11/9/08-TWD's Agenda For The Day: The Desperate Labeling Of America As Still Being Center-Right

(Original Photo from Nydailynews.com)Tom Brokaw is one of the many dishonest fools still calling this nation center-right leaning.

It is pretty sad, the likes of Tom Brokaw (I would love to say Tom Broflaw, but I want to be formal here) and so many others in the media, trying to label this nation as center-right. It is even more of a deplorable sight where right-wingers such as Karl Rove, accusing Barack Obama of having "socialists" policies and being "the most liberal Senator in Congress", go ahead and proclaim that the reason why Obama won the election now (after saying the financial crisis helped him after saying McCain had Bush under his neck helped him) is because he ran a "center-right" campaign.

The trepidation over the liberal agenda getting pushed in this country is amazing. And the ridiculous myth that this country is what most in the media are still saying it is has been slammed big time this week (as it has been rebuked in the past).

In today's Connecticut Post, Huge Bailey said this correctly:

If we're a center-right country, how is Indiana a blue state?

Eric Alterman has a brilliant piece at the Nation, showing how the people truly feel:

Liberals and progressives, however, are in the opposite position. Obama has proven an inspirational messenger, speaking to and for a public eager to embrace the kind of politics that has been demonized and trivialized for the past eight years by mainstream media desperate to deflect the right's accusations of "liberal bias." According to the Pew Center's extensive national survey, released well before this endless election got under way, roughly 70 percent of respondents believe that the government has a responsibility "to take care of people who can't take care of themselves." Two-thirds (66 percent)--including most of those who say they would prefer a smaller government (57 percent)--support government-funded health insurance for all citizens. Most also regard the nation's corporations as too powerful, while nearly two-thirds (65 percent) say corporate profits are too high--about the same number who say "labor unions are necessary to protect the working person" (68 percent). When it comes to the environment, a large majority (83 percent) back stricter laws and regulations, while 69 percent agree "we should put more emphasis on fuel conservation than on developing new oil supplies" and 60 percent say they would "be willing to pay higher prices in order to protect the environment."

Media Maters stalwart (and VP)Jamison Foser exposes Brokaw in a hilarious way, as well as the other in denial community:

NBC's Tom Brokaw, for example, looked at county-by-county election results and concluded that counties carried by John McCain account for greater land mass than those carried by Barack Obama. This would be meaningful, if only fields and streams and rocks and trees were conservative voters. But they aren't: They are fields and streams and rocks and trees. They are neither liberal nor conservative; they tell us nothing about the nation's political leanings. People tell us something about the nation's leanings -- and more people voted for Barack Obama.

Foser's column is so damn good, that it even makes David Broader, the suppose Dean of Washington, look horrendous:

And finally, the dean of the Washington press corps, David Broder: In September 2005, Broder predicted that Bush's handling of Katrina would help him regain his standing with the public. Things didn't work out that way, as Broder eventually acknowledged, but he continued to predict a Bush resurgence. In early 2007, Broder announced that "President Bush is poised for a political comeback."

It isn't just that these three predictions were wrong; people make incorrect forecasts all the time. Many of those incorrect predictions are based on reasonable analysis that just turns out to be wrong. But it has been pretty clear since mid-2005 that the Bush administration has been a spectacular failure, that the public has rejected the disastrous conservative policies President Bush had used to drive the nation into a ditch. There hasn't been any reason to believe the Republicans would rebound, other than blind faith. And that isn't something that is clear only in hindsight: It has been obvious for years.

And finally, a poster over a M.M (Media Matters Acronym) by the name of "neon desert" said this:

I'll let you in on a little secret: There is no center. It's all relative. You've been duped into believing that "center" is somewhere between rabid conservative evangelicals and democrats, between Fox News and PBS.Between ideology and reality.

We're not seeing a shift to the left - we're seeing the realization of that apathetic segment of America that conservative ideology and Republican governance has failed them over the last 8 years. The conservatives don't see it that way because from their perspective, their ideology has the same validity as that of the rest of the country. An egalitarianism between theory and fact. They don't see the Obama victory and Democratic gains as an epiphany. They see it as a marketing failure on their part. To them, it's a game to be played, one field, two sides, ambiguous rules.

Fox doesn't really care about who wins the elections. They only care about giving their audience - a consciously-targeted minority share of the population who can be convinced to move as a herd - a tangible, easily-encapsulated environment in which their intellectual laziness is rewarded by the acceptance of a group that shares and justifies their fears, prejudices and greed on TV, radio, and print 24 hours of every day. Saying that we're now becoming a left-of-center country only helps solidify their audience by identifying them as a righteous clan of commiserating "outsiders".

Couldn't have said that better myself.

The Agenda's P.S. is in the comments section.