Mandates are kind of a funny game; presumably whether or not a candidate has a right to declare a mandate for his policies should have a lot to do with his popular vote margin, but more often than not, whether or not he gets his mandate is up to the talking heads on CNN. And so it is with this election.

Obama didn’t just win on Tuesday. He crushed. And, as Jamelle pointed out, it was McCain’s decision to turn this election into a referendum on liberalism, with all of his blather about redistribution and “spreading the wealth around.” Obama ran this election as an unapologetic progressive, and in the last leg of the campaign, McCain hammered him on it. And you know what? It didn’t work. It turned out that Americans liked spreading the wealth around.

Sounds like a mandate to make sweeping liberal reforms to the federal government, right? Well, sure, if you’re on Planet Earth. If you’re on TV Land, then no, not at all. Because, as you can see from the above video, America is a center right nation.

It’s not exactly clear what the fuck, if anything, that means. Isn’t whatever the mainstream of the country overwhelmingly supports, by definition, the center? The electorate can’t be to the right of itself, and America presumably elected a unified Democratic government so that they could enact the Democratic platform. You can mumble as much as you want about what kind of country this really is, and what the American people, deep down, secretly want, but the voters have spoken.