But will anyone in charge pay attention?
….In 1996, Mr. Clinton was the first Democrat to win re-election since FDR—expanding the electoral map once again into western, southern, and sunbelt states. He did so by creating a new ideological hybrid for a still-progressive Democratic Party: balanced-budget fiscal conservatism, cultural moderation, and liberal social programs administered by a “lean and mean government.” This New Democrat combination appealed to Ross Perot independents concerned about deficits, and also to traditional Republican suburbanites who were culturally moderate on issues like abortion and gay rights but opposed to high taxes and wasteful, big-government bureaucracy.
Then, in 2008, Barack Obama added something extra: a commitment to a “new politics” that transcended the “red” versus “blue” partisan divide. He explained this concept clearly in his 2004 Democratic Convention keynote speech and during his 2008 presidential campaign. It meant compromise, consensus and bipartisanship, even if that meant only incremental change. The purists on the left of the Democratic Party who demanded the “public option” or no bill at all apparently forgot that candidate Obama’s health-care proposal did not include a public option; nor did it include a government mandate for everyone to either purchase insurance or pay a significant tax approximating the cost of that insurance—the “pay or play provision” in both the Senate and House bills.
Bottom line: We liberals need to reclaim the Democratic Party with the New Democrat positions of Bill Clinton and the New Politics/bipartisan aspirations of Barack Obama—a party that is willing to meet half-way with conservatives and Republicans even if that means only step-by-step reforms on health care and other issues that do not necessarily involve big-government solutions.
That’s what Massachusetts Democrats and independent voters were telling national Democrats yesterday. The question isn’t just, will we listen?…
Of course I would disagree that the people want liberalism even if done by careful compromise – but the point made is fundamentally sound: Democrats need to drop the left and come back to the center if they hope to survive. Right now, with the course Obama has set, Democrats are heading for disaster in 2010 and 2012 isn’t look to hot, either. And, remember, in 2012 and 2014 it is the Democrats who will have a whole bunch of first-term Senators up for re-election, many of them in strongly GOP States…failure to change course could, by January of 2015, result in as many as 65 Republican Senators to go along with a House majority and control of the White House. Such power given to the GOP – if matched with a desire to really reform (which is becoming a white-hot passion) – would spell doom for liberalism.
I don’t think Obama has it in him – certainly, Pelosi doesn’t have it in her and Reid has sold himself entirely to the left: he needs massive campaign funds in order to keep his seat and the price being demanded is liberalism, liberalism, and more liberalism. Time will tell…
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