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Go Home Left Behind: How Democrats Are Losing the Political Center ...

POLITICS SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

Left Behind: How Democrats Are Losing the Political Center

BY WILLIAM GALSTON

If you don’t think ideological perceptions matter in American politics, you need read no further. If you do and you’re a Democrat, there’s something to worry about. Even as the terms of the political debate in Washington, in the eyes of many Democrats, have moved steadily to the right, the electorate is increasingly likely to see itself as ideologically closer to the Republican Party than to Democrats. Unless Obama and Democrats can find a solution to this riddle—and find one fast—they will be contesting the 2012 election on forbidding terrain.

In mid-2005, as disaffection with the Bush administration and the Republican Party was gathering momentum, the Pew Research Center asked American to place themselves and the political parties on a standard left-right ideological continuum. At that time, average voters saw themselves as just right of center and equidistant from the two political parties. Independents considered themselves twice as far away from the Republican Party as from the Democrats, presaging their sharp shift toward the Democrats in the 2006 mid-term election.

In August of this year, Pew posed a very similar question (note to survey wonks: Pew used a five-point scale, versus six in 2005), but the results were very different. Although average voters continue to see themselves as just right of center, they now place themselves twice as far away from the Democratic Party as from the Republicans. In addition, Independents now see themselves as significantly closer to the Republican Party, reversing their perceptions of six years ago.

There’s another difference as well. In 2005, Republicans’ and Democrats’ views of their own parties dovetailed with the perceptions of the electorate as a whole. Today, while voters as a whole agree with Republicans’ evaluation of their party as conservative, they disagree with Democrats, who on average see their party as moderate rather than liberal. So when Independents, who see themselves as modestly right of center, say that Democrats are too liberal, average Democrats can’t imagine what they’re talking about.

Compounding the problem, the American people are gradually polarizing. According to Gallup, twenty years ago, as Bill Clinton began his presidential campaign, self-described moderates formed the plurality of the electorate—43 percent; conservatives were 36 percent, liberals 17 percent. By the summer of 2011, the conservative share had risen to 41 percent and liberals to 21 percent, while moderates declined to 36 percent, surrendering their plurality status to conservatives. Because nearly all conservatives now vote for Republicans and liberals for Democrats, the share of the shrinking pool of moderates that Democrats need to build a majority is now larger than ever.

Another Gallup finding that should alert Democrats is the ongoing collapse of public confidence in government. A survey released earlier this week found that Americans now believe that the federal government wastes 51 cents of every dollar it spends, the highest estimate ever recorded. Twenty-five years ago, that figure stood at only 38 cents. While estimates of waste at the state and local level remain lower than for the federal level, they have also risen by double digits in recent decades.

Overall, it’s hard to avoid concluding that the ideological playing-field heading into 2012 is tilted against Democrats. This reality only deepens the strategic dilemma the White House now confronts. The conventional strategy for an incumbent is to secure the base before the general public gets fully engaged and then reach out to the swing voters whose decisions spell the difference between victory and defeat. By contrast, the Obama team spent most of 2011 in what turned out to be a failed effort to win over the Independent voters who deserted Democrats in droves last November, in the process alienating substantial portions of the base. To rekindle the allegiance and enthusiasm of core supporters, the president now finds himself having to draw sharp ideological lines, risking further erosion among Independents and even moderate Democrats. Tellingly, a number of at-risk Democratic senators up for reelection in 2012 have already refused to go along with key elements of the president’s recent proposals.

Granted, ideology isn’t everything. Political scientists have long observed that Americans are more liberal on particulars than they are in general—ideologically conservative but operationally liberal. (Surveys have shown majority support for most individual elements of the president’s jobs and budget packages.) And the Republicans could undermine their chances by nominating a presidential candidate who is simply too hard-edged conservative for moderates and Independents to stomach.

In the face of widespread skepticism and disillusion, it will be an uphill battle for Democrats to persuade key voting blocks that government can really make their lives better. But if they fail, the public will continue to equate public spending with waste, the anti-government message will continue to resonate, and Democrats will be in dire straits when heading into what is shaping up as a pivotal election.

William Galston is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing editor for The New Republic.

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good analysis Mr. Galston. As a registered democrat who thought the dems had finally emerged from their tax-and-spend wilderness in the 1990's (even while destroying manufacturing in a truly bi-partisan effort), exposure to the illiberal left since 2008 has shifted many of my position to slightly right of center, thus making me the object of derision and abuse in many TNR threads. Now, if the GOP could ditch Norquistians, and listen to Tom Coburn instead of Jim DeMint, America might have a chance. waiting for a satellite to destroy my house - easier than trying to sell it.

- K2K

September 24, 2011 at 12:52am

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The 1990s. A flourishing wilderness, all in all.

- ironyroad

September 24, 2011 at 1:47am

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Sounds like an environmentalist's dream irony. In anticipation of the lefty lynchmob, I'll just go ahead and associate myself with K2K's position up front. Just when it looked that the Dems had escaped the clutches of dreamers who imagine that a dollar sent to Washington is automatically a dollar spent for the Common Good, here we go again. The ever-shrinking leftist minority still imagines that if they only get the message right, average voters (who by dint of more actual experience of government in military service, employment in regulation-sensitive businesses, etc than the average left-winger, are more skeptical), will adopt their benign view of The State.

- Robert Powell

September 24, 2011 at 5:11am

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At some point, winning becomes less about attempting to be wherever the centre is and more about turning out your voters. Congressional midterms are a significant worry. I am upset that the Democrats won with the 2006 electorate but lost with the 2010 electorate. But about 50% more people vote in presidential years. (Rule of thumb: 40% in midterms (good), 60% in presidential years (great).) And the Republicans famously admit to fearing higher turnouts. It's especially bad these days, since their base loves them and their branches are scared of the extremeness they're seeing in Washington. Note this from the Pew typology (http://people-press.org/files/2011/05/2011-typology-s1-01.png , http://people-press.org/2011/05/04/section-1-the-political-typology-2/): The 2010 midterms revealed the fragility of this electoral base. While both Solid Liberals and Hard-Pressed Democrats remained solidly behind Democratic congressional candidates in 2010, support slipped substantially among New Coalition Democrats and Post-Moderns – not because Republicans made overwhelming gains in these groups, but because their turnout dropped so substantially. To the extent that the nation is polarized, it's pretty clear the Democrats aren't going to pick off Libertarians and Disaffecteds based on the AJA and the president's tax plan. The former will be turned off by taxes in general and the latter by the list of regulations under Obama. But if the election becomes a choice between Obama and a person that has painted himself as against SS (e.g., Fed Up!) and Medicare (the Obama campaign will dredge up the Ryan plan in all its dirty particulars), Disaffecteds will break more evenly towards the Democrats. At which point the president has to worry about turning out the more stable elements of his coalition, which is notoriously fickle. This includes the youth (any of the recent debate outbursts is scary to Post-Moderns, so a 2004 gin-up-the-base strategy is fine), New Coalition Democrats (they are mostly minorities and likely view the Obama vision for America outlined in the past two weeks as much better than the Republican vision), Hard-Pressed Democrats (who are solid Democrats in search of economic policies that benefit the middle and poor rather than the rich), and Solid Liberals (drama queens who will eventually see that it's Obama or the Republican circus). Note that Obama wins by avoiding socially liberal positions, which is the obvious reason he doesn't become a stereotype by calling for gay marriage. This is a toxic position to New Coalition and Hard-Pressed Democrats, who are socially conservative. I think President Obama is a great campaigner, actually. I'm less worried about how he'll bash Republicans on the stump and more worried about the economic backdrop he will get to campaign on (thus, worried about how much harm we're doing to the economy of the same time next year) as well as how efficient the state operations are at fielding candidates. This was something you appreciate in retrospect when you look at the battle between Dean's 50 state strategy and Rahm's stewardship of the 2006 Congressional campaign that got us lots of Blue Dogs who hung tough in 2010. The harvest maximized the Democratic presence in some unusual places, and campaigning on fair stewardship of social programs can probably do that again. Even if it can't, it's absolutely necessary in case the Democrats want a House majority and a Senate majority, which is necessary to get anything of substance done.

- chaitless

September 24, 2011 at 7:41am

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Any politician who would take advice from William Galston, adviser to the Mondale and Gore campaigns, would be out of his mind. The only thing that Galston appears to know less about than politics is economics. Yes, it takes no genius to observe that Obama is losing political support all along the spectrum, and that the country is being dragged to the right, but does Galston consider at all how this has occurred? The Republicans have been growing ever more ideologically extreme and intransigent. The advice of the Galston and his tiny camp of followers here is for the Democrats to abandon ideological coherence, pander to the right, offer up all sorts of compromise that incarnates supply-side economic wackery, destined therefore to be a complete failure as the tax cuts that weighed down the stimulus were a failure, look "reasonable." In other words, do just what Obama has been doing. How has that been working out? Not well. It has produced just the disastrous state of political affairs the Galston warns of. So, of course, Galston wants more of the same. The problem is that Obama didn't move right far enough fast enough. Or, even better, it is all the fault of those critics on the left. Somehow we are to understand that if Obama and the Demcrats were not being criticized by the left, or were literally adopting whole the destructive economic nuttery of the right and their libertarian moons that things would be fine. THEN they would be the darlings of the center. All complete political garbage. The economics of the right-wing is pure insanity that is driving us over a cliff. Getting to the cliff faster, and having Democratic fingerprints all over it, is hardly the answer. Nor is being so ideologically mushy in the effort to pander to the right that it is impossible to figure out what Democrats are for. That is indeed the problem. The Republicans have a simple message -- government is the problem, government is waste, government spending is destroying the economy, taxes are too high, taxes are too progressive, "entitlements" are killing us -- all of which is flat-out wrong. Democrats, soiling themselves with the Republican-libertarian-supply side message, stand for nothing discernible. No coherent message. Want one? Listen to Elizabeth Warren. She is saying what all Democrats should be saying, and should have been saying, every day 24 hours a day. Think that communications, message discipline, rather than policy, is not the essence of politics? Then you are a moron. And if you are such a moron, what do you observe if that is you bother to look at the actual world at all? Do you observe the Republicans gaining all this political ground with policy or with words? What do you see? Does the way in which the world actually works have any bearing on your ideas about politics and policy? Not if you are William Galston and company.

