Why Americans think Obama is too liberal

Greg Sargent talks about the new poll numbers showing an increase in the number of people want to see Obama move to the center...

 Whe[n] Obama was denied bipartisan support, people worried about liberal overreach. But his bipartisan successes have suddenly persuaded the public that he is more moderate. And yet his fundamental approach -- combine center-left and Republican solutions -- has been more or less the same throughout. He offered deals on health reform, just like on taxes. But they were rejected. The main difference is that Republicans signed on to the post-election initiatives, making them look "moderate" in comparison to the previous ones.

Brad Delong compares President Romney to President Obama (which would have occured in my opinion if the Republican base wasn't as intolerant...)

President Romney would have provided support to troubled banks--capital injections and stress tests--but he would have avoided even a few targeted nationalizations of the banking system: he is, after all, a Republican.

He would not have pushed the Treasury to engage in large-scale quantitative easing through the Public-Private Investment Program or large-scale mortgage restructuring through the HAMP home mortgage modification program.

On monetary policy, Romney would most likely have reappointed Ben Bernanke and let the Federal Reserve proceed as it wished. On fiscal policy, Romney's Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, Mark Zandi, and his National Economic Council Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin would have proposed a fiscal stimulus package that was 60 percent tax cuts and 40 percent spending increases. The Democratic Congress would then have bargained with the administration to produce a stimulus that was 40 percent tax cuts and 60 percent spending.

But, of course, all these policies are exactly what Obama and the Democratic Congress actually enacted.

On global warming, Romney would have abandoned economists' preferred Pigovian carbon tax for the complicated, corporatist and business-friendlier approach of a cap-and-trade system; but he would have been no more successful than Obama in assembling a Senate coalition to achieve anything.

On healthcare, Romney would have taken his signature Massachusetts health care reform and expanded it nationwide: we would have RomneyCare. But that is precisely what we do have.

I see only two key policy differences between RomneyWorld and ObamaWorld. Had Romney been elected President in 2008 we would not have repealed the military policy of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." And had Romney been elected President in 2008, Elizabeth Warren would not now be Assistant to the President for Consumer Financial Protection.

Otherwise? As far as policy is concerned, we would be smack on the mark that we are on now.

The fact is Obama isn't a socialist, isn't left wing, isn't anything other than a center right Democrat along the lines of Clinton--the Eisenhower Republican of yore.

 

Anyone who knows anything about political theory will acknowledge that fact. 

 

 Idiots, and/or people that think you are an idiot, may claim otherwise but it just ain't so.  Our ability to get things done and have a productive policy debates have been greatly hampered by this ideological nonsense and our country is the worse for it.  The electorate can't make informed decisions at the polls when they are is ill informed by those they depend on to Que them into whats going on...  people have busy lives and depend on their political leaders, media outlets, and public intellectuals to honestly contextualize and reflect on whats going on in the policy debates that ensue via the political power struggle between elites.