CNN Poll: Obama Ratings At Historic High

Public approval ratings of President-elect Barack Obama are sky-high according to a poll released this morning by CNN/Opinion Research Corporation. The survey found that a staggering 79% of those queried approve of the way Obama has handled the transition so far. A mere 18% disapprove. President-elect Obama's approval mark is 14 points higher than the comparable number for Bush in 2000 and 17 points higher than former President Bill Clinton's approval rating in 1992.

CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider said: "An... approval rating of seventy-nine percent [is] the sort of rating you see when the public rallies around a President after a national disaster. To many Americans, the Bush administration was a national disaster." 

Amen to that, Mr. Schneider.

Dems, Dems Everywhere... and the Voters Do Approve!

CNN reports that, according to a just-conducted poll of voters, fifty-nine percent of the American electorate think that Democratic control of both houses of Congress and the White House is a good thing for the country. So much for the Republican attempt at fear-mongering about one-party control in the closing days of the election...

Speaking of not understanding the electorate, we have noticed the pathetic - but sustained - attempt by many on the Right, and some in the punditocracy, to characterize President-elect Obama's sweeping victory as confirmation that America is somehow still a "center-right country". These geniuses go on to promote the preposterous idea that increased Democratic majorities in the House and Senate are 'proof' of this delusional notion. 

This is what I call 'Animal Farm' political analysis. You know, analysis from some perverse parallel universe in which up is down, left is right, freedom is slavery and black is white. Those who promote such nonsense would, I think, have felt spiritually at home in the old Soviet Union.  They would be perfectly comfortable asking: what's truth got to do with our political propaganda? 

Last Tuesday, the American people voted - in lopsided numbers - for a man who had been portrayed by extremists in the Republican party as the most liberal, socialist, Marxist, redistributionist politician in our Republic's history. Now, these same wingnuts - and their allies in the chattering classes - want us to believe that Obama really ran as a centrist, or even as some sort of Reagan-lite conservative. Hooey. Barack Obama is a reasoned, thoughtful, center-left politician. He campaigned as such... and he won a decisive victory as such.  No amount of post-election revisionism can change those facts.