- roidubouloi

September 24, 2011 at 7:42am

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(The comment box ate my homework!) At some point, winning becomes less about attempting to be wherever the centre is and more about turning out your voters. Congressional midterms are a significant worry. I am upset that the Democrats won with the 2006 electorate but lost with the 2010 electorate. But about 50% more people vote in presidential years. (Rule of thumb: 40% in midterms (good), 60% in presidential years (great).) And the Republicans famously admit to fearing higher turnouts. It's especially bad these days, since their base loves them and their branches are scared of the extremeness they're seeing in Washington. Note this from the Pew typology: The 2010 midterms revealed the fragility of this electoral base. While both Solid Liberals and Hard-Pressed Democrats remained solidly behind Democratic congressional candidates in 2010, support slipped substantially among New Coalition Democrats and Post-Moderns – not because Republicans made overwhelming gains in these groups, but because their turnout dropped so substantially. (http://people-press.org/files/2011/05/2011-typology-s1-01.png , http://people-press.org/2011/05/04/section-1-the-political-typology-2/) To the extent that the nation is polarized, it's pretty clear the Democrats aren't going to pick off Libertarians and Disaffecteds based on the AJA and the president's tax plan. The former will be turned off by taxes in general and the latter by the list of regulations under Obama. But if the election becomes a choice between Obama and a person that has painted himself as against SS (e.g., Fed Up!) and Medicare (the Obama campaign will dredge up the Ryan plan in all its dirty particulars), Disaffecteds will break more evenly towards the Democrats. At which point the president has to worry about turning out the more stable elements of his coalition, which is notoriously fickle. This includes the youth (any of the recent debate outbursts is scary to Post-Moderns, so a 2004 gin-up-the-base strategy is fine), New Coalition Democrats (they are mostly minorities and likely view the Obama vision for America outlined in the past two weeks as much better than the Republican vision), Hard-Pressed Democrats (who are solid Democrats in search of economic policies that benefit the middle and poor rather than the rich), and Solid Liberals (drama queens who will eventually see that it's Obama or the Republican circus). Note that Obama wins by avoiding socially liberal positions, which is the obvious reason he doesn't become a partisan stereotype by calling for gay marriage. This is a toxic position to New Coalition and Hard-Pressed Democrats, who are socially conservative. I think President Obama is a great campaigner, actually. I'm less worried about how he'll bash Republicans on the stump and more worried about the economic backdrop he will get to campaign on (thus, worried about how much harm we're doing to the economy of the same time next year) as well as how efficient the state operations are at fielding candidates. This was something you appreciate in retrospect when you look at the battle between Dean's 50 state strategy and Rahm's stewardship of the 2006 Congressional campaign that got us lots of Blue Dogs who hung tough in 2010. The harvest maximized the Democratic presence in some unusual places, and campaigning on fair stewardship of social programs can probably do that again. Even if it can't, it's absolutely necessary in case the Democrats want a House majority and a Senate majority, which is necessary to get anything of substance done.

- chaitless

September 24, 2011 at 7:43am

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I agree with roidubouloi. Americans may SAY that they are small government individualists, but in reality they are a bunch of SUV driving comfort seekers. If the choice is between a GOP that will undermine Social Security and Medicare, and not even try to create jobs--OR--a Democratic Party that protects middle class social programs, and is at least seen as making a reasonable effort on the jobs front, then the Democrats have a chance. If the Democrats are seen as a mushy, weaker version of the Republicans on economics, then they will lose the white working class based on social issues and tribal identification.

- NateG

September 24, 2011 at 8:03am

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I substantively don't get K2K's complaints. Like, what is this illiberal left and how is it shifting centrists rightward? The most leftist thing Obama did was nationalize the student loan industry (which took away a reliable corporate welfare source) and the auto industry, which was rescued (!) through keen capitalist management. On this score, if you match up Obama's turnaround success with Romney's, it's not even close. Obama used the powers of government to turn a screeching failure into a job creating industry again. Romney stripped corporations of their pensions and shipped jobs overseas. The tax-and-spend wilderness was the 1960s and early 1970s. Carter did not govern as a palaeoliberal, much less a "progressive". Nixon and, to a lesser extent, Johnson are the tax-and-spenders that have been minting Republican campaigns for decades now. They just capitalize off the fact that since Democrats are committed to preserving the social safety net --and you can only do that by maintaining tax revenues--they can be tarred as tax-and-spenders. That's what Reagan did throughout the 1980s, even though he operated by taxing little and spending lots. I'm assuming that your fondness for Coburn (who gets the same grade of 96 from the American Conservative Union that James Inhofe gets) is more because you may be a social moderate or social conservative. Fine. I'm a social moderate, and your theory only works if Coburn and Lindsey Graham are the most conservative elements in the delegation, because then they can follow their better angels and work with Democrats. That's not going to happen for many years. And it's pretty blindingly obvious that to the extent that the country is "center-right"--which it is on social issues--the Democrats have some of those people in their tent and aren't going to rock the boat on the national stage pushing for that stuff. They learned from the 1968 and 1972 primaries that you only show the centrist side in national campaigns and from the 1990s that you govern as a centrist. Note too that the country isn't actually "center right". That makes absolutely no sense, unless you adhere to the version of math where Karl Rove sets the axes. The country is properly understood as center right on social issues and center left on economic issues. If the Democrats can avoid the Charybdis of anything the Christian Right is prepared to fight a crusade over, they can deal handily with the Scylla of mitigating the Great Divergence on behalf of the middle and working classes. There are so many more regular people than rich people it's scary that they don't do this more often. (And to Robert Powell, if you really think the dollars of the mega-rich [increasingly people like Koch] that magically continue to escape the clutches of the tax collectors are really staying in this country to help us achieve the common good instead of following overseas consumer markets or gambling on investments in Brazil, then I have a dilapidated bridge to sell you.)

- chaitless

September 24, 2011 at 8:09am

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"Another Gallup finding that should alert Democrats is the ongoing collapse of public confidence in government." Of course, "government" is a euphemism for America; the public has lost confidence in America, in particular America's ability to solve problems. And why is that? Sure, there are many on the right who don't view themselves as part of anything, including America, and are interested only in what serves, in their view, their individual interests. Others, many in the middle that Galston writes about, simply blow with the wind, going this way or that depending on the latest news. Then there are those with raised expectations, in part attributable to Obama, expectations that have been dashed by the combination of the severity of the Depression, the intransigence of the Republicans, and the "government's" (i.e., our) inability to solve the problem. What to do? Do what Reagan did (and FDR before him). People forget that Reagan was at his best when praising America, the city on a hill. Sure, he simultaneously attacked "government", but that was only a foil, for he called on "government" to solve what he considered America's greatest challenge, the Soviet Union. Today's Republicans have become yesterday's Democrats in their pessimism, in their belief that "we" (i.e., the government) cannot solve our problems, that our only hope is providence. What Obama needs to do is emphsize that distinction, the difference between those who believe in America's greatness, an America that can successfully face any challenge no matter how grave, and those who would place America's future in the hands of fate. America is in decline, economic decline, and will soon lose its place as the sole super-power. Those on the right believe America can maintain its position through hard power. That's both a fantasy and extremely dangerous. There is an alternative, a re-built America to reverse the economic decline and establish America once again as the pre-eminent power, the city on the hill. It's a choice between an optimistic America and an America that has lost both its confidence and its way.

- rayward

September 24, 2011 at 8:42am

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The mystery of why the public identifies itself as conservative while embracing liberal positions on issues is resolved if you understand that positions on issues is political while our identification with a particular ideology is a function of sociology, psychology and temperament. The public supports liberal political policies because it's in their self-interest to. But liberalism and progressivism as over-arching belief systems grow out of societies that feel an emotional attachment to one another, have a sense of oneness and a share a common destiny. That is why Fox News, conservative talk radio and hate-mongers like Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin work so relentlessly to undermine that fellow-feeling in order to contaminate the soil out of which liberalism and progressivism might grow. It is also why they are so well-paid, their divisive and non-too-subtle racism being invaluable to promoting the corrosive attitudes that have been on display among the Republican debate crowds cheering for criminals being executions, hollering for plugs being pulled on the uninsured and booing a soldier in Iran who happens to be gay -- all raw emotions that feed right wing conservative movements and always have. Conservative media has been most successful at the emotional level by carpet bombing out of existance the "compassion" and "empathy" between groups so as to promote a tribal, fractured community unable to support liberalism as a prevailing temperament. This has taken root among people who otherwise support liberal political programs for the simple fact that humans are tribal by nature. It is in our DNA and requires extraordinary efforts to get us to move past it. A good example of this dynamic is the New Deal and Great Society -- very similar as government programs but with vastly different historical legacies as the New Deal produced a liberal coalition that governed the country for half a century while the Great Society produced a right wing backlash whose ill effects are still with us today. The difference is race. The New Deal was a white man's program while the Great Society tried to extend those benefits to blacks and other minorities. Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch took note and created a progapanda network to protect Murdoch's fortune by sowing the seeds of racial and ideological division within a pluralist society so as to prevent the emergence of a progressive political movement in which individuals would be asked to contribute to the welfare of people outside their particular kinship group and tribe -- a very difficult proposition even for a "modern" democracy like ours, as right wing conservatives better than liberals understand very well.

- TedFrier

September 24, 2011 at 8:55am

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"In the face of widespread skepticism and disillusion, it will be an uphill battle for Democrats to persuade key voting blocks that government can really make their lives better."
While Democratic politicians are busy persuading the public of the virtues of their policies, the Republicans are busy obtaining power. The problem is that Republicans unify for that purpose while Democrats fight spread out. Clinton and Obama could distance themselves from Democrats in Congress. When a Republican Michigan Congressman would vote against a Republican President's bill, he got threatened.

- Nusholtz

September 24, 2011 at 9:06am

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I remember a bumper sticker on police cars in the Sixties: "Next time you need help call a hippie." I would modify that for present times: "Next time you need help call a Republican." Independent voters won't be so independent, if the Republicans take back the White House in 2012. Poisonous Republican economic policies will turn America into a Third World country. Remember, the last three huge crashes in our economy came under Republican presidents--Hoover, Reagan (S & L's), and Bush. With a Republican in the Oval Office, our country will plummet into a deep depression. And Independents, along with Republicans and Democrats, will be thronging to government offices just to stay alive. They won't be thronging to business offices. Corporate America is, again, stealing pension funds. It was in the news last week. Republicans say that only business can save us. I repeat: Next time you need help call a Republican.

- magboy47.

September 24, 2011 at 10:55am

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Great post, TedFrier! Nevertheless, if you follow your argument through to its conclusion, there is no way Obama could have won in 2008. So it's clearly possible -- at moments -- to push back against the pressure of corrosion and division.

