Posted by moy23 on 11/11/2014 12:30:00 PM (view original):

Posted by bad_luck on 11/11/2014 12:18:00 PM (view original):
And again, I say this wishing Obama were more liberal.

All you righties love Reagan. Not because he was some great centrist, but because he was very, very conservative. 

It wasn't just righties that loved Reagan... Have you ever looked at the electoral maps for his elections, especially the second go around?

The 1984 electoral map:

Of course he does.   He found one study that said "Obama is slightly left of center" so he keeps pretending it's the only source available.

It's BL.

Posted by moy23 on 11/11/2014 12:39:00 PM (view original):

Posted by bad_luck on 11/11/2014 12:16:00 PM (view original):

Posted by MikeT23 on 11/11/2014 12:07:00 PM (view original):
This is sort of a silly argument.  Everyone knows Obama is way left on the liberal scale with nothing even remotely resembling a righty lean but everyone also knows BL is going to continue to deny it.    Rather pointless. 

Oh yeah, "everyone" knows it?

Well, everyone that watches Fox News as their primary source of information "knows" it. Just like they "know" the stimulus was a failure. Just like they "know" ebola is going to be used as a weapon by terrorists. Just like they "know" several other things that are clearly false. 

People that actually study this stuff, on the other hand, know differently:

You keep posting that as fact.... But from the Washington post regarding that study:

Judging from the DW-Nominate scores, Obama's closest analog, ideologically speaking, is Lyndon Johnson. The rankings also suggest that both Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were more liberal than Obama.

And that finding is where Republicans will take issue with the numbers, noting that Bill Clinton was a self-professed centrist who pushed his party to the middle on things like welfare reform. And, the DW-Nominate scores have limitations -- particularly when it comes to presidential rankings because (a) they are inferring what a president's position is without having an actual vote to point to and (b) it's actually really hard to effectively judge political ideology over time.


In a post on the Monkey Cage Blog that ran in May 2011, Georgetown (Hoya Saxa!) political scientist Michael Bailey explains:

In the 1960s we know politicians moved left. At the start of the decade, politicians debated fairly mild civil rights reforms in the face of Jim Crow laws; by the end of the decade, politicians debated how aggressively students should be bused to promote desegregation. But if you look at the NOMINATE scores...you see nothing of this. You see something like this figure: racists from the 1960s like Senators Eastland and Ellender are indistinguishable from the modern moderate Democrats like Fritz Hollings. Eastland openly argued for white superiority on the Senate floor; Hollings voted to override Bush's veto of the 1991 Civil Rights Act. There is huge movement but you see none of it in NOMINATE scores.... If we really want to talk about ideological change, we need to keep track of policies and where politicians move on these policies.

Simply put: Using a single measure to compare politicians over time is extremely problematic due to the decided lack of context that goes with those numbers. It's the same reason that using batting average, for example, to compare the relative greatness of baseball players is a difficult thing to do. Or home runs. (Thanks a lot, steroid era!)

I completely agree with all of that. I keep using it because it's still better than hashing out every single issue that Obama could possibly have an opinion on.

He's absolutely left of center. There is no one that denies that. I just wish he were more liberal because, when you look at some major things he's done during his presidency (the continuation of the NSA stuff, not closing gitmo, the continuation of the wars, the wall st. pandering, agreeing to the sequestration, the tempered response to the recession, etc.) you see that they are all things that no one would consider liberal. They are basically extensions of GWB's policies.

Let's try this another way.  

Has any modern President been met with as much resistance from the other party as Obama?   Why is that? 

RACISM!?!?!!   Or something else?    Maybe liberal policies?

Posted by tecwrg on 11/11/2014 12:40:00 PM (view original):

Posted by moy23 on 11/11/2014 12:30:00 PM (view original):

Posted by bad_luck on 11/11/2014 12:18:00 PM (view original):
And again, I say this wishing Obama were more liberal.

All you righties love Reagan. Not because he was some great centrist, but because he was very, very conservative. 

It wasn't just righties that loved Reagan... Have you ever looked at the electoral maps for his elections, especially the second go around?

