Matt Yglesias

Big Change

Here’s an interesting tidbit from Ruy Teixeira:

Poll after poll shows that the public has very positive feelings toward President Barack Obama and his plans for the country. And that includes the major new programs that he is proposing to bring change to a country that badly needs it. A stunning 71 percent of respondents in the most recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, for example, said that Obama has a mandate to “work for major new economic and social programs” rather than for small policy changes.

I have mixed feelings about reporting on these kind of findings. On the one hand, I don’t actually think that elected officials’ future has very much to do with the public’s opinion, such as it is, on this kind of question. I think, for example, that Obama’s re-election prospects will be based much more on whether or not living standards are increasing in 2012 than on whether or not the policies he pursued in 2009 matched up with at-the-time public opinion. So the politically smart thing to do is more-or-less ignore year-one opinion and just do things that you think will work out in the medium-term (of course the wise and moral thing to do is to also think about the long term) irregardless of the polls. But on the other hand, there’s lots of reason to believe that people’s beliefs about short-term public opinion do influence how they act so it’s important to spread the information around when it points in the right direction.

MSM to Obama: Beware the DFHs

The inevitable wanking begins, detected by Greg Sargent. It’s easy to get annoyed at whoever the sources were for the assertion that “Obama’s advisers . . . are ready for potential conflict with some Democratic constituencies or with some liberal Democrats in Congress, whose pent-up demand for action may clash with Obama’s priorities, and are prepared to say no” but you have to consider that once the reporter decides to frame the issue in that way, there’s no way your answer can be “no, we will cave to Democratic constituencies on anything they want.” It’s just a dumb way of framing the issue. Obama’s agenda isn’t a hidden secret — he’s been running on it for over a year. The question is how much of it can he or will he get done.

Times Change

The day before the election, Barack Obama was a socialist. The day after the election, he only won because he’s a centrist in line with the views of “center-right” America. Check out Amanda Terkel’s compilation:

The truth is that Obama ran to the progressive center left behind in the wake of conservatism’s catastrophic failures.

The Progressive Center

I think Nancy Pelosi does a good job here of reframing an annoying question about the need to govern from the center, arguing that the results of the 2006 and 2008 elections reaffirm that the center is progressive and that what matters, ultimately, is delivering the goods to help people with their problems:

To me, that’s the right thing to say. You can’t very well say you intend to govern from the left-wing fringe, but neither can you pre-emptively surrender on the progressive agenda.

Center-Right Nation

Sirota’s got the image:

Change is coming.

A Center-Left Country

Wow. As David Sirota has documented in print and Ali Frick in video form, pundits have been all over the place declaring, without evidence, that America is a “center-right nation” irrespective of election outcomes or opinion polling on issues.

But now it looks like Nina Easton is breaking with the dogma and going with common sense — the huge progressive wave means we’re a center-left country:

Of course it’ll only stay that way if the new administration and new congress are able to deliver the goods and start improving conditions.

After Victory

CAPAF’s memo “A Progressive Triumph”. Key quotes:

Thatís why candidates who embraced progressive solutions to these problems won. Obama ran on the most progressive platform of any presidential candidate in at least 15 years, including a promise of universal health care coverage, a dramatic transformation to a low-carbon economy, and a historic investment in education. Winning congressional candidates also embraced progressive policies. And polls showed that voters supported progressive solutions by wide margins.

In a few short months, leaders who support progressive ideals will take up the reins of government in Washington. We must rise to the occasion. We must move beyond the false choice of left versus center to embrace solutions as big as the challenges we face.

We need investments now to jumpstart our economy while laying the foundations for sustained economic growth. Restoring confidence in our economy will require a new direction for the economy, health care, clean energy, and education. And we must be willing to set priorities on government spending to restore budgetary responsibility in the coming years.

If we do these things, then we can translate yesterday’s victory at the polls into a victory for health care, clean energy, national security, and a stronger and larger middle class. The American people are ready. Now it’s time to deliver.

Indeed.

The Governing to Come

Paul Krugman writes:

A magnificent victory for Barack Obama. And bear in mind that the campaign, in its final stages, was really about different philosophies of governing. This wasn’t like the 2004 campaign, which was essentially fought over fake issues — Bush running on national security and social issues, then claiming that he had a mandate to privatize Social Security. In this election, Obama proudly stood up for progressive values and the superiority of progressive policies; John McCain, in return, denounced him as a socialist, a redistributor. And the American people rendered their verdict.

Now the work begins.

I think that’s right and it’s part of what I had in mind when I disputed the notion that John McCain’s campaign was somehow even more slimy than previous conservative efforts. The whole socialism, welfare, redistributionist, appeaser schtick certainly had its ugly side, but it did also have some real ideological content. A high-tone policy argument? No. But it wasn’t just a series of random insults directed at Barack Obama, it was a clear claim that Obama’s political views were too liberal whereas Obama argued that McCain offered a continuation of Bush’s conservatism. And the voters chose the liberal path.

Ezra Klein thinks back to late 2004 and early 2005:

I do remember that. I also remember how Democrats had to get religion if they ever wanted to be competitive again. I also remember how they had to appeal to the white heartland by nominating candidates more culturally recognizable to rural voters. Instead, they went in the opposite direction, running a candidate who was recognizable to the majority coalition Democrats hoped to have in 10 years. It seems to have worked out pretty well. It’s almost as if pundits don’t really know what they’re talking about.

