We've had a center right electorate. Old people vote, kids don't. It's shifting under his feet and he doesn't want to admit it.
- Jake 640 kiloton should be enough for anybody
IOW, the idea that it is possible to have any one-dimensional political spectrum that is defined in any absolute terms seems wrong to me ... the only reasonable way to identify a one-dimensional spectrum is with respect to a given polity and the issues in play in that polity. Utsukushikereba sore de ii
Obama during the primary showed no inclination to press against the left edge of the Overton Window ... which itself has been pushed quite a far way to the right over the last three decades. So there is no actual basis for anticipating that he will be anything other than a "centrist progressive" in terms of pushing for progress on problems that a majority of Americans wish to see progress on and framed in terms that a majority of Americans are already inclined to view them.
Obviously, in terms of foreign affairs, the US is so far to one extreme on the world stage that the center within the US political system would still be an extreme position in the international context. Utsukushikereba sore de ii
Which may be absurd cultural absolutism. But IMO that's less absurd than calling - say - Milton Friedman or Boris Yeltsin "centrists" (which they would be relative to Chilean politics during Pinochet and Soviet politics during Gorbachev...).
There is also a political point: The Overton Window does not move on its own, or at least does so only very slowly. If the Left (whether in relative or absolute terms) is ever to move the zeitgeist in a more appealing direction, it must first acknowledge that there is a problem with where the zeitgeist is at the moment. Permitting Obama to be framed as a "centrist" (in what other developed country is "we'll see what we can do about it" a centrist position on universal health care?) is counterproductive to that objective.
It does not make sense to try to shoehorn the kind of spectrum described in the comment into a single-dimension, "left right" spectrum. More dimensions are needed to identify a political position with respect to stable reference points.
The only way that a one dimensional spectrum can make any coherent sense is in lining up the coalitions pursuing political change in a given political system ... and even there, the effort to impose a stable one dimensional spectrum in a given political system eventually falls apart in the face of the political evolution of that society. Utsukushikereba sore de ii
I note Berlusconi, Merkel, Sarkozy are also in charge in Europe. It hasn't been just us.
