Indeed, the Republicans do have a guaranteed 41 votes in the Senate and as Todd noted at that link this morning, David Gergen is already merrily spinning the notion that this means Obama should take heed that Americans want him to lean towards the center. Which is pundit-speak for moving right. The implication is that the pursuit of legitimacy in a representative government practically demands that Obama should bow to the center right will of the people in the matter.

The, um, ... Senate results should tell him this?

According to the 2007 census estimates, the State of Wyoming, with its two Republican Senators, has less population than the District of Columbia, with no Senator. Indeed, there are 11 states with less total population than Philadelphia's last estimated 1.4 million, and they get two Senators each. And for real representation in the Senate you should also plainly not live in California, where that nearly twelve percent of the nation's total population winds up with one fiftieth of the nation's Senate seats.

If you go through and add it up, leaving aside Minnesota's undecided 1.7 percent for now, only about 49.8 percent of the nearly 306 million people in the United States live in a state where there's even one Republican Senator. Only 24.4 percent live in a state where both seats are held by Republicans.

Taken from the other direction, 48.5 percent of the country's citizenry lives in states where the electorate wants to see only Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents run things in the Senate. Less than a quarter support having only Republicans do so. That's a 2:1 ratio of Democrat:Republican in terms of straightforward statewide mandates for one party or the other in terms of population represented. That leaves the potential public constituency for some sort of centrist (though it could as easily be center left as right, considering the presidential map and the makeup of the House) management of the Senate at slightly over a quarter.

To review, that's about a 2:1:1 ratio for left:center:right, with the cumulative left+center:right ratio of 3:1.

It's true that with our system being what it is, when Obama wants to pass legislation, he has to govern with the Senate as it is. Though if the will of the people matters to you even a little bit, a person might indeed wonder why the media don't put more pressure on Senate Republicans to respect the clear will of the public and legislate more from the left.

But ...

This is a center right country. This is a center right country. This is a center right country. Because what I tell you three times is true, as they say.

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On This Week this morning, George Will tried to advance Village conservative orthodoxy from "the New Deal didn't work" to the idea that Obama's cabinet signals an abandonment of the progressive movement. While sure there is some skepticism of some of Obama's cabinet selections on the left, the fact is that, as Arianna Huffington made clear in response of George Will, this idea that governing as a "centrist" and governing as a progressive are mutually exclusive is actually rather antiquated.

This is so untrue. Just watch or listen to Obama's radio address yesterday. That was a very very profoundly different plan for this country than we've heard for a long time. I  mean these were massive public investments. This was not a small government small deficit plan. And so the idea that we're living in a center-right country is refuted by all the facts. The center has shifted. What used to be progressive positions on global warming, on Iraq, on corporate responsibility, on health care are now solidly mainstream. We are still a divided country but it is two-thirds one-third, it is no longer fifty-fifty.

As Markos said after Obama gave in on FISA: if only he had run to the center, then he would have been where we are.

Watch Obama's weekly address below:

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