- ironyroad

September 24, 2011 at 12:46pm

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"Listen to Elizabeth Warren. She is saying what all Democrats should be saying, and should have been saying, every day 24 hours a day. Think that communications, message discipline, rather than policy, is not the essence of politics? Then you are a moron. And if you are such a moron, what do you observe if that is you bother to look at the actual world at all? Do you observe the Republicans gaining all this political ground with policy or with words? What do you see? Does the way in which the world actually works have any bearing on your ideas about politics and policy? Not if you are William Galston and company." Roi, you're talking political nonsense again! While I love Elizabeth Warren and hope she becomes my next Senator here in Massachusetts, it must be pointed out that Warren can say the things she is saying because she is not running for President of the United States, she is running for Senator in the state of Massachusetts. Huge difference. The problem with the Democratic party is the intransigence of the far left, who while complaining loudly about everybody else, does absolutely nothing to advance the very causes they advocate. Where is the leftist answer to the Tea Party? Where is the leftist answer to Grover Norquist? Contrast Paul Krugman with Grover Norquist, the former only talks a good game, while the latter backs up his game with his play. The result? Krugman is reduced to lamenting he's been right just about everything, with nothing to show for it. Meanwhile Norquist holds sway over American tax policy in ways Krugman can only dream of. "Yes, it takes no genius to observe that Obama is losing political support all along the spectrum, and that the country is being dragged to the right, but does Galston consider at all how this has occurred? The Republicans have been growing ever more ideologically extreme and intransigent." Again, I ask... where is the left's answer to the extreme right? While you were carping about Obama, the extreme right's been taking no prisoners. It's time to get a clue, Roi:

The New Norquist: Meet the GOP’s Latest Hardline Power Broker In the middle of it all... Colin Hanna, President of the conservative activist group Let Freedom Ring and organizer of the Cut, Cap, and Balance pledge that most of the coalition members in the room would later sign. Even when set against the GOP’s long-standing affinity for pledges, few have been as radical or as noteworthy as the Cut, Cap, and Balance covenant that nearly derailed a deal to raise the nation’s debt ceiling last month. And it owes its existence to Hanna, who, according to leaders of the coalition, helped steer messaging and broker policy divides for the impressive array of both fiscal and social conservative groups that threw their full weight behind the pledge. Hanna’s recent behind-the-scenes star turn marks an impressive leap from only six years ago, when he was finishing a stint as county commissioner for rural Chester County, Pennsylvania, just outside Philadelphia. How did this small-town pol become an important intermediary to the conservative groups most bent on cutting federal spending to the bone? But Hanna’s big break came... [when] he crossed paths with John Templeton Jr., the son and successor of eccentric, devout billionaire investor and philanthropist John Templeton. The two connected over their outrage about George Soros’s moveon.org, and Templeton agreed to seed Hanna with $1 million to start Let Freedom Ring. The organization aimed to provide a conservative counterweight to Soros’ well-funded media plays. http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/95305/colin-hanna-cut-cap-balance-debt-ceiling
Let me repeat that... "The organization aimed to provide a conservative counterweight to Soros’ well-funded media plays." The country is being dragged to the right because know-it-all leftists would rather turn their guns on fellow Democrats than actually do something to counterbalance the conservative narrative. That's our problem in a nutshell.

- wkwami

September 24, 2011 at 2:02pm

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maybe I should have used wkwami's "know-it-all leftists". and, I am not a social conservative - but I decided in 2005 that abortion had divided America so much that it should no longer be an issue that decides my vote. I have zero affinity for this Norquistian GOP, but I am also disillusioned that the Dems forgot why the fiscal responsibility of the 1990's enabled them to finally recapture Congress in 2006, only to blow it in their two years of one-party rule. Obama never became the leader of the Dems, and whatever he does just shows that absence of real leadership. I am not sure who could do better, but I sure wish Obama had listened more to Sheila Bair on the housing crisis and to Robert Kuttner on the economy in early 2009, and less to Nancy Pelosi, who failed to understand that the Blue Dogs gave the Dems their majorities. It is what it is.

- K2K

September 24, 2011 at 2:25pm

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I ain't going to get a clue from you, wkwami, because you are as clueless as they come. The notion that leftists, however defined, are to blame for the abject failure of Obama's strategy of appeasement is complete nonsense. There is not the slightest reason to believe, ever, that the absence of left criticism of Obama would have made his strategy of appeasing the right and adopting its narrative as his own even infinitesimally more successful in preventing the lurch to the right. He enabled it with his failure to articulate any Democratic alternative. Now you blame the party rank and file for failing to do the party leader's job of being the voice of the party. Face it wkwami. Our post-partisan president refused to be the leader of the Democratic party and thus left a total vacuum that no one else could fill. Reminds me of your complaint that Paul Krugman cannot criticize because he never went out and did Obama's political job for him. How much more clueless can you get, wkwami? Obama would not provide the leadership and organizing principles for the Congressional caucus. He considered himself above the nasty work of partisan combat. He thought his ludicrous olive branches to the right would avoid the need. His strategy failed miserably. The left has zero to do with his failure. What you ask now is that we endorse his failed strategy. Wouldn't matter if we did. The damage is largely done. If Obama cannot figure out how to fight the battles he should have been facing over the last three years, no "aw shucks it's alright you did your best" from "the left" is going to help matters one iota. It is the job of the party leadership to articulate that which counterbalances the conservative narrative and organize, not just beg for, the support of the party membership for that narrative, if that is, it expresses the goals of the party. Obama flunked. To bad for all of us. But you cannot lay his failure at the feet of everyone else. If he is criticized now for his failure, too bad. You should have joined your voice to those of the critics when there was still time. But you know-it-all post-partisan Pollyanna fantasists would rather train your guns on fellow Democrats, scape-goating the members of the Democratic party who actually think it is suppose to mean something, than actually do the job. What on earth does the fact that Elizabeth Warren is not running for president have to do with anything? She has the voice and the brains to articulate the goals of the party, the nature of the social compact, in a manner that can connect with the people who are otherwise prone to believe Republican, right-wing, libertarian bullshit. An example for our MIA political leader even if she were running somewhere only for Town Clerk. Bullshit, as ever wkwami.

- roidubouloi

September 24, 2011 at 3:20pm

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roi once again lines up the Democrat firing squad in a circle. I'm prepared to accept wkwami's point that running for President is different from running for the Senate in Massachusetts, and that a little healthy self-criticism is a useful thing for a party to have. Certainly roi's correct on O's failure to lead effectively, in my view more destructively when Dem's controlled the whole government than when he had to contend with a Republican-controlled House and a cleverly-led Senate minority. He's not by nature keen on legislating, and as we all knew and for the most part were willing to accept, was about as inexperienced in serious political leadership as any President in easy recall. But he will be running for re-election having been POTUS for a full term, which is about the ultimate resume item. The real question for the next year is not who fucked up first or worse over the last few years, but what do we do now to secure O's re-election, which I think would be in the long tradition of Lesser Evils.

- Robert Powell

September 24, 2011 at 4:00pm

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"What on earth does the fact that Elizabeth Warren is not running for president have to do with anything?" This is why you need to get a clue. You can't run the right campaign without the right electorate, i.e. the Massachusetts electorate is tailored to liberal messaging. That's why Ted Kennedy kept winning (how far did he get as a Presidential candidate?). "She has the voice and the brains to articulate the goals of the party, the nature of the social compact, in a manner that can connect with the people who are otherwise prone to believe Republican, right-wing, libertarian bullshit. An example for our MIA political leader even if she were running somewhere only for Town Clerk." You think politics is about having the voice and brains to articulate...? You think LBJ's failure to get a second term was due to his lack of a voice and brains to articulate...? You think those who don't share your views are simply prone to believing libertarian bullshit? This type of condescending attitude is why leftism is largely irrelevant today. The left's pseudo-societal altruism - we know what's good for you, and we're going to give it to you whether you like it or not - does not message well. The right on the other hand is saying you know what's good for you, and we're going work with you to get it. Now, which of these two messages do you think is selling well? So keep blaming people for being prone to believing libertarian bullshit, and they will in turn keep tuning you out. Now, let's assume for the sake of argument that Obama is a failure, so what has the left accomplished on its own when faced with a leader they claim is unable to lead? They carp, and that's it. The right on the other hand knows how to take action outside of party leadership. In fact they seek to influence their party, hence the Tea Party, the likes of Grover Norquist and Colin Hanna. The left has Paul Krugman telling them "more stimulus", Keynesian economics or bust. How's that working for ya?

- wkwami

September 24, 2011 at 4:02pm

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I think it's interesting to note that in a CBS Poll, the public showed a greater propensity to describe the President as liberal recently than just six months ago, which raises the question of what actually drives these perceptions. We need a political scientist to delve into that possibly. The other thing I'd note is I think of Galston's summary is a bit flawed. He writes, "By contrast, the Obama team spent most of 2011 in what turned out to be a failed effort to win over the Independent voters who deserted Democrats in droves last November, in the process alienating substantial portions of the base. To rekindle the allegiance and enthusiasm of core supporters, the president now finds himself having to draw sharp ideological lines, risking further erosion among Independents and even moderate Democrats." Galston is correct that Obama tried to win over swing voters earlier this year and this didn't work, but he seems to be inducting much of the rest. Did Obama's effort to win over independents really alienate base voters? They seemed to be largely sticking with him, in many respects. There have been some declines in support among liberals, but the support among liberals and Democrats has been relatively high for Democrats in hard times, and they might be upset about jobs and the economy, not Obama's efforts to win over swing voters. Secondly, many of you keep saying he's aiming for the left with his recent proposals, but I think you actually miss the point. As you noted, Obama's efforts to win over swing voters by moving right weren't very successful. Moreover, it's important to distinguish between elite centrists and rank and file centrists. Do these proposals really risk alienating swing voters? Most of these groups supported key elements of the jobs package. They support taxing the rich. They don't want to cut Social Security and Medicare to reduce the deficit. All of that is consistent with what the President is proposing. He's not loudly advocating for say a financial transactions tax, upping food stamps, and lots of direct job creation from the government in the WPA-style. As Galston noted, many, many surveys have found this group favors our balanced approach to the GOP all-cuts approach. Ultimately, Galston's assertion that this latest posture is about reaching out to the base is somewhat misguided as Greg Sargent pointed out. It's a different approach. Guy Molneux of Hart Research had a poll in February that forced people to choose between a Democrat who attacked GOP budget cutting and demanded tax fairness and a Democrat focused on bipartisanship and deficit reduction. By twenty percentage points, people preferred the former.

- darklayers

September 24, 2011 at 4:38pm

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K2K, though, most of the spending was through the stimulus program, which helped the economy. And independents are particularly responsive to actual economic conditions. The only tax hike in the past few years was the one in the health care law, and polls show independents didn't mind it.