The 1984 electoral map:

Um, ok. You guys realize that electoral votes are winner take all, right? He could have won CA by one vote (he didn't) and received all 47 electoral votes.

Plenty of Democrats liked Reagan. He was a likable guy. But there is a large spread in between how Republicans viewed him and how Democrats viewed him. Same with Clinton, in reverse.

Posted by bad_luck on 11/11/2014 12:57:00 PM (view original):

Posted by moy23 on 11/11/2014 12:39:00 PM (view original):

Posted by bad_luck on 11/11/2014 12:16:00 PM (view original):

Posted by MikeT23 on 11/11/2014 12:07:00 PM (view original):
This is sort of a silly argument.  Everyone knows Obama is way left on the liberal scale with nothing even remotely resembling a righty lean but everyone also knows BL is going to continue to deny it.    Rather pointless. 

Oh yeah, "everyone" knows it?

Well, everyone that watches Fox News as their primary source of information "knows" it. Just like they "know" the stimulus was a failure. Just like they "know" ebola is going to be used as a weapon by terrorists. Just like they "know" several other things that are clearly false. 

People that actually study this stuff, on the other hand, know differently:

You keep posting that as fact.... But from the Washington post regarding that study:

Judging from the DW-Nominate scores, Obama's closest analog, ideologically speaking, is Lyndon Johnson. The rankings also suggest that both Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were more liberal than Obama.

And that finding is where Republicans will take issue with the numbers, noting that Bill Clinton was a self-professed centrist who pushed his party to the middle on things like welfare reform. And, the DW-Nominate scores have limitations -- particularly when it comes to presidential rankings because (a) they are inferring what a president's position is without having an actual vote to point to and (b) it's actually really hard to effectively judge political ideology over time.


In a post on the Monkey Cage Blog that ran in May 2011, Georgetown (Hoya Saxa!) political scientist Michael Bailey explains:

In the 1960s we know politicians moved left. At the start of the decade, politicians debated fairly mild civil rights reforms in the face of Jim Crow laws; by the end of the decade, politicians debated how aggressively students should be bused to promote desegregation. But if you look at the NOMINATE scores...you see nothing of this. You see something like this figure: racists from the 1960s like Senators Eastland and Ellender are indistinguishable from the modern moderate Democrats like Fritz Hollings. Eastland openly argued for white superiority on the Senate floor; Hollings voted to override Bush's veto of the 1991 Civil Rights Act. There is huge movement but you see none of it in NOMINATE scores.... If we really want to talk about ideological change, we need to keep track of policies and where politicians move on these policies.

Simply put: Using a single measure to compare politicians over time is extremely problematic due to the decided lack of context that goes with those numbers. It's the same reason that using batting average, for example, to compare the relative greatness of baseball players is a difficult thing to do. Or home runs. (Thanks a lot, steroid era!)

I completely agree with all of that. I keep using it because it's still better than hashing out every single issue that Obama could possibly have an opinion on.

He's absolutely left of center. There is no one that denies that. I just wish he were more liberal because, when you look at some major things he's done during his presidency (the continuation of the NSA stuff, not closing gitmo, the continuation of the wars, the wall st. pandering, agreeing to the sequestration, the tempered response to the recession, etc.) you see that they are all things that no one would consider liberal. They are basically extensions of GWB's policies.

Its not that he's not liberal enough... Is that he's a ****** governing leader. For example he WANTS to close Gitmo and can't beause no other country or state wants these guys, so he traded 5 for Bergdahl, and still can't get it closed. He tried to pull all the troops from Iraq despite being advised not to and now, as predicted, we have to go back to Iraq. He had no choice on the sequester since republicans won't work with him, as a leader that's on him to get buy in.

Posted by bad_luck on 11/11/2014 1:10:00 PM (view original):

Posted by tecwrg on 11/11/2014 12:40:00 PM (view original):

Posted by moy23 on 11/11/2014 12:30:00 PM (view original):

Posted by bad_luck on 11/11/2014 12:18:00 PM (view original):
And again, I say this wishing Obama were more liberal.

