Pushing the big liberal mandate meme.

Rejected as a blog topic yesterday: "Barack Won A Mandate: Here's why you shouldn't let anyone tell you differently," by Jonathan Chait. (I know that, at the link, it's called "Defining Barack Down: In which we separate the mandates from the boy-dates," but the other title is what The New Republic successfully teased me with in its "Today at TNR.com" email.) Reason for not blogging it: Text nowhere near as interesting as either title.

Today: "It's Time to Give Voters the Liberalism They Want: Don't believe pundits who say there's a centrist mandate," by Thomas Frank. I'm biting because: 1. It's starting to look like a meme, and 2. Frank's piece feels more substantial.

[It's] possible that, for once, the public weighed the big issues and gave a clear verdict on the great economic questions of the last few decades. It is likely that we really do want universal health care and some measure of wealth-spreading, and even would like to see it become easier to organize a union in the workplace, however misguided such ideas may seem to the nation's institutions of higher carping.

If it's possibly clear, it's not clear. Obama never identified himself with these positions in a way that can be said to have transformed a vote for him into a vote for them. We voted for the man, and he was (and is) a man who built his success on creating the appearance that he is whatever it is we want.