Remember how, after George Bush's narrow escape into the White House in 2000, the rhetoric was all how he would "govern from the center?" I remember it everywhere, it was "a tie election" and therefore we could expect Bush to govern as a "moderate". At the time I told people that there were two theories of the election, one is that it was the closest Presidential race in American, and therefore Bush would govern in a bipartisan manner, the other was that the election had been stolen, and that no one steals an election to govern as a moderate.

I think history can now judge which theory - was correct.

We are now seeing from Time, Newsweek and other outlets a recycling of that same theory - namely that the Democrats, because of the "conservative" tilt of the new freshman class are going to have to be "moderates". This prediction is just as off base. The American people voted for change, not for slight tweaking.

As Tom Schaller points out much of the shift was away from moderate Republicans to progressive Democrats and as Nathan Newman notes Conservative is a great deal more progressive than it used to be.

One of the funniest political ads of this cycle was for independent, and conservative, Christy Mihos in Massachusetts. It featured a cartoon of Christy asking various people simple questions about "Why is the Big Dig 12 billion dollars over budget?" The cartoon then shows an anatomically impossible representation of rectal-cranial inversion. This is the punditocracy on the issue of being "moderate".

The reality is that while the last three incoming classes of Democratic House members have been to the right of the party as a whole - as tabulated by various partisan indexes on voting patterns - this class is to the left of the caucus as a whole. The argument for a more "conservative" caucus holds no water - only a few Democrats were elected from conservative districts. More over, even many conservative Democrats have recoiled in horror at the way the Republicans have run the House into the ground over the last 12 years.

Take, for example, Murtha (D-PA) and Ike Skelton (D-MO). Both are conservative Democrats, Ike perhaps the most conservative Democrat in the house. However, both are closely associated with the Democratic critique of how the war was run. Ike hasn't been calling for more forces, nor has Murtha, simply because neither man trusts George Bush to do anything right. They might think that Iraq could be won by the US Military, but they both clearly believe that there is nothing that the US Military can win, that George Bush can't lose.

Thus even many representatives who are at the conservative end of the spectrum are not going to behave like Bush-lite, father or son sorts of people. The hope of the muddled middlecrats that the Blue Dogs and the Republican caucus can come to some form of working majority over the head of Speaker Pelosi is misguided. It is misguided and wrong for reasons which any political reporter should be able to fathom.

First, as people such as Thomas Ricks of the Washington Post have reported on several occasions, the 'phants treated the blue dog Democrats with complete contempt as the majority. Perhaps Ike Skelton has more in common in his basic upbringing and sense of himself with other midwestern rural district represenatives, but you don't tell a proud man with a deep stubborn streak who has spent years mastering the military system that his vote doesn't matter. Ike would make a better Secretary of Defense than Rumsfeld did, or than Gates will - and memories are long in that part of the world.

Second, such a "bi-partisan" Red-Blue Dog coalition would not be able to command a majority on such issues as the budget, since the Blue Dogs can count, add and subtract, as a general rule, and they can see that the Republican obession with extending the Bush revenue reductions leads to fiscal disaster. And without the budget, there is no gravy.

Third, and most importantly, the American public didn't elect moderate Republicans. In fact, it hammered the moderate Republicans harder than in any election in recent memory. The defeated Republicans in the house were, by and large, from the most centrist third of the Republican caucus. The American public chose to hand power to Democrats, and most specifically a Democratic Party that promised a new direction - out of Iraq.

The campaign by the right, first telling people that the incoming Democrats are conservatives, which, in the House, they are not - and then by telling them that the "liberal activist" groups are showing up for a payoff - fails on its second part as well.

The liberal activist groups that are listed, the old line micro-politics groups - are not going to be held in high regard in the new Washington DC. The rule of payback is about to be put into place, many of these groups backed "moderate" Republicans as a way of seeming "bi-partisan". Many of these Republicans, headed by Lincoln Chafee - are not in Washington DC any more. More over, these groups have created a revolt from their own rear. NARAL will never, ever, ever get a good word from me, on any subject at any time. This is because they sell out when it counts. If it were up to NARAL, Mitch McConnell would be the new incoming Majority Leader. The same "liberal activist" groups that are so feared by the "moderates" have lost a great deal of their influence.

What is really going on here is a struggle between to groups of the old politics - the entrenched micro-issue activists and the entrenched top down media outlets. These groups are refighting the "policy entrepreneur" wars of the 1970's, 1980's and 1990's. Those wars are over, simply because micro-issue groups neither organize effectively, nor do they win elections. In fact, their participation is viewed negatively by the public. However, the media punditocracy is as disconnected from their putative base as the activist groups are. Poll after poll shows the media held in low regard. In short, one has two groups which, once upon a time, could deliver the mojo - in political fights and in elections, but whose influence is waning. During the period of their heyday they were competitors - top down media power against bottom up organizational power. Both were fighting over the surplus available in the post-modern system.

