And we were right, those of us in the “liberal blogosphere”. We’ve been right for years and the election of November 2008 proved that we are not alone. In spite of lame quacking from Rightwing punditry about a “center-right” country, and other right wing goofballs warning that Obama must resist a radical Democratic Congress, the election made it clear that a good percentage of the American populace is sick of Republican ideology, sick of their incompetence, and sick of watching the country being handed off piecemeal to corporate jackals.
The pundits continue to assert that Obama won as a liberal but must govern as a conservative. Or, in some cases, have actually claimed that Obama ran as a neo-Reaganite. Wah? What is most clear is that the overwhelming mandate of the Obama election has unhinged the Right. Or, rather, further unhinged them. Utterly lacking in any evidence to support their claims, they cite the passage of California’s Measure 8 as proof that the entire country is “really” more conservative than not.
But Frank Rich of the New York Times nails it.
For eight years, we’ve been told by those in power that we are small, bigoted and stupid — easily divided and easily frightened. This was the toxic catechism of Bush-Rove politics. It was the soiled banner picked up by the sad McCain campaign, and it was often abetted by an amen corner in the dominant news media. We heard this slander of America so often that we all started to believe it, liberals most certainly included. ….
So let’s be blunt. Almost every assumption about America that was taken as a given by our political culture on Tuesday morning was proved wrong by Tuesday night.
Continue reading →
