I was just chatting this over with Jonah. If Obama is elected, won’t we have our most left-wing government ever? Obama is to the left of FDR and LBJ, Democrats who existed in a different world, prior to the cultural revolution in the Democratic party. Carter and Clinton both ran as, and had records as, Southern moderates. Then, there’s Nancy Pelosi who makes old-style New Deal Democrats like Tom Foley and Tip O’Neill look quaint. Harry Reid is kind of a cipher, but the commanding heights of the Senate aren’t dominated by Southern Democrats the way they once were. Now, there may well be limits to what Obama/Pelosi/Reid will be able to do, with Henry Paulson having vacuumed up so many public dollars for his rescue mission, but on the face of it this would be the most left-wing government ever, no? Am I missing something? (Let me know if so–I might delve into this in my column.)

UPDATE

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Subject: Missing something?
Yah, I think you are missing that the country is still center-right, even if Obama wins in a landslide. As NR pointed out, the reason to hope he loses is so the country doesn’t go on an ideological bender it doesn’t really want to go on. The question is, will the country let him go on an ideological bender? I doubt it. At least not for long.
Obama is enough of a blank slate that it’s difficult to tell with any degree of accuracy just how left-wing he really is. I’m sure he’s left wing, but we were all upset over some of Clinton’s radical past as well, and while I’m no Clinton fan, I think you’ve have a hard time saying he was more liberal then Carter or LBJ. He tried to be a lot more left-wing with his healthcare thing, but other then that (which I admit was big), he was, at worst, a fairly non-threatening center-left President. I mean, let’s face it, he was better then some Republicans on trade.
It’s easy to say that Clinton might have been much more left-wing if he had kept Congress for more then two years, and that might be true. But ultimately, his feet were held to the fire by the American people, and he governed, mostly, as a centrist. I doubt it’ll be all that much different with Obama, should he win, as admittedly, seems likely. Should the D’s get a gigantic bout of hubris, I expect a similar kickback to ‘94. We might not take back Congress, but we’ll make big enough gains to stimey anything they do.