A new Democratic era? Maybe not

I still don’t buy the Democratic-dominance scenario.

Stan Greenberg, a prominent Democratic pollster, suggested the other day that voters are interested in Obama “because of his steadiness,” and not because of his progressive agenda. That sounds about right.

Swing voters – the folks in the middle of the electorate – checked out Obama during the three presidential debates, and judged him to be of keen intellect and good temperament, at a crisis moment when both traits are required. In terms of intellect, Obama is widely viewed as the antithesis of Bush; in terms of temperament, he is widely viewed as the antithesis of John McCain.

But just because Americans want something different, that doesn’t mean that the nation is trending leftward; indeed, as top Obama strategist David Axelrod remarked in Newsweek the other day, “I think right now people are in a pragmatic mood, not an ideological mood.” In other words, Obama is well-positioned to win not because of his liberal profile, but in spite of it.