All you righties love Reagan. Not because he was some great centrist, but because he was very, very conservative. 

It wasn't just righties that loved Reagan... Have you ever looked at the electoral maps for his elections, especially the second go around?

The 1984 electoral map:

Um, ok. You guys realize that electoral votes are winner take all, right? He could have won CA by one vote (he didn't) and received all 47 electoral votes.

Plenty of Democrats liked Reagan. He was a likable guy. But there is a large spread in between how Republicans viewed him and how Democrats viewed him. Same with Clinton, in reverse.

We do realize that... Find me another president on either side that dominated the electoral vote like that? You can't.

But here's some more supporting facts that BOTH dems and republicans supported Reagan:


"President Reagan's public approval rating upon his retirement from office in 1989: 70%
Number of presidents who finished their terms with a higher approval rating than Reagan, since Franklin Roosevelt died in office in 1945: zero"

"Percentage of the popular vote won by Ronald Reagan in the presidential election of 1980: 50.7%"

"Percentage of the popular vote won by Ronald Reagan in the presidential election of 1984: 58.8%"

Nearly 10% more people voted for the guy after he proved what he can do the first 4 years.

Posted by MikeT23 on 11/11/2014 1:02:00 PM (view original):
Let's try this another way.  

Has any modern President been met with as much resistance from the other party as Obama?   Why is that? 

RACISM!?!?!!   Or something else?    Maybe liberal policies?

Or a shift in the opposition party? It was pretty telling to see the complete flip flop on plenty of GOP positions.

Stimulus in 2008 under Bush? GOP was all for it.
Stimulus in 2009 under Obama? GOP suddenly hates it.

Cap and trade under Reagan/Bush 1/Bush 2? Absolutely supported by GOP
Cap and trade under Obama? Oh, wait, never mind.

Immigration reform under Bush? Republican idea
Immigration reform under Obama? Crickets

Should I keep going?

Posted by moy23 on 11/11/2014 1:23:00 PM (view original):

Posted by bad_luck on 11/11/2014 1:10:00 PM (view original):

Posted by tecwrg on 11/11/2014 12:40:00 PM (view original):

Posted by moy23 on 11/11/2014 12:30:00 PM (view original):

Posted by bad_luck on 11/11/2014 12:18:00 PM (view original):
And again, I say this wishing Obama were more liberal.

All you righties love Reagan. Not because he was some great centrist, but because he was very, very conservative. 

It wasn't just righties that loved Reagan... Have you ever looked at the electoral maps for his elections, especially the second go around?

The 1984 electoral map:

Um, ok. You guys realize that electoral votes are winner take all, right? He could have won CA by one vote (he didn't) and received all 47 electoral votes.

Plenty of Democrats liked Reagan. He was a likable guy. But there is a large spread in between how Republicans viewed him and how Democrats viewed him. Same with Clinton, in reverse.

We do realize that... Find me another president on either side that dominated the electoral vote like that? You can't.

But here's some more supporting facts that BOTH dems and republicans supported Reagan:


"President Reagan's public approval rating upon his retirement from office in 1989: 70%
Number of presidents who finished their terms with a higher approval rating than Reagan, since Franklin Roosevelt died in office in 1945: zero"

"Percentage of the popular vote won by Ronald Reagan in the presidential election of 1980: 50.7%"

"Percentage of the popular vote won by Ronald Reagan in the presidential election of 1984: 58.8%"

Nearly 10% more people voted for the guy after he proved what he can do the first 4 years.

FDR in 1936 certainly dominated just like that.

And, while it wasn't a completely blue map, Obama won by an electoral landslide in 2012.

Also, Johnson in 1964. Huge landslide.

They happen all the time.

Posted by bad_luck on 11/11/2014 1:22:00 PM (view original):

Posted by MikeT23 on 11/11/2014 1:02:00 PM (view original):
Let's try this another way.  

Has any modern President been met with as much resistance from the other party as Obama?   Why is that? 

RACISM!?!?!!   Or something else?    Maybe liberal policies?

