One day after winning the presidency along with considerable gains in both chambers of congress, the Democratic leadership, namely Nancy Pelosi, seem already eager to begin conceding any semblance of a progressive left-wing mandate.  Pelosi admonishes Obama to “bring people together to reach consensus,” and observes that a “new president must govern from the middle.”

Suppose McCain somehow pulled it off last night instead of Obama.  Do you really believe the arch-conservative, plutocratic, proto-fascist Republican congressional leadership would advise a newly elected McCain administration to govern from the middle?  The American political spectrum is certainly skewed far to the right when compared with its economic and industrial rivals, not to mention its largely social democratic-leaning population, yet this has never swayed American reactionaries in the past.  So is there any reason to believe a reelected Republican regime would concede any ground on foreign policy, energy policy, economic policy, or any other?

The nation is in the midst of a catastrophic economic meltdown, a phenomenon that will likely prove to have been a (if not the) major catalyst that lead Obama to a relatively easy victory this year.   Though, as Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair point out, when the financial meltdown hit several weeks ago,

Obama did not rise to the occasion. He actually got less inspiring as the weeks pass. On September 23, he stated on NBC that the crisis and prospect of a huge bailout required bipartisan action and meant he likely would have to delay expansive spending programs, outlined during his campaign for the White House. Thus did he surrender power even before he gained it. The next day, he told reporters in Clearwater, Florida, that “issues like bankruptcy reform, which are very important to Democrats, is probably something that we shouldn’t try to do in this piece of legislation.” In addition, he said that his proposed economic stimulus program “is not necessarily something that we should have in this package.” Then he worked the phone, hectoring recalcitrants in the Congressional Black Caucus to vote for the bailout, whose paramount importance was as a show of force, as dramatic as nineteenth-century cavalry cutting down demonstrators at Peterloo. As an instigator of beneficial change, the Clinton administration was over six months after election day 1992, when Clinton turned to Al Gore and said, “You mean my re-election hinges on the Federal Reserve and some fucking bond traders?” Gore nodded, and Clinton promptly abandoned his economic plan to follow the dictates of Wall Street tycoons like Robert Rubin, now a top advisor to Obama. Obama beat the speed of Bill Clinton’s 1993 collapse by almost seven months.

Despite the historical significance of Obama’s victory and the general euphoria justifiably elicited from this latest victory in the long struggle against racial bigotry and intolerance, this election in no way signifies any realignment by the Democratic party to a more left-wing position. With DLC-Centrist Rahm Emanuel and former Clinton Treasury Secretary and deregulation enthusiast Lawrence Summers appearing as the first potential names in an Obama cabinet, the Democratic leadership has thus far communicated no significant repudiation of Clintonista neo-liberalism, aside from the obvious need to reregulate financial markets, a position wholly supported by all sectors of the establishment, progressive through reactionary. Considering the enormous sums invested in the Obama candidacy by the same elite financial and corporate interests that have benefited from the economic upward redistribution of the last 30 years, we should not expect come January for the President-elect to tug too hard on the master’s leash.