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."
... the 44th president apparently thought he had a mandate for the expansion of federal power and responsibility, which he has used on everything from bailing out automakers to showering the economy with stimulus dollars to trying to overhaul health insurance. He and his allies have therefore been surprised to face a surge of angry opposition.
.... Obama managed to provoke the Right by spending hundreds of billions of dollars and proposing that the government exert more control over medical care.
That conflicts with our persistent strain of anti-government feeling. Obama's election marked no sudden ebbing of this sentiment: Last December, 52 percent of Americans felt the government was "doing too much that should be left to individuals and business" -- up from 41 percent in October 2001.
(VIA DINOCRAT.)
In 1998, 61 percent of Americans said they had confidence in the federal government's ability to handle domestic problems. On the eve of the 2008 election, only 48 percent felt that way.
Even amid the worst recession in decades, most have not changed their minds. Today, more than half say the president's policies go too far in expanding the federal government, and his popularity has declined as a result.
- CHAPMAN IS WRONG; MODERATES DIDN'T MISREAD; THEY WERE LIED TO! THERE'S AN ESSENTIAL DIFFERENCE!
- THE BRILLIANT JAY COST ALSO GOT THE ESSENTIAL CAUSE OF OBAMA'S CURRENT POLL STANDING WRONG.
- LIKE CHAPMAN, COST BLAMED A "MISREADING" - CHAPMAN ARGUES MODERATES MISREAD OBAMA; COST ARGUED THAT OBAMA MISREAD THE ELECTION.
- BOTH ARE WRONG. (AND I POSTED COST WAS WRONG AT THE TIME!)
MODERATES WEREN'T MISREADING OBAMA; OBAMA WAS DELIBERATELY MISLEADING THE MODERATES.
- OBAMA AND AXELROD AND RAHM KNEW ALL LONG WHAT THEY HAD TO DO TO WIN - APPEAR MODERATE AND CENTRIST - AND HOW THEY WOULD GOVERN ONCE THEY GOT IN - FROM THE LEFT, (THE PLACE ALL THREE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN!).
- IT WAS THE MOST DECEITFUL CAMPAIGN IN US HISTORY.
DISSENT ACCORDINGLY.
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