Or a shift in the opposition party? It was pretty telling to see the complete flip flop on plenty of GOP positions.

Stimulus in 2008 under Bush? GOP was all for it.
Stimulus in 2009 under Obama? GOP suddenly hates it.

Cap and trade under Reagan/Bush 1/Bush 2? Absolutely supported by GOP
Cap and trade under Obama? Oh, wait, never mind.

Immigration reform under Bush? Republican idea
Immigration reform under Obama? Crickets

Should I keep going?

You are stretching:

Most republicans HATED the 2008 bailout bill... Myself included. Look at the polling.

Most republicans are OK with immigration reform, they just want the borders tightened up first. There SHOULD be common ground here but Obama won't move from his far left position.

Posted by bad_luck on 11/11/2014 11:27:00 AM (view original):

Posted by silentpadna on 11/11/2014 10:12:00 AM (view original):
What makes him "not a centrist", or essentially left-wing is more than the few things I mentioned before (which I'll mention again)

• He advocates single payer healthcare and has always wanted us to go that direction.  It's not just that he got ACA passed; it's that ACA is the stepping stone.  He is on record as advocating single-payer.  That's a liberal concept.
• He advocates wealth redistribution through government means.  No, this is not the varying amounts of tax share people pay; this the part of your taxes that directly to those that do not.  That's a liberal concept.
• He is not only pro-choice, but pro-abortion (i.e. his opposition to the infant born alive act).  That's a liberal concept.
• His actions with respect to diplomacy and military / foreign policy are demonstrably liberal.
• His tax policy (especially with respect to the ACA TAX) is again, a liberal concept

I don't care what any study says, as a 50-something educated participant in this economy and in our American culture, I know how to recognize a liberal non-center president. 

The idea that Obama is somehow in the middle is pretzel-twisting logic at best.

 - He doesn't advocate single payer. He advocated the ACA, which was basically written by 1990's Republicans.
 - He advocates social safety nets. I'll wait for your list of presidents who advocated abolishing welfare, food stamps, unemployment, etc.
 - No mainstream politicians are pro-abortion. I don't know anyone who is pro-abortion.

Again, no one is saying that Obama isn't liberal. He just isn't an extreme, far-left liberal.

- Yes he does.  He has been quoted that way.  He not established it as presidential policy (he would be stupid to do that, but ACA is a logical step in that direction).

- I won't find presidents who want to abolish safety nets.  That doesn't change the fact that he is in favor of a MUCH larger one than conservatives believe in.  And his policies indicate that he believes government is the best solution for that  -  it's a distinction.  It's a matter of degree.  In that respect he is much more to the left than conservatives who still believe in some sort of safety net. 

- Then you don't know your president and what his voting record is.

Your argument was that Obama was a centrist.  I find that to be lacking.

Posted by moy23 on 11/11/2014 1:30:00 PM (view original):

Posted by bad_luck on 11/11/2014 1:22:00 PM (view original):

Posted by MikeT23 on 11/11/2014 1:02:00 PM (view original):
Let's try this another way.  

Has any modern President been met with as much resistance from the other party as Obama?   Why is that? 

RACISM!?!?!!   Or something else?    Maybe liberal policies?

Or a shift in the opposition party? It was pretty telling to see the complete flip flop on plenty of GOP positions.

Stimulus in 2008 under Bush? GOP was all for it.
Stimulus in 2009 under Obama? GOP suddenly hates it.

Cap and trade under Reagan/Bush 1/Bush 2? Absolutely supported by GOP
Cap and trade under Obama? Oh, wait, never mind.

Immigration reform under Bush? Republican idea
Immigration reform under Obama? Crickets

Should I keep going?

You are stretching:

Most republicans HATED the 2008 bailout bill... Myself included. Look at the polling.

Most republicans are OK with immigration reform, they just want the borders tightened up first. There SHOULD be common ground here but Obama won't move from his far left position.

I'm looking at the congressional votes. GOP was all in on the stimulus in 2008, despite what the uninformed members of the general public wanted.