- darklayers

September 24, 2011 at 4:42pm

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"You think politics is about having the voice and brains to articulate...?" Yeah, I do. I agree with Abraham Lincoln about that: "Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed." Do you think he, the greatest political genius in American history, had more of a clue than you do, wkwami? Now, does that mean you make any sort of policy error, no matter how disastrous, such as the Vietnam War, and still survive if you have the voice and brains? No, of course not. But if you cannot move people with the tools of politics -- we persuade in a democracy, we do not imprison political opponents -- then you are political nothing. The converse of the obvious that you cannot survive any policy error is that policy successes -- such as the Obama successes you like to count out loud -- also ensure nothing politically if you cannot articulate a persuasive narrative that the public will support. Your babbling on about condescension, etc. etc. in unconscious echo of the Republican attack on the Democratic party (are you actually a Republican wkwami?) is yet another illustration of your utter confusion between politics and policy. No, you don't win the political argument by telling people that you know better than they what is good for them. Do you think successful political rhetoric is characterized by stupidity and that the only possibility for the left to speak to our society is stupidly? What has the left -- you mean the Democratic party don't you? -- accomplished on its own with a lack of leadership at the very top? Jackshit. Proving my point. What's your point? That Obama is not a failure as a political leader? That a party does not need effective leaders? Are you suggesting that the more liberal elements of the party hold the party hostage as the extremist Republicans do? Do you even have a point?

- roidubouloi

September 24, 2011 at 5:02pm

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I don't "blame" people for being prone to believe right-wing libertarian bullshit. I take it as a given, a fact of life, that should be met with a much more effective class of left-wing bullshit. Yo, on the other hand, hang on desperately to the delusion, in the face of copious evidence to the contrary, that the Democratic party will be rewarded by the electorate for good policy either enacted or proposed. How dumb is that?

- roidubouloi

September 24, 2011 at 5:05pm

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"Do you think he, the greatest political genius in American history, had more of a clue than you do, wkwami?" What a stupid question, rhetorical or not. Whenever you don't have an effective response to an issue you resort to this kind of silliness. I will ask my question again... What is the know-it-all left's counterweight to the Tea Party, the likes of Grover Norquist and Colin Hanna? Answer the question, Roi. Tick tock!

- wkwami

September 24, 2011 at 5:32pm

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darklayers: I still believe the Dems should have allowed all of the irresponsible Bush43 tax cuts expire when they still had their majorities, altho maybe not on dividends. Absence of political courage, and they had already lost the House. The original stimulus was too skewed to the belief that we were in a normal V- or U- shaped job loss recession, which was not true (75% of new jobs created in the Bush43 housing bubble economy were linked to housing). I could go on, but we are where we are, and until the housing crisis is finally dealt with, and some kind of real leadership that fuels confidence emerges, Obama can try whatever he thinks will get him re-elected, but I continue to believe America is going to have a huge anti-incumbent wave that will affect both parties. I find it incredulous that Harry Reid is refusing to re-allocate some "green energy" (or is it unspent high speed rail?) stimulus funds to cover FEMA shortfalls when the Solyndra debacle is unfolding.

- K2K

September 24, 2011 at 7:54pm

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This is silly. You guys probably have very similar political views and yet you're arguing on a liberal blog post about why Obama was unable to achieve his entire platform in one go. Personally, I side with wkwami and http://pleasecutthecrap.typepad.com/ (Milt Shook). The only thing I would add to the notion that the unadulterated platform was not achieved in one day is that people who call themselves progressives (the term liberal is just fine by me) want Obama to be someone he can't be. In their eyes, the Obama of the 2008 election cycle was about Obama as the new MLK. Fine. I mean, he stood for solidly liberal things--even if there was very little difference between his platform, Hillary's, and a center to center-left Democrat's. What he didn't stand for was the race card and all of the pathologies of identity politics that made Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and plenty of other civil rights "leaders" unelectable. There's a big hole that MLK occupied at his height, and no one yet has filled it. So you had this accomplished, telegenic, youthful figure with JFK-like optimism and you started seeing people swoon as if this, by itself, would break us into kum-ba-yah utopia. Stop it. Obama isn't MLK. He is a politician and not a political activist. He has inflected his presidency with a little bit of that--the calls for post-partisan unity, the attempts to stay above the fray of sausage-making, and the recent re-appearance of "Stump Speech Obama". But we elected Obama to be our president. He can't barnstorm around the country, call rallies, and lead marches on Washington. If we are going to have a progressive, civil rightsy movement that unites the left around the basics of a Fair Society or whatever, we are going to have to deal with the fact that we don't have a clone of Obama lying around. Obama can't be an agitator for justice channeling a popular movement throughout the country at the same time that he is making decisions about the jobs crisis, energy woes, the Arab Spring, Israel-Palestine, counter-terrorism, two to three wars, the ridiculously petulant House Republican caucus, WTO battles, court appointments, . . . you get the picture. Campaigning is a full-time job. Governing is more than a full time job. This is why it's actually pretty maddening that people like Cornel West and Tavis Smiley are undercutting the president. To the extent that the president can get out there and be MLK Obama barnstormer transformer, he will. But there's a lot of crap going on in the world. How long do you think he can be the left's saviour, uninterrupted? This guy has a real job. He doesn't have time to be candidate Obama. But they do, and they're not organizing anything for Obama, much less America, so they should STFU. People look back to the Great Society with fondness. We were, at the time, going through an unprecedented economic expansion and an independent, non-political group started to fight for equality. They fought against much longer odds than anything today, organized throughout the South, and galvanized youth from around the country. They had a goal and they built institutions to keep people focused on achieving that goal. Now that goal required politics, but they didn't dress it up as a political movement. It wasn't about electing MLK or any of the SNCC or SLC leadership to political office. It was about moving the country in a certain direction. Having put in the years on the ground to percolate throughout the national consciousness, they steadily started seeing aspects of their movement get attention in Washington. Because they autonomously applied pressure and had an appealing, saleable agenda. There's nothing like the Civil Rights Movement going on right now. The Tea Party is derided as astroturf. At its essence, it's not, though. Organized minorities with a message can gain a national following and affect politics. It was always thus. (See the Abolitionists, Prohibitionists, and more recently the Anti-Abortionists.) This is why it was disappointing that the people in Organizing for America didn't tap into that sustained effort to keep people drawn into the political movement. You don't just fight for an election. You fight to keep your movement in the hearts and minds, you fight to win over souls, and you fight to infiltrate the political establishment. And if you think that winning the presidency meant success, you probably ignored the fact that 21 state governments are under unified Republican control because of the midterm elections. That didn't have to happen, and to the extent that Obama now has to connect with demoralized supporters in red and purple states (but doesn't have the time to do so), the dream of the 2008 election with supermajorities that could do stuff will not be realized.

- chaitless

September 24, 2011 at 8:20pm

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K2K, I agree that it would be good to do something about housing, but is that a really matter of being a tax and spend Democrat versus learning the lessons of the 1990s? You could argue, I suppose, that the President turned to that alone because of a belief in left-wing economics. However, many liberal economists have endorsed ambitious ideas aimed at the housing crisies, and it was largely the blue dog Democrats--the ones who are arguably the ones most closely affiliated with DLC lessons--that opposed fixing our bankruptcy laws. Paul Krugman and Mark Thoma have talked about how much good mortgage relief and debt forgiveness would do in many articles (Pennywise Pound Foolish; Against Learned Helplessness; Shoulda Woulda Coulda; Letting Bankers Walk; his talk with Peter Beinhart; his op-ed with his wife post mid-terms) . Dick Durbin sponsored Cram Down in the Senate. The head of the House Progressives Caucus has sponsored a Right-to-Rent bill modeled on Dean Baker's ideas. It's not New Democrats and the Blue Dogs who push this day in and day out--they often defected from it. I support the stimulus, but I agree the President made a huge mistake by not doing more about housing. I was surprised that Dean Baker didn't talk about this in his counterfactual. A lot of that was Treasury and Summers, people from the 90s economic team. Did 1990s fiscal responsibility enable Democrats to win then or in 2006? Some would say the fundamentals were much more important. The strong economy in the 1990s and the war, Katrina, etc. was more of the issue than Bill Clinton's fiscal responsibility. Also, recall, that most voters who listed the budget as their top priority in 1996 voted for Dole. The other thing is I wonder if you're truly emblematic of the independents that Dems have been losing. As mentioned, independents are very responsive to actual economic conditions, as John Sides has shown. For what it's worth, surveys showed independents supported the tax cut deal when you say Democrats should have lot all of them expire. Third Way's survey of Obama 2008-GOP '10 voters found that very few supported letting all of the Bush tax cuts expire. A CNN survey also showed that most independents said disaster relief should be unconditional. There are also hazards to fiscal consolidation in this economic environment, as several European nations are finding out. Also, Bill Clinton who delivered a lot of the budget responsibity you tout, has said we need to focus on growth first and deficits in a couple of years. Finally, I think a huge GOP win in 2012 is inevitable because of the weak growth. You can dream that they'll govern like Tim Coburn, but it's worth recalling that every Republican in the House on the fiscal commission voted against Simpson-Bowles. Every Republican on the debate stage opposed a 10-1 spending cut-tax deal. Look at who Mitch McConnell and John Boehner appointed to the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction. In terms of the housing crisis, one crucial moment in the origins of the Tea Party movement was the Santelli Rant. Boehner opposed cram down and every Senate Republican voted against it. The AG suit had state AGs pushing the banks to write down loans to reflect today's real estate values. Congressional Republican Leaders opposed that. Clearly, they're not the place to look for a housing fix.

- darklayers

September 24, 2011 at 9:47pm

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For a recall, here are the Senators voting against cram down: Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, Michael Bennet, Max Baucus, Tim Johnson, and Tom Carper. Some of these individuals are among the opponents. These are the folks who seemed to absorb the 1990s lessons the most.

- darklayers

September 24, 2011 at 9:55pm

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chaitless, I have policy criticism of Obama, but far more because of the policy impact on politics than on the discrepancies between my ideal policies and what Obama has achieved. 99 44/100% of my complaint with Obama is that he has failed to do his job, even to shoulder his job, as political leader, of the country and of the Democratic party. As a result, we lost the House and are at risk of losing the Senate and the presidency. Am I certain that if Obama had been an engaged political leader things would have been different? Of course not. There are no do-overs in history. But I am mortally certain that he did not expend much effort in that direction despite his many political gifts. That is almost criminally irresponsible. When I try to figure out how and why he was missing-in-action as political leader, i can think of only two possibilities that fit the observable facts. One is that he was taken in by the cult of the presidency and thought his primary task was to be "the decider." Not hardly. His primary task, one that only he could fulfill, was to be the primary voice of the party and connect with the public in order to maintain public support. See Lincoln, above. The other possibility is that he became narcissistically infatuated with his own image as the post-partisan who would bridge the partisan chasm in American politics. Pure delusion that. Naive and destructive. We were left with one party fighting an ideological war and the other unable to give battle. We can see the results, the very rightward lurch that Galston describes, despite eight years of Republican depravity and disaster.

- roidubouloi

September 25, 2011 at 12:40am

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The answer to your question, wkwami, is that we have a leaderless party. It is not possible for the party to organize itself around the vacuum at the top. You are completely delusional, lost somewhere between 1968 and 1972, in imagining that there is some "left" out there that has the numbers or power to organize around the vacuum, was responsible for any of the policy choices made by Obama, or was opposing him in Congress (the more progressive the more they sucked it up and supported him). You have conjured up an imaginary scapegoat for Obama's political failures. Tick, fuck you, tock.

