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Obama is likely the most moderate president since WWII

F

fskimospy

Elite Member
An interesting article from Keith Poole, a former professor of mine and one of the creators of the DW-NOMINATE system of measuring political ideology. DW-NOMINATE is probably the most widely accepted measure of relative political positions that there is and it has been employed by organizations all over the world. Anyways, here's their analysis using DW-NOMINATE for Obama's presidency as compared to other postwar presidencies.

presidents_common_space_1D.jpg


By this measure, Obama is the most moderate Democrat to occupy the White House in almost 70 years. This has not stopped conservatives from attacking him as a radical socialist bent on communizing America for one second, however. I think info like this really serves to show just how radicalized the Republican party has become when a guy this moderate is the second coming of Stalin.

Full post here: http://voteview.com/blog/?p=317
Bonus link on congressional polarization and Republican radicalization!: http://voteview.com/blog/?p=284
 
And yet the Right still hate him...on a fun note I bet Romney is arguably more Liberal then President Obama is.
 
Two statisticians went duck hunting. A mallard flew overhead and one statistician fired just to the right of the bird. The other statistician fired just to the left of the bird. They turned to each other in glee, and congratulated each other... "On average, he's dead!", they cried! The mallard continued his migration.
 
He has all the bad points of Bush, combined with the bad points of liberalism. Go team Obama!

EDIT: That said, we read the blog and find this:

However, because presidential estimates are based on a limited number of “presidential support” votes– roll calls on which the president clearly indicates his support or opposition to a particular (often contentious) measure, presidential ideal points are somewhat biased towards the ideological extremes (however, this effect is roughly constant for all presidents, so it is unlikely than any particular estimate would be affected more than others).
Click to expand...

Basically, he says he is guessing. Interesting chart, nonetheless.
 
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eskimospy said:
An interesting article from Keith Poole, a former professor of mine and one of the creators of the DW-NOMINATE system of measuring political ideology. DW-NOMINATE is probably the most widely accepted measure of relative political positions that there is and it has been employed by organizations all over the world. Anyways, here's their analysis using DW-NOMINATE for Obama's presidency as compared to other postwar presidencies.

presidents_common_space_1D.jpg


By this measure, Obama is the most moderate Democrat to occupy the White House in almost 70 years. This has not stopped conservatives from attacking him as a radical socialist bent on communizing America for one second, however. I think info like this really serves to show just how radicalized the Republican party has become when a guy this moderate is the second coming of Stalin.

Full post here: http://voteview.com/blog/?p=317
Bonus link on congressional polarization and Republican radicalization!: http://voteview.com/blog/?p=284
Click to expand...

The GOP use "Moderate" as a bad word...
 
So...Nixon who took us off the gold standard, implemented wage and price controls, and founded the EPA is supposedly nearly as an "extreme rightist" as Reagen, but LBJ who instituted the great society program and Truman who tried to nationalize the entire steel industry are "moderates"?
 
zsdersw said:
No more than the left hated GWB when he was in office.
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Pretty much this. FDR would rank in the middle also. He combined elements of communism (redistribution, lifelong supporter of the UN, and more pro-immigrant than his Republican predecessors) and fascism (regulations, militarism, having people arrested for crimes against the state, having people arrested all the time for expressing anti-war views). Personally, I dislike Romney more than Obama because the latter can't make up his mind as to whether he wants fascism or communism. Romney is an out and out national socialist.

Hoover and Carter were really the closest this country has ever been to having a far left president. There were like only two presidents who could be hawks without favoring hard money, deregulation, and low taxes at the same time and they were well before the ones mentioned in the OP.
 
eskimospy said:
By this measure, Obama is the most moderate Democrat to occupy the White House in almost 70 years.
Click to expand...

I think your chart is full of crap.

Not only has obama not stopped the wars in the middle east, has not closed guantanamo bay, but he also got the health care bill passed that is forcing US citizens to purchase a product.

You call forcing religious organizations to do something that is against their faith (supplying birth control pills to employees) being a moderate? That is one step from socialism or communism. When the government tells a church "we do not care what your faith is, this is what you have to do", that is not being a conservative.

When free trade with china is allowed to continue, that is not being a conservative.

When companies like apple can report record profits, while the US is in a recession, that is not being a conservative.
 
This has not stopped conservatives from attacking him as a radical socialist bent on communizing America for one second, however. I think info like this really serves to show just how radicalized the Republican party has become when a guy this moderate is the second coming of Stalin.
Click to expand...
Of course they are going to attack him with such nonsense, they can't attack him with the truth, that he is a bought and paid for corporate shill just like most republicans, because then they themselves would be looking in the mirror.
 
QuantumPion said:
So...Nixon who took us off the gold standard, implemented wage and price controls, and founded the EPA is supposedly nearly as an "extreme rightist" as Reagen, but LBJ who instituted the great society program and Truman who tried to nationalize the entire steel industry are "moderates"?
Click to expand...

I was waiting for one of these silly posts where people take individual policies and then try to tar an entire presidency with them without actually understanding what the DW-NOMINATE system measures. (it's comparative ideology, btw!)

Here, let me try:
So... Reagan, who raised taxes in seven out of eight years in office, who implemented amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants, who ran up record budget deficits and signed landmark disarmament treaties was an 'extreme right conservative'?!

