Did America turn right?

We recommend this article on the post-electoral situation in the U.S; published November 8th on Socialistworker.org

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By Lance Selfa

WE DIDN’T have to know the exact outcome of the 2010 midterm elections to know what the media’s analysis of the results–and their unsolicited advice to President Barack Obama and the Democrats–would be.

First, they would say that the election proves America is a “center-right” nation. Second, they would say that Obama and the Democrats would have to move to the “center” (translation: to the right) to have any hope of being politically viable in the future.

Like clockwork, the mainstream media came through. The Washington Post‘s Dan Balz, commenting on Obama’s November 3 mea culpa press conference, said the president was “unwilling, it seemed, to consider whether he had moved too far to the left for many voters who thought he was a centrist when he ran in 2008.”

The New York Times‘ Peter Baker, waxing on the deeper meaning of the elections, wondered: “Was this the natural and unavoidable backlash in a time of historic economic distress, or was it a repudiation of a big-spending activist government?” Most pundits, it seemed, had chosen Baker’s latter explanation.

They got no argument from Obama. His press conference was a pathetic display of further retreats from long-held positions and offers to work with the Republicans who oppose him as a matter of course. “I think people started looking at all this and it felt as if government was getting much more intrusive into people’s lives than they were accustomed to,” Obama said. “We thought it was necessary, but I’m sympathetic to folks who looked at it and said this is looking like potential overreach.”

There you have it from the President of the United States–most people in the U.S. are suspicious of the government and care deeply about the deficit.

Full Article: SocialistWorker

Related story: Apathetic vote in U.S. general elections