- roidubouloi

September 25, 2011 at 12:47am

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Among Obama's political crimes, as repeated here by you, is treating the members of his party who supported him as equally to blame with the Republicans for policy paralysis. If the president public deplores his own party in that way, why on earth should the public believe otherwise? His lack of support is a direct consequence of his lack of loyalty. To get loyalty, you have to give loyalty. The Democrats did not desert Obama; he deserted them in his post-partisan swoon with the Republicans.

- roidubouloi

September 25, 2011 at 12:50am

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Here is one of the comments in the article linked by chaitless: "I know some of you think such a notion is unseemly, but politics really is about salesmanship. Democracy is not pretty." "Salesmanship" is the primary job of the president. If the president does not accept that responsibility, not only of doing that work himself but of leading and organizing elected officials and party activists in the effort, there is no way for it to get done. As I said above, a party cannot organize around a vacuum at the top. All of the carping about leftwing policy criticism is almost completely irrelevant to the problem.

- roidubouloi

September 25, 2011 at 12:59am

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I think you're off base here roi. Obama campaigned hard against Brown in Mass, and lost. He campaigned hard against Christie in NJ, and lost. The list is long--Va governor's race, special elections, numerous Congressional seats--the result of the kind of cheerleading you're advocating has been zip. As has been pointed out above, O has become more commonly associated with the left of the Dems by his efforts, which has impacted his popularity and his re-election chances negatively. Nationally this is a center-right polity. Full-throated advocacy of more government solutions is a sure-fire political loser in national elections. See McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis, etc.

- Robert Powell

September 25, 2011 at 3:57am

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Great link chaitless. My sentiments exactly--thanks.

- Robert Powell

September 25, 2011 at 4:42am

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Well, Galston ran Mondale's campaign. FWIW, a lot of that was Democratic incumbents against Republicans who enjoyed strong and substantial economic growth. GDP was very high in 1972, 1984, and 1988, largely due to monetary policy in Mondale and McGovern's case. That's not to say the public loved their ideas, but that it wasn't just campaigns, ideologies, or candidates. The fundamentals were very strong in favor of those candidates.

- darklayers

September 25, 2011 at 4:45am

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Mr. Powell: Wasting time on certain individual campaigns is not a replacement for a sustained focus on showing the voting public what your presidency and your party stand for. I don't think your example really answers Roi's objection; the ineffectuality of Obama's support for those candidates, in fact, is evidence in support of Roi's position.

- Curran1

September 25, 2011 at 5:06am

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Powell, Obama showed up for a day at the end of the Brown campaign when it was already lost. You also ignore the rather important difference between leading the party and articulating a narrative of what it is about and particular policies. Policy doesn't matter very much it at all until it goes sour. People pay attention to the narrative, not the particular policies, and the Republicans have demonstrated that you can tell outrageous lies about what your policies actually will do and no one much cares. Obama failed to exercise leadership of the Democratic party and even went to the point of publicly badmouthing his party as part of the Washington problem no different than the Republicans, children to his grown-up. He was the Lone Ranger by choice. Now he is alone. No surprise.

- roidubouloi

September 25, 2011 at 8:57am

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Center-right? So what? A Democrat trying to lead as a warmed over Republican is a certain failure. Given a choice between a Republican and a Republican, the country will choose the Republican. So said Harry Truman. There is plenty of room between center-right and full-throated left or whatever it is you dislike. You prefer the wacko demonstrated failure of supply-side libertarian economics too. Got us into this problem and is making the hole deeper. You can't be popular with policies destined for visible failure unless the visibility is off in the indefinite future. Center-right? So what? A Democrat trying to lead as a warmed over Republican is a certain failure. Given a choice between a Republican and a Republican, the country will choose the Republican. So said Harry Truman. There is plenty of room between center-right and full-throated left or whatever it is you dislike. You prefer the wacko demonstrated failure of supply-side libertarian economics too. Got us into this problem and is making the hole deeper. You can't be popular with policies destined for visible failure unless the visibility is off in the indefinite future.

- roidubouloi

September 25, 2011 at 9:02am

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Re: roi Lincoln was keeping the North united. He wasn't bridging the divide by holding out olive branches to the Confederacy after they seceded. You can't just pretend that he didn't endlessly compromise in order to keep the border states in the Union. The accurate analogy would be attacking the original Emancipation Proclamation from the left because it didn't end slavery in the Union. You offer your vision and you take what you can get. If there's a ground organization pushing the politics in your direction, you can probably press harder. Thing is, I don't remember mass marches on Washington for health care reform, much less Medicare for all. I don't remember publicized phone bank campaigns that pressured Grassley and Snowe in July 2009. The way you seem to put it, the president did not give speeches to lead the base in the right direction. But you also have to remember that those speeches would also kindle opposition, and I'm much happier having a president with a record of accomplishment in terrible economic times, because there are tangible things he can campaign on. The alternative was more accomplishments in some areas but Blue Doggish Senators bucking him more often, resulting in even less getting done overall. Would I have been happier had Obama gone all left populist leading into the 2010 election? Yes. Especially in retrospect, Obama probably should have taken this gambit last year. I'm not sure it would have shook the Ben Nelsons of the world into action, but if it failed (as was likely) there would have been much less room for negotiation and much more consternation within the base that perhaps progressives really don't matter all that much.

- chaitless

September 25, 2011 at 9:21am

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leadership fuels confidence which still can perhaps fuel growth and re-employment. where is that leadership? Obama is trying to channel Harry S Truman without a chance, because he is nothing like Harry S. Truman. I am a disillusioned dem who regrets that Pelosi forgot the lessons learned from the 1990's. leaving the policy wonks to bicker amongst themselves until they understand that the only chance dems now have is to aggressively reform Obamacare, which they refuse to do. That is what energized the extreme right. whether it is what is keeping re-employment down is anyone's guess, but it certainly is being used as a major theme.

- K2K

September 25, 2011 at 10:18am

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The abiding lesson of the 1990s was that the Republican Party wanted to cut taxes after Bush's deal in 1990. When they came into office after 1994, they tried to cut taxes, day in and day out and Clinton generally held them at bay. This produced a surplus and when they stormed the presidency through corrupt means in 2000, they made good on that policy preference and brought us back into deficit. You can't keep pretending like economic policy was different in the 1990s. It wasn't. Dole campaigned on unaffordable supply-side tax cuts, Gingrich continued to push for them throughout Clinton's second term, when the surplus was starting to come into view, and Bush completed the stroke and was able to sell them as (terribly inefficient) Keynesian stimulus. Why you think Pelosi is a liberal monster is beyond me. Stuff got done for the good of the republic when she was in power, and if you prefer that an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress pass small-bore things like school uniforms, I don't know exactly what you think the point of winning elections is.

- chaitless

September 25, 2011 at 10:39am

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K2K In today's world, we will not see the kind of leadership we seek. Democrats are not ruthless enough to have its leaders decide on a law and get it through like the Republicans did. The Republicans were willing to draw estate tax repeal from reconciliation (with a ridiculous Sunset Provision after 10 years -- talk about uncertainty!). They were willing to threaten a member that if he did not vote their way, they would fund the political opponent of that member's son. They were willing to do illegal redistricting in Texas to maintain a majority. They are willing to block all activity in the Senate or shut down the government. Democrats just don't do any of that.

- Nusholtz

September 25, 2011 at 10:59am

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What Lincoln was contending with is beside the point, chaitless. What heg understood is that in a democracy politics comes first, then policy. All of Obama's policy achievements will be torn to shreds, rendered into fleeting nothing, because he neglected his primary reposibikity, politics, including by pointless compromises with Republicns that have sacrificed both poltics and policy -- because he was deluded by his own post-partisan rhetoric. Haven 't you noticed him dropping like a stone? Do you think if he had moved even further toward the Republicans he would be so much as an iota more popular today? He already lost the House. How much more sinking do we need in order to observe that his political strategy has failed? And what did the mythical left contribute to his failure other than a bit of complaining that the rest of the political spectrum cares nothing about?

- roidubouloi

September 25, 2011 at 11:15am

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And when Obama came out in full-throated leftwing attack on Ryan, how did that go? Brilliantly. On that day, he did his job.

- roidubouloi

September 25, 2011 at 11:17am

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Nusholtz--the healthcare bill? It's the poster child, but not the only one-party ''accomplishment'' of Dems. O was green, and like Clinton in his early days relied too much on Congressional leaders. Pelosi and Read basically sold him out a la Hamilton and Mitchell in Clinton's case, making a dog's breakfast of the process. I agree with you about the party discipline advantage of the Republicans, but as roi points out there's only one Party Leader, and in this regard O has been floundering. The problem is that too few of the senior party leaders learned from their experience, as Galston seems to have done. I'm for reform, not for reiteration of failed past policies, whether they are supply-side economics, the nanny state, Big Government Conservatism, or struggle against class enemies. I think center-right is just right for a national campaign.

- Robert Powell

September 25, 2011 at 11:28am

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darklayers--it would appear that Galston learned something from the Mondale campaign that not all Dems did. And all things being equal, shouldn't all incumbents benefit from a strong economy, even Democrats? I'm not understanding your point.

- Robert Powell

September 25, 2011 at 11:44am

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So what was Rahm Emmanuel doing? Wasn't he supposed to understand how to work with the Congress? Did he get stupid when he got to the White House?

- roidubouloi

September 25, 2011 at 12:05pm

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Exactly right. Liberal Moonbats easily infected with Cognitive Dissonance which blinds them to reality. And the only reason liberals even have a chance is that they are racist; From Gallup a few weeks ago: 33% of Whites approve of Obama job perf 48% of Hispanics approve of Obama .. 88% of Blacks approve of Obama.. Sort of ironic.

- mr_rationale

September 25, 2011 at 12:32pm

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Let's see now. The fact that blacks and Hispanics approve of Obama at higher rates than whites, if true, is supposed to be evidence that liberals are racist. White liberals? Black liberals? Hispanic liberals? You know what the definition of moonbat insane, wacko, completely off your rocker is, rat? It's you. You are the single nuttiest wackjob here, by a wide margin.

- roidubouloi

September 25, 2011 at 2:14pm

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What in god's name has Galston learned? He seems not to have noticed that Obama's courtship of the right has been an abject and colossal failure. So what does this man know that any sentient being should take cognizance of?

