What Voters Meant........................

[True_Blue_KY_Dem]

Source: Chicago Tribune

What Voters Meant...
By Steve Chapman

Barack Obama came into office championing change, and he apparently assumed that if Americans voted for him, it was because they wanted the future to be different from what went before. Actually, what they wanted was a future much like the not-so-distant past -- before the financial crisis, before the recession, before the Iraq war, before the most unpopular president since the invention of polling.

If voters had wanted a sharp ideological shift, they could have voted for Democratic candidates more identified with Great Society-style government -- Hillary Clinton, John Edwards or even Dennis Kucinich. Obama got the early endorsement of Ted Kennedy, but like Bill Clinton before him, he won because he distanced himself from Kennedy-style liberalism. His promise of change was eloquent enough to motivate the left wing of his party but vague enough to make him acceptable to people in the middle.

Among independents, Obama beat John McCain by an 8-point margin. The reason John Kerry lost and Obama won, as Democratic pollster Douglas Schoen has noted, was not liberal voters: They voted for both in the same proportion. The difference was that while Kerry had a 9-point edge over his Republican opponent among moderates, Obama carried them by 21 points. Obama also did significantly better among conservatives than Kerry.

After the election, then-chairman of the Republican National Committee Mike Duncan noted that the Democratic nominee supported offshore oil drilling, merit pay for teachers, a tax cut for 95 percent of Americans, more troops in Afghanistan and an end to wasteful federal earmarks. "Put simply," he said, "Barack Obama just ran the most successful moderate Republican presidential campaign since Dwight Eisenhower."

In the weeks after the election, amid talk of a second Great Depression, Obama was often compared to Franklin D. Roosevelt. But by the time FDR took office, the economy had been in free fall for more than three years, creating mass desperation.



Read more: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/08/30/what_voters_meant.html

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Read the rest here: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/08/30/what_voters_meant.html

[No Elephants]

1. Sounds more like Chapman's wishful thinking than like reality.

[madmom]

2. I hate it when someone tries to tell me what I mean or want.

[Jackpine Radical]

8. That's exactly what I was thinking.

Hey, I didn't vote for Kucinich for two main reasons--first because I knew Goddam well the media would never let him be taken as a serious candidate--garden troll jokes, UFOs, wife with a tongue stud and he has to get on a ladder to look her in the eye--I mean, Jebus, they would have had a field day with all that. And second, I detect certain rigid personality traits in Dennis that might make him less than an effective leader.

TPTB were never gonna let a Kucinich within 100 leagues of the White House. I wanted Gore, settled for Edwards while he was in the race (I still shiver when I think what would have happened if he had gotten the nom & then the affair got exposed), and eventually went for Barack because I thought he was marginally left of Hillary with her Family connections. She scared me. she still does. So we got the furthest-left guy that TPTB were gonna let us have. And I still keep hoping that he'll turn around and bite his handlers. BTW--I believe JFK did. That's why they killed him--and that sets off another whole paranoid trip I won't go into just now.

[stray cat]

3. Voters vote for different reasons - its never one size fits all and its arrogant to think otherwise

[jwirr]

4. You are not talking for me Mr Chapman. I want a much more fundamental

change to a simpler, greener existence than what we had under Bill Clinton. As to what Barack Obama was actually offering us - it remains to be seen.

[BumRushDaShow]

5. This is more Editorial than LBN...

Of course the Tribune is the right-leaning paper as opposed to the Sun-Times.

[droidamus2]

6. Again, remember

The Repubs want it to be known that there is no such thing as a good liberal, nothing good ever happens because of liberals and if somebody that might be seen as liberal gets into office he or she isn't really a liberal they are just a Republican in disguise. Give me a break, Obama may not be the most liberal politician on the block but he is definitely not a moderate Republican. Of course, another thing this does is try to reposition the Republicans as much more to the left than they are (which is about as far right as you can get).

[bluestateguy]

7. If you didn't vote for Obama, he owes you nothing

and people who did not vote for him have no standing to instruct him on how to do his job.

[OHdem10]

9. The people rejected the GWB-Tom Delay Center Right Governing.

This country has not seen the Center in 30 years except for
Clintons 1st term. Republicans fixed that the 2ond term.

The people voted for change. Go Center to a little left of
cwenter.

Everyone seems to forget the people were mad as heck at GWB and
GOP. For the Repubublicans to come out and vote for a Democrat
they had to want change.

This does not matter. If things had been handled differently
we would be in a different place.

Going Right is not the answer. It will head us back into the
ditch.

[dbonds]

10. Bullshit.

[alcibiades_mystery]

11. This is not LBN

Try again.

[Skittles]

12. ridiculous to compare Kerry to Obama

Obama had the "advantage" of a completely destroyed economy