As pathetic, desperate efforts to spin an electoral loss of historic proportions go, this line of thinking makes the kind of faux intuitive sense that is pure talking point gold. The concocters of this poppycock deserve some credit. They were ready and waiting to unleash the conservative Democratic mandate and we’ll hear no end of pontificating about the new zeitgeist in the months ahead. Never mind, as the left-wing blogs have been pointing out with alacrity all morning, that the theory doesn’t hold up when you look at who actually won the majority of the Democratic takeaways from Republicans. If anything, the Northeast, with the possible exception of new Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, is sending a more solid block of liberal Democrats to Congress than has been seen in generations, if ever. New Hampshire’s utter transformation into the bluest of blue states has nothing to do with any purported rise of social conservatism. And even in Pennsylvania, it’s hard not to look at the humiliating annihilation of the Senate’s third most powerful leader, Rick Santorum, as anything other than a triumph over the most backward, homophobic, caveman-style conservativism this country has to offer.
From How the World Works – Salon.com
Will people please stop buying the spin that this Republican loss is actually a conservative mandate. This is just plain wrong. The Dems that won buy the biggest margins are the ones like Brown, Whitehouse and Klobuchar who ran the furthest to the left. Heck, Klobuchar and Brown are to the left of me on most issues. Even the ones that ran to the center, Blue-Dogs like Ellsworth and Shuler; ran on Lou-Dobbs meat and potato progressive economic populism. Head over to Media Matters for a point by point analysis.
Second, will those who claim that the democrats don’t have any plans please go over to Google and type in “The Democratic Plan”? Just click here if you can’t be bothered. It’s the first few links.
Lastly, Nancy Pelosi is reading the election mandate correctly. There is a very strong desire for a return to progressive economic policies, a broad consensus for a change in national security policies and a strong desire to return to fiscal responsibility. And if you head over to her web site, you’ll see that her first 100 hours as speaker are to be devoted to those three big issues.