- roidubouloi

September 25, 2011 at 2:16pm

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K2K, I'm not sure aggressively reforming Obamacare would work as well as you think. Firstly, if there's a key lesson from the 1990s, it would seem to be get elected on a strong economy. You might argue that it's pursue fiscal responsibility. But, as mentioned before fiscal responsibility too fast, could be bad. Also, as far as the importance of the economy for electoral outcomes, budget restraint helped in the 1990s but may not do so now. IMF found in the short term fiscal consolidation reduced income growth. That's not something you want to do in a balance sheet recession. Recall that our bond yields were quite high in the 1990s, so we had more to gain economically, from fiscal consolidation. It's worth mentioning again, Bill Clinton does not favor budget restraint: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/09/18/ftn/main20107872.shtml Secondly, how exactly would radically reforming Obamacare save the Democrats or give them another chance. One crucial factor in public opposition to health care reform was the opposition. http://www.bepress.com/forum/vol8/iss1/art4/ Voters figured it was a bad deal because Republicans were so hysterical about it. We would need Republican leaders to come aboard on something. But, can you really think of a compromise that would suffice to please Republicans? Recall that one Republican aide told Politico that they don't want to give the President a win. It would have to be something to satisfy the WSJ crowd. Unfortunately, any thing that does that might not achieve goals. Should we settle for higher costs or less coverage to bring the WSJ editorial board members along? I don't know...

- darklayers

September 25, 2011 at 2:55pm

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And K2K, in terms of leadership fueling confidence which in turn fuels growth and employment, what about the possibility Paul Krugman discussed with confidence: people would get more confident, and they realize they still had too much debt, and the bubble debt would continue to act as a drag on the economy. And, as far as leadership, Gordon Brown was praised by many people for his performance in the crisis. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1078326/Brown-wont-rule-early-election-praised-handling-economic-crisis.html He kept the Brits out of the Euro. He still lost by a sizable margin in the elections.

- darklayers

September 25, 2011 at 3:05pm

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"So what was Rahm Emmanuel doing? Wasn't he supposed to understand how to work with the Congress? Did he get stupid when he got to the White House?" Great questions, roi. I'd add these to your questions: where was the vice president? Wasn't he supposed to be the legislative skill man in the administration? What exactly does he do for this administration?

- scrubby

September 25, 2011 at 3:30pm

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Indeed. Either Emmanuel and Biden both got stupid or they were constrained by Obama. I have recently heard a second hand account from relatives in Chicago from someone with firsthand knowledge that Emmanuel seethed throughout his entire tenure because he was so frustrated and cooked up a deal to move a Daley to the White House so that he could get out and become mayor of Chicago instead. Perhaps so.

- roidubouloi

September 25, 2011 at 5:41pm

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Roi: "Indeed. Either Emmanuel and Biden both got stupid or they were constrained by Obama. I have recently heard a second hand account from relatives in Chicago from someone with firsthand knowledge that Emmanuel seethed throughout his entire tenure because he was so frustrated and cooked up a deal to move a Daley to the White House so that he could get out and become mayor of Chicago instead." Roi, you're channeling classic Mr_Rat, you only see one of two outcomes. You've now been reduced to unsubstantiated rumors and second hand, anecdotal stories about Rahm Emmanuel? It's only a matter of time before you bring up Churchill, Chamberlain, Hitler, FDR, LBJ, and Lincoln. The question which you can't seem to answer is, where is the left's counterweight to the right's Tea Party, and the likes of Grover Norquist and Colin Hanna? The fact is, the President alone can't do it all. Could he have done things better? Probably. But he also needs folks like you who claim to stand for something, to actually do something. Since you love to invoke the past so much, here's a lesson you'll do well to learn:

Obama's inner FDR In 1940 the government started spending money like crazy creating jobs to make weapons but the jobs being created were not open to black Americans. FDR did not want to fight segregationist Southern congressmen and refused to act. A. Philip Randolph, the leader of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters began to organize a march on Washington to demand that the government forbid employment discrimination. Randolph credibly threatened to bring 150,000 demonstrators to the Capitol and eventually FDR gave in: The President sent a message to a young lawyer on his staff, Joseph L. Rauh, Jr. "We need an Executive Order for Fair Employment Practices Commission and we need it in a few hours." It became the famous Executive Order 8802. As Rauh worked to meet his deadline he coined a phrase that was to become one of the most powerful and familiar in American life. "No discrimination on the grounds of race, color, creed or national origin." The march was cancelled. The interaction of Roosevelt and Randolph is the absolute opposite of how today's "left" has interacted with President Obama. Not only was Randolph able to credibly threaten a major mobilization, thanks to decades of organizing work, but he was able to use the President's own ideals to popularize his demands. Today we call on President Roosevelt, a great humanitarian and idealist, to... free American Negro citizens of the stigma, humiliation and insult of discrimination and Jim-Crowism in Government departments and national defense. Randolph was an adult, playing hardball politics with an ally who was under intense pressure to do the wrong thing. Today, I guess, our "progressives" would have credibly threatened to bring a few hundred people to DC, called the President a whore and a coward, and sulked when things didn't work out as they wanted... Today we still have leaders who care about porters - for example, Professor Cornel West, self-proclaimed spokesman for the poor, cares that a mere hotel porter got a ticket to the inauguration and he didn't. It's hard to imagine the distance between Randolph and West was traveled in just 70 years. Where's Obama's inner FDR? Working hard, hoping and praying that someone will come to help him so he doesn't have to carry the whole weight by himself. http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2011/09/obamas-inner-fdr.html
The know-it-all extreme left of today is a joke. They have become useful idiots for the extreme right, undermining the President with largely unfounded criticism, thus giving comfort to the extreme right. The sad thing is they are too smart by a half to even recognize their folly.

- wkwami

September 25, 2011 at 7:15pm

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Okay, so much of the reason why Galston makes much out of all of this is that Democrats were seen as ideologically closer to the electorate in 2006, but those perceptions are reversed now. What is the significance of that? For what it's worth, in 2008, there weren't independent numbers, but the "all voters" measure was significantly closer to their McCain rating than Clinton or Obama. But that did not preclude dramatic electoral success. The Democrats' most crucial problem is the economy. The ideological placement of candidates does not alone determine electoral success or play a huge role in outcomes above and beyond the fundamentals. The fundamentals are Dems' problem. http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=385

- darklayers

September 25, 2011 at 7:17pm

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Wait a second, Roi is not second rate Rat, that's ridiculous. So is the accusation that the left is Obama's problem. Obama's problem is that he hasn't recognized the right for what it's become, which should have been apparent from the selection of Sarah Palin as VP candidate, ie, totally without limits and willing to stoop to dog-whistling the very worst of America in order to gain power. Obama is hardly alone though, most of us don't want to see the America that's represented by the Right lately. Apart from the appalling array of putative Presidential candidates and their bloodthirsty, reactionary supporters, the most recent insult to our nation being the attempt to defund FEMA or make it's work conditional - man oh man the first people to scream bloody murder would be the Red states next time there's a huge tornado. Meanwhile here we are, back to the brinksmanship, threatening to shut down the government, and sure enough the stock market crashes again thus making everybody even more poor and more angry and depressed. And a program that would create jobs and maybe improve the environment is threatened - of course this helps entrenched power, especially the oil industry. Why is anybody surprised? This isn't the work of the LEFT, it's the work of people who are making so much money they don't want anything to change even if it brings the world down around our ears. Think this isn't affecting people "on the ground" so to speak? Think again. This city is in danger of dying from what I can tell. People are angry, frightened, won't go out, won't spend money. 1/5 of its citizens are without sufficient food or fear for their next meal; maybe 1/3 or more of the homes are underwater. Note: world class city. THIS is the problem, not the "left." When people in power play stupid, greedy, ridiculous games, the powerless people literally get depressed. The kaboom goes the economy, even if other factors weren't involved like a lack of decent jobs due to a spate of reasons, none of which have ANYTHING to do with the Left. Meanwhile Obama's other problem, besides the shameless corporate right that's playing fearful people like a violin, and the fact that he's been acting until recently like a Republican-lite, is the the Blue Dog Dems who are also Republicans. The Left can't accomplish anything because our feet are always getting cut off by our friends, the so-called Dems, who are actually Republicans in a lot of ways. Frankly I do not understand this. I don't understand because the Right is perfectly clear as to their agenda especially lately. There is nothing moderate about it. So the center, of either and all parties, should be deeply alarmed. I also don't understand K2K and how he thinks it is acceptable to rob women of our rights. Either we believe in women's rights, also gay and minority rights or we don't. We don't have any room to hedge our bets on the death penalty either because once that particular die is cast it's too late to undo it. So if we want to talk about culture, we have to be clear that there is sensible, compassionate culture and there is a culture more closely akin to the Taliban than people here want to admit. We have people in the US who would probably support public execution and stone people they don't like and that scares me to death and it should also be scaring the so-called center, like K2K, so why isn't it? Meanwhile, the rich are busy robbing the poor, destroying the middle and yelling "class warfare" at the President so enough already. I'm beginning to think there isn't a center in America. It's either powerless or hard right. Show me otherwise?

- Sophia

September 25, 2011 at 7:51pm

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Thanks RobertPowell, for your earlier comments. Sophia: I never wrote or said that I "... thinks it is acceptable to rob women of our rights." Just that it no longer is THE #1 issue that determines my vote as it did until 2005, well, SCOTUS nominations were my proxy for protecting Roe vs Wade until 2005. Sophia also wrote : "When people in power play stupid, greedy, ridiculous games, the powerless people literally get depressed." You bet. I have been terrorized by the psycopath managing agent of my very affordable north Bronx co-op for years, and, in the past three years, he has deliberately blocked my attempts to sell, and four Bronx lawyers have refused to help me even GIVE it away. I am so depressed by this that I no longer want to live in America, and, quite bluntly, no longer want to live at all, even the fantasy of moving to Ariel no longer works. I detest both extremes. I just wrote to my Congressman Eliot Engel, he still has my vote although I am disappointed, but the Democratic Party needs leadership, and that means replacing Obama, Pelosi, and now I include Reid because of his refusal to cave on pay-go for FEMA. I totally understand his principle, but, with Solyndra, really do not think this is the moment to protect unspent funds for electric cars and "green" jobs. maybe I should not have watched "Primary Colors" (1998) last night. especially the rally at a closed NH shipyard where Gov. Stanton says their jobs are not coming back, but that he will help them re-train for the jobs of the future. WHY NOT BRING THOSE JOBS BACK? What is wrong with Democrats? Too many Lawyers and academic economists in thrall to mathematic models that do not work? The Dems had their one-party control of government for two years and blew it on health insurance reform. Norquist wins. America is NOT a meritocracy, and we are all held hostage by this two-party duopoly fighting for Wall Street money to keep their jobs in Washington.