How did I do?
 
Texashiker said:
I think your chart is full of crap.

Not only has obama not stopped the wars in the middle east, has not closed guantanamo bay, but he also got the health care bill passed that is forcing US citizens to purchase a product.

You call forcing religious organizations to do something that is against their faith (supplying birth control pills to employees) being a moderate? That is one step from socialism or communism. When the government tells a church "we do not care what your faith is, this is what you have to do", that is not being a conservative.

When free trade with china is allowed to continue, that is not being a conservative.

When companies like apple can report record profits, while the US is in a recession, that is not being a conservative.
Click to expand...

That's fine. The data it is based on is from an award winning system highly regarded by political scientists, and used by prominent organizations worldwide. You are welcome to find it to be crap, but people who do this as their business do not.

Nowhere on this chart does it say Obama is a conservative. (thank god) It says he is a moderate liberal, more moderate than any Democratic president in the postwar period. I think his record has shown that clearly for quite a long time, but it's nice to have some backup.
 
eskimospy said:
Here, let me try:
So... Reagan, who raised taxes in seven out of eight years in office, who implemented amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants, who ran up record budget deficits and signed landmark disarmament treaties was an 'extreme right conservative'?!
Click to expand...

Reagan is considered to be a 'extreme right conservative' because of what he said, not what he did. After all, words are louder then actions.

If anything, reagan was one of the most left leaning presidents we have ever had.
 
Texashiker said:
Reagan is considered to be a 'extreme right conservative' because of what he said, not what he did. After all, words are louder then actions.

If anything, reagan was one of the most left leaning presidents we have ever had.
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I'm sorry, but that is simply untrue.
 
eskimospy said:
I'm sorry, but that is simply untrue.
Click to expand...

Giving amnesty to millions of trespassers is not left leaning? - Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986

Driving up the national debt is not left leaning?

Moving our oil production to OPEC, with caused drill rig production and ship building companies to close. Which in turned left tens of thousands of people in the ship building industry without jobs.

In the southeast Texas area (Beaumont, Port Arthur, Orange area), at least 3 large companies closed - Bethlehem steel, Livingston shipyard and American Bridge. When those companies closed, over 7,000 people lost their jobs. An unknown number of support chain jobs were also lost. Entire shipyards were closed, striped and the parts sold off. I put the number close to 10,000 people lost their jobs.

Those people losing their jobs was in direct relation to the policies set forth by reagan.

Its taken southeast Texas almost 30 years to recover. It was not until the late 1990s when construction in the local refiners started to expand that we had a surplus of high wage jobs come back. Here we are in 2010s, and the economy has just about recovered. In the late 1990s, the southeast Texas region had the second highest unemployment rate in the state of Texas , second to El Paso.
 
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Texashiker said:
Giving amnesty to millions of trespassers is not left leaning? - Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986

Driving up the national debt is not left leaning?

Moving our oil production to OPEC, with caused drill rig production and ship building companies to close. Which in turned left tens of thousands of people in the ship building industry without jobs.

In the southeast Texas area (Beaumont, Port Arthur, Orange area), at least 3 large companies closed - Bethlehem steel, Livingston shipyard and American Bridge. When those companies closed, over 7,000 people lost their jobs. An unknown number of support chain jobs were also lost. Entire shipyards were closed, striped and the parts sold off. I put the number close to 10,000 people lost their jobs.

Those people losing their jobs was in direct relation to the policies set forth by reagan.

Its taken southeast Texas almost 30 years to recover. It was not until the late 1990s when construction in the local refiners started to expand that we had a surplus of high wage jobs come back. Here we are in 2010s, and the economy has just about recovered. In the late 1990s, the southeast Texas region had the second highest unemployment rate in the state of Texas , second to El Paso.
Click to expand...

This is the same sort of thing that Quantumpion was trying to do. Sure, Reagan did things that were left leaning, I mentioned them in a previous post. He did a whole lot more things that were right leaning though, which is why he's considered quite conservative.
 
eskimospy said:
He did a whole lot more things that were right leaning though, which is why he's considered quite conservative.
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If anything, reagan should be middle of the road, and not regarded as a conservative.

The main reason why reagan is regarded as a conservative, is because of what he said, and not what he did. reagan was two faced, he would say one thing, then do something else.

reagan talked about welfare reform, but gave amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants.

Why not kick those illegals out, then have the people on welfare fill the job vacuum?

I have no respect for reagan, he destroyed tens of thousands of US jobs, and ran up the national debt with excessive spending.
 
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QuantumPion said:
So...Nixon who took us off the gold standard, implemented wage and price controls, and founded the EPA is supposedly nearly as an "extreme rightist" as Reagen, but LBJ who instituted the great society program and Truman who tried to nationalize the entire steel industry are "moderates"?
Click to expand...

You forget that it was under the Nixon administration that much of what we call affirmative action was implemented as well. Some ultra right winger he was!
 
Linflas said:
You forget that it was under the Nixon administration that much of what we call affirmative action was implemented as well. Some ultra right winger he was!
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And of course was one of the main drivers during his time of the 'New Federalist' movement of returning federal powers to the states, one of the defining aspects of modern conservatism. But hey, who's counting?
 
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