense that we'll need it more after the election than we did before.

He missed one, though; the Center Right meme reared its head again this morning in no less a publication than the commie-socialist fellow traveller rag, The New York Times. A supposed news analysis, "Obama Tilts to Center, Inviting a Clash of Ideas" by David E. Sanger, had this in the second paragraph:

"Now, his reported selections for two of the major positions in his cabinet ...(Clinton and Geithner)... suggest that Mr. Obama is planning to govern from the center-right of his party, surrounding himself with pragmatists rather than ideologues."

Those pragmatists are everywhere, especially in the MSM. Keep it up, please, both of you, and thanks.

Yes, the country is definitely center-right if you re-define "center-right". So those on the right can comfortably shift their positions and remain right leaning. Sounds like a liberal plot. bwahahahaha!

Factual basis for claims is simply a nuisance.

Carol A. @ 3:45 PM has it exactly right; this is nothing more than an attempt to legitimize any future obstructionism by the Republican Party.
I used to think that the broadcast media was simply too large and varied to be controlled and manipulated to the advantage of one political party; but now, I'm not so sure. One thing is certain however, the continuing concentration of the media in fewer and fewer hands needs to be halted and reversed.
Is it possible that fears of possible media decentralization are really what is behind the right's, at present, ridiculous uproar over a new "Fairness Doctrine"? I can easily imagine the Republicans and their trumpets conflating any attempt to rein in the media monopolies with an attempt to re-introduce some sort of Fairness Doctrine. That it wouldn't be true, of course, doesn't matter.

Okay. So the mantra of right wing media finds its way to the popular press. Let's look at the cup as 51% plus full. This cocoon of disbelief that the right has constructed has the not inconsiderable benefit of destroying the GOP.

Remember what the original objective of the conservative movement was. It was not simply to get a specific agenda enacted, a list of policy matters passed. It intended to change the culture -- to literally change the public's mind -- by controlling the language and terms of debate. And it was wildly successful. Note the number of people who identify themselves as "conservative" even if they support all of the issues in the liberal agenda (social security, medicare, government support for student loans and education, a progressive tax system). Liberals were never all that concerned with the definition of conservativism, or The Right. But conservatives were obsessed about the word "liberalism." They understood that most people think in terms of labels and slogans, so if conservatives could make the word "liberal" radioactive they were halfway home. As Walter Lippmann said in his famous book Public Opinion: "People do not see first and then define. They define first and then see." Tell someone that an idea is "liberal" and they are less likely to support it -- even if they do.

Consider how Reagan and Bush I kept snickering about "The L Word." Or the number of time O'Reilly, Limbaugh and the rest of conservative talk radio hosts use liberalism and "The Far Left" interchangably. Conservative commentators are much more likely to deal with progressive ideas by simply labeling them as "liberal" under the assumption that they can then dismiss them out of hand without ever having to debate the idea on its merits.

Tons of time and money was spent by conservatives into making all of us shun the lable "liberal" so it's really important for them to defend their own brand by repeating again and again that this is a center right country -- even if it is not true.

The "center-right nation" is a case study in framing the debate. So long as we are discussing the orientation of the nation, rather than the immensity of the Democratic mandate, conservatives are clawing back their losses.

Take two undisputed facts:
1) Democratic challengers hold one or two policy positions that are more commonly associated with conservatives. (Think abortion or gun control.)
2) These same Democrats lead the gains into traditionally conservative territory following the Nov 4th election.

Conservatives know that media consumers are often more interested in an intriguing storyline than with substance. They also know that once conventional wisdom is formed, it is hard to dispel. The moment you try to blame "the Media" for reiterating conventional wisdom, you've effectively ceded the battle for the attention span of those consumers.

Progressives need to do a better job getting in front of the conservative message. Unfortunately, that means making a few myths of their own. The problem with that tactic, is that relying on myths at the expense of facts makes most democrats' skin crawl.

"The claim is completely dependent on where one defines 'center' as. And this seems to be a completely arbitrary decision."

I don't agree. Because we are talking about nations, then the "center" must be either the median or the average political orientation of all other nations.

And by that measure, the US is "center-right".