- K2K

September 25, 2011 at 8:14pm

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K2K, if this isn't the moment to protect green jobs, what is? Have you been looking at what's going on with the environment lately including the weather? First place we need every job we can get but secondly, we need to break the stranglehold of the oil industry on the global economy, which has befouled the planet but also warped the world geopolitically to an astonishing degree. So Reid is absolutely correct - also - giving in to Right Wing blackmail on this point would lead to further blackmail. Bringing up FEMA funding in a season of terrible disaster is outrageous on the part of Congressional Republicans and you should be supporting Reid. And, if you can't protect women's rights over our own personal wombs, then where DO you draw the line? Now. It sounds like you have personal grievances. I think there must be recourse. I wish I could personally help. However I would plead that you not blame Obama for this, or Pelosi, or Reid. Meanwhile, please don't give up! Although, I know a lot of people who've been getting suicidally depressed lately because things are just totally bizarre and because we just can't make any headway, so many of us just want to give up. That's potentially catastrophic for the country as a whole. Our so-called leaders need to pay attention and stop playing their destructive, stupid games. They are hurting real people, their fellow Americans, but in fact they seem to have turned their back on the "social contract" that constituted America in the first place! PS this isn't the fault of the Left either. It's the fault of the RIGHT. So please stop blaming us and help us! And stop the baloney about the so-called center. What center? Finally, I think this and the other article on LGF, about racist attacks on Morgan Freeman who spoke about the Tea Party, pretty much sum up some of our worst problems in the US, to wit, we're dealing with religious nuts that would make Saudi Arabia blush and also, some of us are still longing for the good old days of the plantation: http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/39200_Astounding-_FL_Lt._Gov._Bashes_Science_and_Evolution_Calls_for_Christian_Theocracy So, I'd like to ask Mr. Galston and others who blame THE LEFT for our troubles, exactly what do you want us to do?

- Sophia

September 25, 2011 at 8:30pm

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What you want is incoherent, wkwami. On the one hand you ask where is the leftwing equivalent of the Tea Party, a bunch of raging extremists dragging the political spectrum in their direction. On the other hand, any criticism of Obama from the left is greeted by you as a betrayal. So, we should have leftwing fanatics balancing the Tea party by applauding everything that Obama does and says?

- roidubouloi

September 25, 2011 at 8:50pm

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Roi: "What you want is incoherent, wkwami. On the one hand you ask where is the leftwing equivalent of the Tea Party, a bunch of raging extremists dragging the political spectrum in their direction. On the other hand, any criticism of Obama from the left is greeted by you as a betrayal. So, we should have leftwing fanatics balancing the Tea party by applauding everything that Obama does and says?" Whoa Roi, you suddenly don't believe in people dragging the political spectrum in their direction? Isn't that what you've been accusing Obama of failing to do? And, what makes you think there can be only two options - being a useful idiot for the right, or reduced to applauding everything Obama does? Why the strategic myopia? In any case, you're still not answering the question... where is the left's counterweight to the right? Sophia: "Wait a second, Roi is not second rate Rat, that's ridiculous." Sophia, I agree. Roi and I tend to go overboard in our characterization of each other, and each other's positions whenever we discuss Obama, but I don't seriously believe he has anything in common with the rat. That probably wasn't the best way for me to characterize what he stands for.

- wkwami

September 25, 2011 at 9:34pm

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wkwami: "The question which you can't seem to answer is, where is the left's counterweight to the right's Tea Party, and the likes of Grover Norquist and Colin Hanna? The fact is, the President alone can't do it all. Could he have done things better? Probably. But he also needs folks like you who claim to stand for something, to actually do something." Fair enough, wkwami. Read Michael Kazin's essay in today's Times for some thoughts on why the left hasn't been more organized and effective in opposing the right-wing machine. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/opinion/sunday/whatever-happened-to-the-american-left.html HOWEVER, wkwami, it seems to me that you want it both ways. You habitually criticize "the left"--whatever that is--for tearing your man Obama down and seeding his political path with shards of broken glass, and at the same time, as in your most recent post, you claim that Obama cannot possibily promote a left-leaning agenda because "the left" is non-existent. Which is it? Either the left is a potent political force that is making life hard for the president or it is non-existent as a practical matter, but it can't be both. And as a correlary, can you not see that roidubouloi's sustained and eloquent critique of the president and support of liberal positions here on this public forum itself constitutes political organizing activity on the left that you claim does not exist? And if Obama loses in his reelection bid and if exit polls show a marked fall-off in voter participation among blacks and young people--both groups disproportionately harmed by the economic depression and who would stand to benefit disproportionately if the government under Obama enacted the more progressive fiscal policies that roidubouloi advocates--what will you say then? That it's the blacks' and the youths' fault for not marching on Washington to voice their distress? The truth about you, wkwami, at least to judge from your posts here at TNR, is that you stand for nothing other than Barrack Obama as an individual. You will answer any criticism of Obama from any direction with whatever ploy comes most readily to your mind. This is why I and others have questioned whether you might be employed by OFA. I'm willing to accept your claim that you are not a paid political operative, however you should acknowledge that you write like one. Forget for a moment about Obama and about the art of the possible, wkwami. What would you do if you were king? What policies would you advocate? What do you stand for besides the re-election of Barrack Obama?

- AaronW

September 25, 2011 at 9:43pm

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hehe. I see that while I was writing my post (and taking a break from it to do some actual work--it's Monday here in Australia), roi came back with more or less the same thing as me, only more concise.

- AaronW

September 25, 2011 at 9:45pm

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Bugger. On my first post, instead of showing the "full comment" the link takes you straight to the Times article I linked to. Oh well. What I said, more concisely, is kind of what roi said: you want it both ways, wkwami, you simultaneously claim that criticism from "the left" is holding Obama back and that Obama can't possibly advance the kinds of messages that roi asks because there is no "left" to back him up. I also asked what you stand for personally, wkwami, besides Barrack Obama as an individual. If you were king, what policies would you enact? If you divorce yourself from Obama's re-election prospects and the "art of the possible" what role for government do you see in American life? What would you like the government to do?

- AaronW

September 25, 2011 at 9:53pm

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Another thing I said was what will you say if Obama loses his re-election bid and exit polling shows a fall-off in voter participation among blacks and young people as compared with 2008. Both groups have been disporportionately harmed by the recession/depression and would therefore be disproportionately advantaged were the government under Obama to adopt more progressive fiscal and tax policies. Who will you blame if black people and young people--the two main groups who put your man O over the top into the White House--sit out? Will you blame the president for throwing this electoral base under an economic bus while tripping over himself to endorse watered-down Republicanism in pursuit of the all-important reasonableness vote? Or will you blame the people for failing to march on Washington to inform the president of their deep distress in person?

- AaronW

September 25, 2011 at 10:19pm

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roi: "Think that communications, message discipline, rather than policy, is not the essence of politics? Then you are a moron. And if you are such a moron, what do you observe if that is you bother to look at the actual world at all? Do you observe the Republicans gaining all this political ground with policy or with words? What do you see?" Since Chait is no longer here, I'll say in part what he likely would say: I see much of the Republican gains as the product of a lousy economy. I see a fraction of Republican gains as a product of their superior communications and messaging, along with a lack of leadership and consistent messaging by Democrats. How much, I think, is hard for anyone to say. I agree with roi that without winning on the politics, or at least in elections, policy doesn't matter. But I also think that even politics has a limited functionality when it comes to winning elections. Roi has posted twice in this thread that Obama "lost the House," though roi also says he does not know what the outcome would have been had Obama been more engaged. I think it was lost no matter what. Perhaps the margin would have been a little closer. But sometimes there is nothing anyone can do to affect how people are voting. Did Democrats win big in 2006 or 2008 because of their messaging? I can't even tell you what their message was. In 2006, voters were angry over the Iraq war, Katrina, Abramoff, and gas prices. What did Democrats offer in return? Some bland hodgepodge about "Honest Leadership and Open Government," "Real Security," "Energy Independence," "Economic Prosperity & Educational Excellence," "A Healthcare System that works for Everyone," and "Retirement Security" (http://www.bouldercountydems.org/Election2006/2006GasVision.html). I doubt most voters knew this much about the Democratic political message, which itself hardly fired up the electorate. And if one can win big with such a muddled message and little leadership (who were the Democratic "leaders" in 2006? Dean? Pelosi? Anyone?), it's fair to ask how much messaging matters, at least under some circumstances. And 2008? There was Bush fatigue and a collapsing economy, and an Obama murkiness that allowed frustrated voters to read into him basically what they wanted. Nor have voters necessarily bought into the Republican messaging which I agree is bs. Of course their base has, and always will, but where is the evidence that those who changed their votes in 2010 did so because of what Republicans were saying? Clearly, voters in the somewhat conservative NY-29 decided that they did not adopt the Ryan plan in 2010 as they gave the district to a Democrat in their recent special election. But that may not show new loyalty to Democrats either; maybe they're just frustrated with everyone in DC and not adopting any particular political position. Without more polling data about why they voted the way the did, it's hard to tell. Even experienced Republicans who should know better seem to make the same policy overreach that Democrats do when they misinterpret election results. McCain said last July: "The principle of not raising taxes is something that we campaigned on last November and the results of the election was the American people don’t want their taxes raised and they wanted us to cut spending." http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/07/03/mccain-americans-%E2%80%98don%E2%80%99t-want-compromise%E2%80%99/ That's a fundamental political error: just because you ran on something and you won doesn't mean that's what people were voting for (see polling that shows vast support for raising taxes on some people, and again NY-29). Sometimes people are frustrated and angry, and they want something different. And that means they may not be voting for anyone's message on politics or policy. This is not to excuse the Democratic lack of message discipline. Nor does it excuse Obama's failure to lead the party politically. I suggest, though, that being more effective on these fronts may have only marginal effects depending on what else is going on. Some elections are won and lost on the margins, and politicians should do what they are capable of doing to move things in their direction. But I'm reluctant to impute more consequences to these actions than they may warrant. Policy wonks like to think that policy matters, even though most voters are oblivious. Political junkies like to think that politics matter, even though most voters aren't paying much attention. I think we have a huge dearth of good information as to what matters and what doesn't.

- dsimon

September 25, 2011 at 11:05pm

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K2K, I think you're dramatically oversimplfying it. Firstly, democrats didn't just blow it on health care reform. Health care reform hurt a lot, but it wasn't the whole story. This analysis at Monkey Cage found Health Care Reform hurt a lot, but Democrats would have lost the house even without health care reform. http://themonkeycage.org/blog/2010/11/09/which_roll_call_votes_hurt_the/ Larry Bartels found that Democrats would have been stuck with a -5% loss on the basis of the economy. The combination of a weak economy, political cautiousness from some Democrats, and controversial legislation led to quite a storm in 2010. But, hey, maybe that's too complex a story.

- darklayers

September 25, 2011 at 11:42pm

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Democracy is not a natural form of government. It can exist only under special conditions and at certain times. Our democratic honeymoon is coming to an end. An American form of fascism is waiting in the wings. A republican president aided by a Republican Senate and House of Representatives and a conservative Supreme Court will wake us from our democratic dream state and we won't even know anything has changed.

