Don't let Republicans tell you Barack Obama didn't win a mandate, said Jonathan Chait in The New Republic online. Conservatives insisted President Bush had a clear mandate when he won reelection with a much smaller margin of victory, and Bush certainly acted accordingly. Voters knew Obama planned to "make the tax code more progressive, reform health care, and the like," so Democrats should muster the courage to push that agenda.
Not so fast, said Ralph Reiland in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Obama won precisely 1 percentage point more of the popular vote than Bush did in 2004. The needle didn't budge from voters' "center-right ideological self-identification," so there's no call for "turning America into a European welfare state or beating our swords into plowshares" or pushing our coal plants into bankruptcy.
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