I'm finding the push-back against the conservative/media "center-right" meme at least as obnoxious as what it's combating. Yes, those who are promulgating this right now are doing so in an attempt to deny the mandate of an election which greatly favored liberals over conservatives. But it's simply true that the US is "center-right". It's also true that by US historical standards, it's far more liberal than it has been for decades.

If you say that a person is "tall", you're implicitly comparing him/her to other people. If you say that a nation is "leftist" or "rightist" or "centrist", then you're comparing it to other nations. If you compare the US to all other nations, it's probably centrist or center-right. Certainly when you compare the US to the group of large, advanced economies, then it's very much center-right.

Ironically, to some degree, by asserting that the US is now necessarily "center-left" because the US public supports generally liberal (by US historic standards) policies liberals are unwittingly buying into conservative rhetoric. All the supposed progressive things on the list that liberal pundits are claiming proves that the US is "center-left" are, at best, centrist in the context of all other nations. To say that the typical US citizen favors center-left policies is to validate the idea that what the rest of the world regards as centrist policies are, as the conservatives claim, leftist. It's marginalizing true leftism.

People arguing about this aren't using these terms properly. "Center-left" and "center-right" are just proxies for "the public generally supports the Democratic agenda" and "the public generally doesn't support the Democratic agenda". Well, the public does support the Democratic agenda, but that it's the Democratic agenda doesn't make that agenda "center-left". The Democratic agenda, in comparison to the agenda of political parties around the world, is centrist at best. And, you know, even by US historical standards current Democratic policy isn't that liberal. It only seems leftist because the Republican Party, which is by worldwide terms a very (but not ultra) conservative party, has dominated the political discourse in the US for almost thirty years.

I'd like to repeat my most important point: the only sensible way to evaluate whether a nation is center-right or center-left is to compare it to other nations. The reason that we liberals are inclined to make the claim that the US is now center-left is, first, because we recognize that the "center-right" meme is obstructionist; and, second, because conservatives have managed to brainwash us to a sufficient degree that we've unconsciously accepted their definition of the "center", to which the US is now undoubtedly leftwards. But their definition of the "center" has always been relatively far to the right. By any rational standard, the US has moved leftward to adopt a centrist or center-right position from something considerably further to the right.

Surely we can fight back against this attempt at manipulation without being dishonest ourselves and/or unwittingly accepting the conservative view of where the "center" is located.

People who insist Barak Obama will lead a center right nation sound like the wealthy Republican parents of a girl who just announced she is marrying a Peace Corps volunteer. The parents don't know what to make of their daughter's decision so they try to make it sound like she still shares their fundamental values and that this Peace Corps fascination will pass.

I agree with the previous post, that time will tell how much to the left the US center has shifted. The left's "revolution" in the sixties was more social than economic and it ended relatively quickly following the election of Ronald Reagan. It looks like Obama's policies -- of necessity -- represent a fundamental change in the relationship between government and business. The fact that Obama is considering investing in industry at all (energy, autos, health care, etc.) puts him left of center.

The success of this new relationship will determine how far to the left the US center moves. But the bottom line for Americans is that they simply want an economy that creates jobs, one that's fair and rewards initiative.

This statement of "center right" or "center left" has never made any sense to me. Isn't the definition of the majority position of the nation the center? It cannot be right or left of itself. It is more than just a clumsy way of saying that the majority agrees more or less with a "conservative" or "liberal" position -- it is a way to "fix" the view of the majority. The idea is to distract from widespread support of positions on individual issues of your opposition, hoping to scare them away from being enacted.

If I hear someone say that a majority of the public supports or opposes a given issue (ideally based on polling and related trends in voting), I think that might be a pretty smart person. If I hear someone say that the public is "center right" or "center left" as a blanket statement, I think that might be an idiot or a desperate partisan.

I don't know about the nation, but Obama is unquestionably center-right:

http://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2008

Saying he's "liberal" or "progressive" merely serves to make the real center look left wing, which is good only for the conservative movement.

I feel like Newsweek's cover story the week before the election, insisting in advance of the results that no matter what happens when voters actually express a preference, everyone should remember that it's still a "center-right" country.

This seems odder still given that the majority voted for a socialist who plans to redistribute everyone's wealth....That doesn't seem like something a center-right nation would do, doesn't it? Unless perhaps it a trick to put pressure on the GOP to become EVEN MORE conservative....

My head hurts.