- paskunac

September 26, 2011 at 7:11am

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Alternatively paskunac, O will be re-elected without having to face the real reason he's suffering from buyer's remorse on the part of independents and we'll continue down the road to serfdom : http://patdollard.com/2011/08/federal-regulatory-agency-employment-is-fastest-growing-job-sector-in-us-nearly-4-times-higher-than-private-sector/ O's not kow-towing to Repubs, he's been trying to get a better understanding with the people who elected him. His party is reflexively going for Big Government solutions. To the extent that he and people in the Administration like Cass Sunstein can institute genuine reform rather than just more government jobs, he's got a better shot at re-election. To do that, he's got to fire some traditional Democrat mandarins.

- Robert Powell

September 26, 2011 at 7:28am

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I think the market functions better with securities regulation and cops on the beat to enforce it. But if you think that's the road to serfdom, you obviously missed the last decade of illusory gains wiped out by a fantastic market crash. Similarly for environmental regulation. In any case, look at this sentence from the patdollard article: The Obama administration imposed 75 new major rules in its first 26 months, costing the private sector more than $40 billion, according to a Heritage Foundation study. “No other president has imposed as high a number or cost in a comparable time period,” noted the study’s author, James Gattuso. Yikes. A Heritage Foundation study. Because we all know how independently they seek the truth through research. And of course John Barrasso, whom they quote next, is going to be against anything the EPA does. He represents the Wyoming's 0.17% of the US population, but more crucially, the dirty energy interests in his state. He would rather the EPA not exist and the federal government just hand the money to him. Critical thinking involves thinking about the motivations of the authors and the arguments they employ. You're supposed to learn it in secondary school. Failing that, you're supposed to learn it in college. If you really read that article without subjecting it to scrutiny--maybe deregulation meant there weren't enough regulatory positions filled by good people--then you really ought to evaluate where you went wrong.

- chaitless

September 26, 2011 at 9:26am

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darklayers: the dems did not reform health care. PACCA "reformed" health insurance. and all those angry town hall meetings with House members in 2009 did seem to morph into the TEA party. PACCA was the wrong priority - and the dems kept saying "jobs is #1" the whole time. and now I keep hearing how Dodd-Frank is why these ultra-low interest rates are NOT getting to consumers (like me). Pelosi turned into Tom DeLay on January 21, 2009. "We Won!" was NOT a good enough reason, and spare me the GOP rejectionism in 2009 - a whole lot of pragmatic GOPers lost to extremists in 2010. now, excuse me while I return to updating my Last Will & Testament before the bond market totally takes over the global economy.

- K2K

September 26, 2011 at 10:48am

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The purpose of almost every regulation is to correct some market failure. The frauds who populate the Heritage Foundation like to tote the costs of regulation (no doubt dishonestly) but never consider the cost of not regulating. A good regulation will increase economic output. Is all regulation good? Of course not. If it is a human endeavor it will be imperfect and hence inefficient, achieving less than the best available outcome. But the very idea that regulation is per se a loss is complete nonsense, ideologically driven absurdity that bears no relationship whatsoever to the world in which we actually reside. See chaitless, above.

- roidubouloi

September 26, 2011 at 10:53am

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K2K: "PACCA was the wrong priority" I don't think so. They got health care through in the only window possible. Does anyone think it would have passed going into an election year? After Democrats lost their 60th vote in the Senate? Or after the midterms when even under better circumstances Democrats were almost assured of losing seats in both chambers? And as half-formed as what we got turned out to be, how long would we have had to wait to try again as the health care system became even more dysfunctional? No, I think we got what we could have gotten at the only time we could get it. I do think Obama should have tried to push the process, but I'm not sure the results would have been any different. As far as jobs goes, it would have been better to see more action sooner (again, a result of Obama's apparent reluctance to push health care along). But again, I'm not sure the situation would have been a lot different. Fiscal crises are different from cyclical ones, and they take far more time to recover from. Chances are things would still be pretty bad economically, though perhaps marginally better politically. "The Dems had their one-party control of government for two years" That's simply not true in any realistic sense. Republicans could block anything with a 40 vote minority in the Senate, and and they did so (imagine how things would have been different on health care if the Senate operated by majority vote). And Republican obstructionism was going on in the Senate as soon as Obama took office. Democrats had 60 votes for only several months, and even then they had to deal with the Nelsons, Landrieus, and Liebermans of this world. So let's let go of this fantasy that Democrats had two years to push through whatever they wanted. "I detest both extremes." I keep wondering what polices Democrats are advocating that are "extreme." I keep not getting an answer. Maybe it's because most of what Democrats propose was perfectly acceptable and even advocated by Republicans not too long ago. But I'm open to examples if anyone can come up with them.

- dsimon

September 26, 2011 at 1:45pm

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Obviously nothing the Dems propose is extreme. In fact they're looking more "conservative" than the Right these days. The business of the 40 vote minority is serious. I think that needs to be examined; ditto, House TP'ers shouldn't be able to shut down the government. They are ruining this country; who gave them the power to shut us down? As to why people aren't marching. We're too busy trying to survive and/or making our wills. We're not kids anymore. And the kids are terribly ill-informed. Right wing kids will blindly do what they're told on FOX and even CNN has resident right wingers, which scares me (note, not "Republicans," but real 'RIGHT WINGERS' which these days = fascists.

- Sophia

September 26, 2011 at 1:56pm

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I've been reading this correspondence with interest, and it only confirms what I think I knew already -- the entire universe of TNR readers and contributors who disdain both old-time liberal pieties and revanchist right-wing ideas is hardly a proxy for the general voting public, left, right or center. Elections are won and lost by rallying the base and persuadable swing voters and hoping that fortune favors you with good electoral weather. Everything else is just an attempt to sell newsprint or eyeball clicks.

- wildboy

September 26, 2011 at 4:55pm

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Spending, and costing, more money on regulators who don't actually regulate what needs regulating is the nub of the problem. We had ample regulations on the books and ample regulators to prevent the most recent banking scandals. Now that the horse is out of the barn, the administration loads up on more regulation which will mostly be directed at businesses that had nothing to do with the housing bubble. Another case of fighting the last war rather than addressing current problems. Typically, there's no actual rebuttal of the facts here, just attacks on the messenger. If the data comes from the Heritage Foundation it couldn't possibly be correct, right? C'mon, facts are facts....

- Robert Powell

September 26, 2011 at 6:46pm

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The Heritage Foundation wouldn't know a fact if it jumped up and been every one of its phony analysits on the nose. As a cost/benefit accounting of regulations, this is a sick joke. And we certainly do need much more regulation of banking than what was permitted from the 1990s until 2008. We just don't have it yet. We STILL permit enormous leverage off the books. Perhaps if Republicans weren't constantly trying to cripple regulatory agencies in their fanatic opposition to all regulation of all kinds, we might see some effective regulation.

- roidubouloi

September 26, 2011 at 9:34pm

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If, as roi contends, socialism is the answer, why are the western European countries' economies on the verge of collapse? Those countries have for most part followed the technocratic socialist path that Obama is foolishly trying to impose on this country. What Obama doesn't seem to grasp is that his statist ideology is alien to land of the free, its traditions and its ideals. Obama's radicalism appeals to intellectuals who dream of of lording it over the ignorant masses out there in America. The irony is that the common sense of those supposedly benighted masses is for the most part superior to the shallow, bookish, faddish theories of the so-called intellectuals.

- bulbman1066

September 27, 2011 at 2:54am

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Repealing Glass-Steagal was obviously a very bad idea. Republicans didn't do that. Look, you can have all the regulations in the world but if they're not enforced, or the regulators are asleep at the switch, ignored, or over-ruled, you're still going to have problems. Alternatively, loading up on regulation that has little or nothing to do with why we had a housing bubble and banking collapse happened is just going to make the recovery slower and more difficult for millions who had nothing to do with credit default swaps etc.

- Robert Powell

September 27, 2011 at 3:54am

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bulbman: "Obama's radicalism..." What radicalism? Can you come up with some examples? I can't think of one, not one. Maybe someday I'll get an answer to that challenge from those who keep asserting Obama's supposed extremism. "why are the western European countries' economies on the verge of collapse?" Because they made a mistake with the Euro. If Greece could inflate its own currency, we wouldn't have this problem. (That one really wasn't hard.) One could just as easily argue that if free markets were "the answer," why did the American financial industry nearly destroy the world economy--and would have without government intervention to save the day (well, if not save it, at least keep it from blowing up entirely)? I don't think anyone says "socialism" (whatever bulbman means by that) is "the answer" (whatever bulbman means by that). It's just a recognition that unbridled market fundamentalism can lead to collective decisions that will bring down the system. So some regulation is necessary, not for any "socialist" goals but to preserve the market itself. And in those instances where there is ample evidence that markets don't work well (providing education for all, or health care for all), then some government involvement is warranted. These should not be controversial precepts.

- dsimon

September 27, 2011 at 9:17am

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Don't know what you are babbling about, as usual, bulb. Socialism? But the very idea that European fiscal problems are the result of socialism is completely laughable. The current threat to the Euro is the result of unrestricted private sector lending to governments. Now, as in the US, the Europeans are faced, not with bailing out Greece, but with bailing out their own banks and debtholders. The private sector run amok, as usual. Doesn't matter how much evidence there is that the private market is not adequately self-regulating, doesn't matter how much evidence there is that inadequately progressive taxation destabilizes the economy. Rightwing pseudoeconomics insists we therefore do even more of what is failing miserably. You are a flat-earth, wacko, bulb. Utterly divorced from reality. A religious wingnut. ____________________ Simply toting up the number of regulations or their ostensible cost without asking what is being regulated and why is completely meaningless. It answers nothing.

- roidubouloi

September 27, 2011 at 9:17am

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"Simply toting up the number of regulations or their ostensible cost without asking what is being regulated and why is completely meaningless. It answers nothing." Okay. Ditto: "...in those instances where there is ample evidence that markets don't work well (providing education for all, or health care for all), then some government involvement is warranted. These should not be controversial precepts." No, they're not. We could save a lot of pixels if we would accept that there is obviously an appropriate role for government, and that when it is exceeded, Bad Things happen. The recent crash here, like most of them, couldn't have happened without the toxic influence of government both in omission and commission, and everyone knows it. It's even more the case in Europe, where political elites cooperated with international bankers to defraud the public comprehensively. They just wanted to get rich and powerful, but by using not only their states but the utopian concept of a SuperState, their costs will be higher in both financial and social terms.

- Robert Powell

September 27, 2011 at 10:16am

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K2K, Ultimately I think comparative politics refutes the importance of those developments: Larry Bartels found that Democrats would have lost by -5 on the economy alone. I suppose Tea Party sentiment is simply not as important as you think. Gordon Brown was again widely praised for his handling of the financial crisis. He focused on the economy. He didn't pursue a big social policy goal, but he still lost decisively for the economy.

- darklayers

September 30, 2011 at 12:45am

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