What has changed over the past 1-3 years is that we have a much more liberal government, which has taken this country in a leftward direction that is almost irreversible. Once you create a multi-trillion-dollar entitlement program, it is difficult (if not impossible) to take it away.

Despite the poll numbers, where an overwhelming majority of those polled were against this healthcare bill, the Democrats in congress, along with President Obama, forced this bill through regardless, using a parliamentary trick to do so. That doesn’t sit right with most Americans.

Americans elected President Obama not because they agreed with his liberal agenda of bigger government, higher taxes, and more government intervention. They elected him because the economy was suffering, and because they wanted to be “a part of history.” Now that the economy is in even worse shape, the Republicans will likely regain all three houses in 2012. Hopefully, they can reverse some of the damage that has been done (but I’m not counting on it.)

And ultimately, that’s what I think we saw in the last two elections: not a permanent leftward shift in the electorate but a reaction to the ineptitude of the party in power. Just as many now expect the Dems to lose ground in the upcoming mid-term elections.

Personally, from my half-informed position, I think the medium-to-long term trend (10-40 years or so) has been for the country to become more liberal, socially, but more conservative, fiscally. I may not actually be correct about this, but the point is that the electorate and/or media needn’t trend, inexorably, in one direction only. Lots of complex, even contradictory, forces are at work in determining its disposition. Decrying things like “the liberal media,” or “the country’s conservative culture,” is often mainly a way of registering one’s astonishment that so many others could have such different beliefs from your own (what you consider to be superior) ones.

Steven, to your point #1: frustrated as I am with the current administration, I think it’s hard to argue that the country didn’t demonstrate a leftward swing the the past two election cycles. It’s not that Dems or Repubs became more liberal, it’s that independents voted Democratic in large numbers. You can argue that Democrat doesn’t really equal Liberal-with-a-capital-L, but surely it’s more liberal that Republican.

Also, I don’t think it’s fair to say that Obama’s not a liberal. It’s just that that he’s above all a pragmatist. I think Nate made a convincing argument that this was just about as good as a HCR bill as could have been passed in the current environment. It’s a disgusting fact but a fact no less that the filibuster + a loose democratic coalition that includes Blue Dogs and a Lieberman = a less Democratic Senate than would appear at first glance, 60 seats (now 59) or not. I think DADT will prove to be a long term win for Obama.

Where you and I agree 100% is that I am absolutely horrified and outraged that the previous administration is being let off the hook for it’s legal and moral sins. Fuck pragmatism in that case–the precedent undermines the foundations of our democracy.