What exactly is Obama's "far left" immigration position?

Posted by silentpadna on 11/11/2014 1:31:00 PM (view original):

Posted by bad_luck on 11/11/2014 11:27:00 AM (view original):

Posted by silentpadna on 11/11/2014 10:12:00 AM (view original):
What makes him "not a centrist", or essentially left-wing is more than the few things I mentioned before (which I'll mention again)

• He advocates single payer healthcare and has always wanted us to go that direction.  It's not just that he got ACA passed; it's that ACA is the stepping stone.  He is on record as advocating single-payer.  That's a liberal concept.
• He advocates wealth redistribution through government means.  No, this is not the varying amounts of tax share people pay; this the part of your taxes that directly to those that do not.  That's a liberal concept.
• He is not only pro-choice, but pro-abortion (i.e. his opposition to the infant born alive act).  That's a liberal concept.
• His actions with respect to diplomacy and military / foreign policy are demonstrably liberal.
• His tax policy (especially with respect to the ACA TAX) is again, a liberal concept

I don't care what any study says, as a 50-something educated participant in this economy and in our American culture, I know how to recognize a liberal non-center president. 

The idea that Obama is somehow in the middle is pretzel-twisting logic at best.

 - He doesn't advocate single payer. He advocated the ACA, which was basically written by 1990's Republicans.
 - He advocates social safety nets. I'll wait for your list of presidents who advocated abolishing welfare, food stamps, unemployment, etc.
 - No mainstream politicians are pro-abortion. I don't know anyone who is pro-abortion.

Again, no one is saying that Obama isn't liberal. He just isn't an extreme, far-left liberal.

- Yes he does.  He has been quoted that way.  He not established it as presidential policy (he would be stupid to do that, but ACA is a logical step in that direction).

- I won't find presidents who want to abolish safety nets.  That doesn't change the fact that he is in favor of a MUCH larger one than conservatives believe in.  And his policies indicate that he believes government is the best solution for that  -  it's a distinction.  It's a matter of degree.  In that respect he is much more to the left than conservatives who still believe in some sort of safety net. 

- Then you don't know your president and what his voting record is.

Your argument was that Obama was a centrist.  I find that to be lacking.

Simply disagreeing with conservatives doesn't make someone an extreme liberal.

I'm not arguing that Obama is a centrist. I'm arguing that he's just left of center. A moderate Democrat.

Posted by moy23 on 11/11/2014 1:30:00 PM (view original):

Posted by bad_luck on 11/11/2014 1:22:00 PM (view original):

Posted by MikeT23 on 11/11/2014 1:02:00 PM (view original):
Let's try this another way.  

Has any modern President been met with as much resistance from the other party as Obama?   Why is that? 

RACISM!?!?!!   Or something else?    Maybe liberal policies?

Or a shift in the opposition party? It was pretty telling to see the complete flip flop on plenty of GOP positions.

Stimulus in 2008 under Bush? GOP was all for it.
Stimulus in 2009 under Obama? GOP suddenly hates it.

Cap and trade under Reagan/Bush 1/Bush 2? Absolutely supported by GOP
Cap and trade under Obama? Oh, wait, never mind.

Immigration reform under Bush? Republican idea
Immigration reform under Obama? Crickets

Should I keep going?

You are stretching:

Most republicans HATED the 2008 bailout bill... Myself included. Look at the polling.

Most republicans are OK with immigration reform, they just want the borders tightened up first. There SHOULD be common ground here but Obama won't move from his far left position.

Agreed.  The stimulus sucked and pubs hated it, BUT crony capitalism is used by both sides, and in my opinion, the nation was suckered on this.  This has no bearing on Obama's liberalism BTW.

Agreed on the immigration thing.  Tightened borders and enforcement are common sense steps.  Conservatives believe in immigration.  Just in case liberals didn't realize this. 

When you combine open borders, amnesty, and opposition to voter ID laws it's simple to see why libs want the status quo.

When you combine lack of enforcement, cheap labor, it's simple to see why the conservative (supposedly) politicians also want the status quo - when it comes to immigration.