Mostly I think it’s a reminder that events matter. By 2006, the consequences of conservative governance were clear to a majority of the public, who registered their displeasure at the polls. But the lame-duck conservative president and a filibuster-happy conservative minority in the Senate blocked efforts to take the country in a substantially new direction. Two years later, the consequences of conservative governance and of conservative obstruction were even worse. So the public has once again expressed its displeasure at the polls. The vehicle — an unlikely candidate with an uncanny talent for political oratory and organizing who didn’t fundamentally rethink the nature of the progressive agenda but did help sharpen public demand for change into an effective political movement for change.

That gets you . . . an opportunity. If progressive ideas, when put into practice, work as we think they will work — which is to say, if they work well — then we should expect to see that reflected in future election results. But if our ideas fail, as conservative ideas have failed, then victory can turn into defeat incredibly quickly, just as Karl Rove’s dreams of an enduring Republican majority have now melted away into nothing.

The Mandate

My colleagues and bosses will, of course, have more official things to say on this subject in the morning, but for now look at the issues tab from the Ohio exit polls, that I’ll take as a stand-in for the as-yet-unavailable national numbers:

People want Obama to implement his agenda, and his agenda is a progressive one — cutting carbon emissions, expanding access to health insurance and early childhood education, making the tax code more progressive, and spreading the wealth around building broad-based prosperity.

Frum’s Diagnosis

I’d say this diagnosis from David Frum is largely right:

It’s been evident for a long time, for example, that the average American worker did not benefit much from the Bush economy. Real wages stagnated between 2000 and 2006, while prices of essentials, such as food and fuel, rose. But the Republican party and the conservative movement asserted against the facts that everything was fine — that the Bush economy was the “greatest story never told” and that those who thought otherwise were “whiners.”

Had McCain attempted a more innovative and responsive economic policy, he would never have won the Republican nomination. By the time he got the nomination, he had so firmly locked himself to the Bush economic legacy that he had no space to pull off a Sarkozy. In the same way, had McCain chosen the running mate he wanted, he would have faced a walk-out from the floor of the St. Paul convention center.

I’m going to have more to say about this later, but that’s the basic shape of things. Meanwhile, if there’s a sense in which a spell in opposition will be “good for” Republicans, it’s this. In the opposition, you’re under no obligation to become apologists for the status quo — you can accept that problems are real problems and really problematic. Maybe some Republicans will come to embrace at least some progressive solutions to some of these problems. Or maybe they’ll try to devise new, distinctively conservative solutions to those problems. But it’ll be a situation where, at a minimum, acknowledging the existince of some of these problems would be the natural course of action.

Conversely, this is your progressive mandate right here. Not just for this policy or that, but for solutions and an end to the politics of denial.

Penn: Democrats Must Snatch Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

One happy result of the way the primaries came out is that Mark Penn is writing op-eds in The Financial Times rather than advising the next President of the United States:

The history of 1992 contains a clear warning that a centre-left coalition can fall apart quickly if the policies are seen as too far left. In 1993, Mr Clinton raised taxes on the wealthy, adopted the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in the military, proposed and lost universal healthcare and adopted gun safety measures, banning assault rifles.

To just repeat what I said in response to Doug Schoen’s similar argument, the real thing that the next administration needs to do is to avoid failure. In particular, the country clearly faces a serious economic challenge. What the next administration needs — and what the next congress needs — is policies that will work to restore prosperity. If the administration signs into law a recovery program that, whether popular or not at the time, delivers the goods in terms of restoring prosperity, then the president and the congress will be in good shape politically. By contrast, if they can’t do so, they’ll suffer. Similarly, a health reform plan that works will be rewarded. That’s the real issue here — not policies that “are seen as too far left” or policies that are seen as too far right, but policies that are seen as failing.

Beyond that, I think facile analogies to 1992 should be rejected. In 1992, the Democrats lost 9 seats in the House of Representatives, there was no change in the composition of the Senate, and Bill Clinton got 43 percent of the popular vote. It was an anti-establishment result, but also an equivocal one — reflecting the reality of over a decade of divided government. Now we’re looking toward an unambiguous public desire to put the fate of the nation in the hands of progressives. The challenge they face is to take responsibility for the governance of the nation find policies that are equal to the size of national challenges, not to shrink from that duty by shying away from any sign of potential controversy.

What to Fear

Starting Wednesday I think we can expect a boom market for op-eds and television commentary darkly warning that if Democrats take advantage of winning the election to implement the agenda they outlined during the campaign, they’ll be punished, punished, punished at the polls. And not just from Republicans, but from loathesome creatures like Bob Kerrey and now Doug Schoen:

If the Democrats govern as if there is no Republican Party, they are likely headed to the kind of reaction that Bill Clinton faced when he made the same misjudgment after the 1992 election victory, following a meeting in Little Rock, Ark., with then Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell and House Speaker Tom Foley.

This is a pretty odd view of what Clinton did in 1993-94 (NAFTA, anyone?) but that aside, I just think it’s pretty blinkered to act as if the electorate has a deep commitment (or lack of commitment) to bipartisanship or some finely nuanced conception of moderation. Rather, voters tend to re-elect incumbents when things seem to be working out okay whereas they tend to punish incumbents — and those closely associated with incumbents — when things seem to be going poorly. What Democrats need to do if they want to prosper in 2010 and 2012 is deliver the goods. In other words, return the economy to prosperity, avoid terrible foreign affairs calamities, etc.

People will disagree, naturally, about the best way to do that. But the point is to try to get it right. If ex post conditions in the country look bad in 2010, then it’s not going to matter at all whether or not Obama’s decisions in early 2009 were ex ante popular. Conversely, taking some ex ante unpopular votes in 2009 that pay off in terms of making things much better by election day will be rewarded. Spending your days pondering what, exactly, the election constitutes a mandate for isn’t going to get anyone anywhere.