It looks like I might be part of the majority. How in the hell did that happen?

It should come as no surprise that conservative media figures repeat the myth that most Americans share their views. Even when Democrats win, conservatives claim that their ideology is still dominant. On election night 2006, Fox News Washington managing editor Brit Hume acknowledged that Democrats were winning, but stressed that "from what we could see from all the polling and everything else, it remains a conservative country." He did not say what "polling and everything else" he was referring to. Glenn Beck of CNN Headline News agreed, stating the following day that despite the Democratic victory, "the majority of Americans seem in favor of classically Republican points of view."

But it was not just conservatives; in fact, they were simply repeating what they had heard mainstream journalists say for some time. "This is basically not a liberal country," said John Harris, then of The Washington Post and now of The Politico, in May 2005. "It's a conservative country." Previewing the Democrats' prospects for victory three weeks before the 2006 election, CNN senior political correspondent Candy Crowley asserted that Democrats have been "on the losing side of the values debate, the defense debate and, oh yes, the guns debate." (Crowley presented no evidence that Democrats had been "on the losing side" of any of these debates.)

We do hear that all of the time, and I have often felt very disappointed by that. If most of America really was that conservative then we would continue to elect these warmongering, CEO hugging, oil company butt boys.

But it appears that I have been the victim of poor information.

The idea of an American public moving to the left -- or residing there in the first place -- seems to be outside the imagination of much of the press. But the data demonstrate that the American public is in fact progressive, far more so than conventional wisdom imagines them to be.

Further, the movement of public opinion, particularly on social issues, seems to be in one direction: to the left. Opinion on issues such as homosexuality and the role of women has grown steadily more progressive for the last few decades, while it is difficult to find an issue on which the public is more conservative now than it was 20 years ago.

Hah! Well that just makes my whole damn weekend!