The pundits could push down, the activists could, if the organized enough people to create a wave, press upwards by getting coverage. These methods did not win the recent election. The punditocracy backed Bush to the end, the old line activists were virtually invisible in creating the conversation that led Americans to bolt from the war.

For this reason a great deal of the commentary about what is on the agenda for the Congress to be is out of place. We are not about to see a parade of single interest groups get their pet bills passed in a blizzard of pandering to micro-issues. Nor are we going to see the return of Bush 41 - George "Dubya" Bush has put token realists in before, and then had them do his bidding. Colin Powell should legally change his first name to "Tom" after his performance in the UN before the Iraq invasion. Paulson as Treasury Secretary is carrying the same inflationary growth line that has been in place in the Bush executive, Mankiw is another moderate Republican who spouted the hard right line while he was in place. One could extend the list even farther. More over Rice is not out as Secretary of State, and she is as hard line as Rumsfeld is. Cheney isn't making any public waves, but he has not been stripped of any of the authority in his portfolio of being the most powerful Vice President in American history.

If the "moderate/activist" paradigm comes from a fight over how mass power is generated and used, the "idealist/realist" fight is one which is equally fictional. Instead the two camps are "minimalist versus maximalist". The minimalist camp, whether idealist or realist in their goals, sees change as incremental. While the realists want to leave things alone, and the idealists have an overarching series of goals, both agree that progress is made with multi-lateral consensus and by continuous pressure, not by bold leaps. The maximalists, again whether realist or idealist, believe in the bold stroke.

Bush I was a soft maximalist - he was far more willing to use military power for political revision of other regimes - Panama was Iraq on a small scale and without the realities of an oil insurgency - than Reagan or Carter. Bush II is more of a maximalist than his father, but he is cut from the same cloth of believing in bold strokes. Bush I got his views from the CIA, where they are constantly seeking to turn a situation around with one action or operation or intelligence source. The neo-cons are the more maximalist wing of the same guns blazing anti-sovietism that focused on the DoD and Scoop Jackson. We are watching the policy fights within the Nixon Administration reënacted. We are not seeing a victory for realists over idealists, but a victory of soft maximalists over hard maximalists. This is not moderation.

Signs of moderation would be to end the World War III rhetoric - but Bolton is being shoved up before a hostile Senate, the domestic spying bill is on the lame duck Congress' agenda, and the world from the military logistical system is that there is no change in war philosophy in Iraq. The conversation over Iraq is between Bush and Blair, not Bush and Reid and Pelosi - this as reported in the Guardian.

It is fairly clear that while the American people spoke, the Fourth Estate is still in Republican hands, and more over, speaks a different language from the rest of Americans. No, the American people did not elect a Congress to push through gun control - but given the slant of the incoming class on gun control, any delusions in that direction are DOA. The American people did elect a Congress to end the extreme corruption of the recent years in Washington DC - something which the Fourth Estate refused to talk about more than a bare recitation of facts - and they did elect a Congress to extricate America from ground opperations in Iraq with all due haste. While "withdrawal now" was the talking point, everyone knew that "now" means "2009". The accusations of "cut and run" were not founded on any kind of reality among the candidates for the Democratic Party, but then, nor are the assertions of a Kinder, Gentler Bush Administration founded on any kind of reality.

Underneath this is a basic fallacy of pundit world view, and of a slice of avid newspaper reader of the old school. According to this view, what matters is guys in suits. Guys in suits make the decisions, guys in suits appear on televisions, guys in suits stand up to diversions. Thus people who look good in a suit on television, generally guys, are going to direct the business of the country. It has not occured to these guys in suits that they are simply highly placed peons, and that instead, the Bush executive - indeed most large US corporations - are controlled by a very few people, and the rest are simply parts in the machine. Maybe nice parts, but interchangeable and disposable.

The Times and Newsweeks of this world are taken seriously by this slice of public opinion, and therefore are pushing, again, the "guys in suits will govern from the center" line, just as they did after 2000 - and with equally little reality.

Instead what is going to be on the plate for the Democratic Congress is cementing the voters who just gave the Democrats the majority. While there will be a great deal of smallball governing for the left - for example ending the various harrassing Congressional directives towards the District of Columbia government - the top items on the agenda are going to be focused on the upper middle class voters whose defection from the GOP was the difference maker in Virginia, Connecticut, New York and Pennsylbania, and on rocky mountain and southwest individualist voters who brought Tester to the Senate, and who will be crucial if the Democrats want to build on their majority.

