"Because Romney made opposition to raising tax rates on the superwealthy part of his campaign..."

"Obama seemed to interpret his defeat of his GOP challenger as a referendum on this point..."

"And I just want to point out, this was a central question during the election. It was debated over and over again. And on Tuesday night, we found out that the majority of Americans agree with my approach. And that includes Democrats, independents and a lot of Republicans across the country, as well as independent economists and budget experts."

Is that the way elections work? There's a struggle right now to impose an interpretation on the election. One man got more votes than the other. We were put in the position of having to vote for one man or other other. But how does that translate into what we want on particular issues? It translates through the power-holders insisting on the meaning they like. We still get to fight back. The interpretive process never ends.

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.