"Obama ran on platform of change — now he must spell out exactly how"
Ever since Obama began his campaign, he has never been very specific about what he is going to do and how he is going to do it. Well, now he's finally got to let people know. He's going to have a very difficult time balancing between liberal, progressive policies and those more middle-in-the-road governance that he promised during the campaign (he already broke the promise of accepting public campaign financing; will he again?).
He needs to remember that once Clinton started getting liberal along with the Democratic-controlled Congress the Dems lost big time in the mid-term elections and the GOP took over. He needs to fulfill his promises of being a moderate and all-inclusive President. If not, he will encounter problems two, four years down the road.
I don't really see this election as an embrace of liberalism and socialism; Obama doesn't have the mandate to follow such policies. This was more of a backlash against the Bush era.
Democratic pollster Geoff Garin said Obama's mandate, as put to the voters, was a mandate to be a different president than George W. Bush. "That covers a lot of ground," he said. "There's certainly a mandate in terms of leadership style to have a politics that is more inclusive."
Garin argued that Obama enjoys a mandate for a more activist government that can regulate the excesses of the private sector. "But having said that," Garin said, "the public still has a lot of skepticism about the efficiency and effectiveness of government."
He is certainly going to have to resist pressure from the energized Dems controlling the House and Senate.
"My own hunch is that Obama is smart enough not to want to govern as a liberal," said Peter Wehner, a former Bush administration official. "But he is going to have hydraulic pressure from the House and Senate to do that."
John Feehery, who was a top aide to former House speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), said House Democrats represent a political threat to an Obama presidency. "His real challenge is to understand that the House leadership does not necessarily lead you into a reelection," he said.
Read this great article from the Washington Post about these difficulties that Obama faces.
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