The War is going to be front and center, and not in the way of running a bad occupation better - because it cuts across all of the groups that backed this victory in '06. There are going to be a host of regulatory changes, and a halting of the general trend towards allowing corporations to act as if they are palatanates. Thus, AMT is on the table, which hammers upper middle class blue state couples with children. Thus, tightening the nuts and bolts at the Pentagon is on the table, because waste, fraud and abuse upset the meritocratic Ivy League educated voter. Thus energy prices are on the table, since this hammers the midwestern farmer and western rancher.

Also on the agenda is a careful reworking of the Patriot Act and No Child Left Behind, both of which have provisions which have become odious to the public. Sarbox is going to be revisited to smooth out its rough edges and make international compliance better.

How the Democrats handle the priorities on this plate of demand will determine whether they get a chance to, with a more reasonable occupant of the White House, pass issues which have a great deal of cachet in the base, but less so in the public at large. We aren't going to see "moderate" but we are going to see "cautious" simply because the Democrats know they have to run three hurdles - Blue Dog defection, Senate minority filibustering and delaying and finally a Bush Veto. They are going to serve up veto bait - in the form of stem cell research for example - but they are also going to pick issues to land on Bush's desk that he cannot well veto.

But to get back to the theme of some weeks ago, where you are going to see this Congress bare its teeth, is on the investigative front. This Congress is more progressive than the pundits think, because it has been made more progressive. Many of the people in it have moved to the left on a host of issues, simply because they have seen what the right looks like on those self same issues. The Blue Dogs have lived in conservative America.

One can see how thorough a rejection of the Republican way of government this last election was by looking at Governor's races. Even when Democratic incumbents were embattled, they survived. Iraq wasn't the issue. Take a look at how in Maine the two left candidates polled more than 50% on the Governor's race, even though a pro-war Senator was returned to office. Take a look at how many legislative chambers moved towards the Democrats. This was a top to bottom rejection of how the Republican theory of government operates.

While the pundits are once again talking about the triumph of the men in suits theory, and venting their paranoid delusional fanasies about a National Abortion Gay Rights Liberties Union conspiracy that runs the left, the real shockers of the next congress are going to be how conservatives Webb, Tester and McGaskill will end up being mavericks pushing very broad ideas. Webb has strong ideas about changing the defense establishment, Tester strong ideas about energy and McGaskill strong views about health and human services.

More over there is a growing revolt on the right wing which is going to create numerous openings for moves that will be radical overturns of the recent "big government conservative" theory that people like Brooks like to push. To take one example - the Obama-Coburn alliance on earmarks. The Republicans are not in a majority in the Senate today because of defections on their own right flank. This right flank is as anti-Patriot act as the ACLU is, this right flank will be more than willing to see big spending Republicans go down. This flank, in short, offers a number of openings for Reid and Pelosi to wedge off the right end of the Republican coalition, their neglected base - in pursuit of rather large changes in policy direction. These strange marriages, of which Ted Kennedy is one old master, and Obama a rapidly rising one - are not going to be "moderate", but they are going to find broad based support.

And that is going to be the key theme of the next 2 years - to get anything done the Democrats are going to have to have a very broad base of support. While the same pundits who proclaimed in 2001 that Bush would govern from the center are hoping to take an ax to their rivals, the Democratic Congress does not have the luxury of pandering the muddled middle hate, any more than it can pander to any other micro-issue group. Instead, we are going to see a lot of poll reading, and press conferences that start with some variation on "over 60% of Americans feel..."

Progressivism is about to get a chance to stand and deliver with a Congress that is far more willing to admit that Thatcherism isn't working here, and a Congress that is now heavier with maverick Democrats - Sanders, Tester, Webb are in, Feingold is staying in - than since the 1980's. The search isn't going to be for "the middle" against two entrenched extremes, but a search for a broad base against a reactionary core of about 30% which will not give way on anything at any time until forced. The fiction that the hard left and the hard right are of proportionate size, or danger, is just that, a fiction. The hard left comprises perhaps 20% of the Democratic vote, even in the most concentrated blue zone areas, the hard right comprises between 50% to 60% of the Republican vote, even in states like Maryland, where hard right Steele was the Senate nominee, and in winnable New Jersey where Kean Jr.'s Bushstampism snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

Thus, while the pundits may not like it, this Congress is going to be left of center, simply because that is where the center of gravity of a political spectrum that has to exclude the rabid religious right is going to be. We will see a number of maverick moves - a la McCain-Feingold, as Presidential contenders look to move the debate - and we are going to see a much different series of policies on trade and labor than we did before. The net result isn't going to be moderate, but the search for a new center.

One that isn't going to particularly look much like George Bush, older or younger.