Actually, I think that's been one of my main talking points since Day 1 in this blog (with respect to both Obama and the democratic party -- although I believe the same is also true of the republican party). All you had to do was take a look at Obama's voting record in the Senate to know that this was a bona fide (and as it's turning out, radical) liberal who was not going to try to run this country from a mainstream, center-left location.Most dems, of course, would never admit these simple truths, and that's why I credit democrat columnist and talking head Douglas Schoen (pictured) for an excellent online column today (link below) on this very subject. One highlight: "The reason for [Obama's declining poll numbers] is simple: Mr. Obama, despite his popularity, is proposing policies that are out of sync with a center-right electorate. Specifically, only two in ten Americans are liberal, close to four in ten are conservative and a third are moderate. However, a poll conducted by Scott Rasmussen last week shows that nearly half of all Americans now identify Mr. Obama as being 'very liberal' -- up 15 points from January."
Now, while I did not vote for Obama (nor McCain), I don't criticize for a minute all the non-liberals in this country who did vote for Obama. I think many of them were in part hoodwinked by Obama's little campaign act of disingenuously holding himself out as some sort of moderate. And I also know that those folks wanted change (I can't blame them) and voted for it. But they weren't voting for this, and that's why Obama has big problems in his polling numbers these days. And that's why we are seeing so much real anger coming out at so many of these town hall meetings over the last week. You won't see me celebrating if we see a repeat of 1994 in terms of huge republican congressional gains over the next few years. But I do know what I will be saying -- you brought it on yourselves, dems. Most Americans do not like extremes, and they will react very negatively if you try to run the country that way. Ain't that America!
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