So far I haven’t seen a single Democrat, or independent liberal for that matter, claim that the election of Barack Obama means there will be a permanent Democratic majority forever and ever amen. The best outcome most of us hope for is that Dems will at least keep if not increase their seats in Congress in the 2010 midterms and that President Obama gets a second term. Beyond that, anticipation dissipates into the Unknowable Unknown.
The only certainty is that all compounded things will decay. Nothing lasts forever, in other words.
This has not stopped a number of conservatives from wagging fingers at us and warning us not to expect a permanent Democratic majority. Of course not, dears, but nobody thinks in terms of “permanent majorities” except you. Oh, and clue: As long as there are human beings, history will not end.
The disconnect may be that conservatives don’t grasp the meaning of the word “permanent.” James Antle, associate editor of the American Spectator, writes,
After Tuesday, the Republican remnant in Washington is fearing the worst. While they seem to have dodged a filibuster-proof Democratic Senate, they will have less ability to shape and block legislation than at any time since Jimmy Carter’s administration. Conservative Democratic senators are few, and many moderate Republicans from blue states will feel pressure to cave into Obama’s agenda. Republican opinion leaders warn of a big, and perhaps permanent, shift to the left.
It’s happened before and could happen again.
A permanent shift to the left happened before? But it didn’t last, did it? That means it wasn’t permanent.
Conservatives also are warning us not to “overreach,” meaning don’t go all New Deal on us. Antle continues,
But these concerns could be as overwrought as Democratic worries that their party would forever be shut out of power by an ascendant right wing after November 2004. Undivided American government leads to overreach, and overreach leads to defeat. It took four years of Carter to bring about eight years of Ronald Reagan. It required just two years of Clinton to give way to Gingrich and a dozen years of Republican domination of Congress.
Let’s think about this. Did Reagan sweep Carter out of office in 1980 because of “overreach”? Did George Bush and the GOP win in 2000 because the Clinton Administration was guilty of “overreach”? That’s not how I remember it. There were many factors that caused Dems to lose those elections, some of which were the fault of Dem administrations and Dems in Congress, and some of which were not. But “overreach” was not one of those factors.
Carter lost in 1980 mostly because he seemed weak and ineffectual, not because he “overreached.” His actual policies were middle-of-the-road for the time. Among his achievements were deregulation of the airline and telephone industries.
Regarding “It required just two years of Clinton to give way to Gingrich and a dozen years of Republican domination of Congress” — let us note that President Clinton won re-election easily in 1996. And, frankly, I think it’s possible that he would have been re-elected in 2000 if he could have run for a third term.
So what “overreach” is Antle talking about? If you want to see an example of “overreach,” let’s see — invading Iraq? the Patriot Act? The Terri Schiavo episode?
The meme has been set-“the dems better not move left, this is a right-center country”, this after a drubbing at the polls where conservatism was rejected. I wonder what these guys smoke daily.
It’s fairly typical neocon thinking: the right is the center and the center is the left. Nothing they do is extreme, but centrism and anything even moderately to the left of that is “marxist.”
So far I haven’t seen a single Democrat, or independent liberal for that matter, claim that the election of Barack Obama means there will be a permanent Democratic majority forever and ever amen.
I’ll just come right out and say it– a permanent Dem majority, forever and ever, would be a really bad thing.
Can anyone think of a country where one-party rule has been a success? I can’t. Look at the endless list of crap the GOP got up to after too long in power. Of course, going all the way back to 1968, it was the Dems in the same situation. They’d held the White House since March 1933, with just one 8-year gap for Eisenhower; they were the majority in Congress for many of those 35 years, as well. They gave us the Gulf of Tonkin, Vietnam, violence at the Chicago convention, and bad boys like Richard Daley Sr.
Yesterday I heard some young-whippersnapper conservative on NPR say the reason the GOP lost was because the Dems offered a better tax package to the middle class. Whoa there, little Rightie! I thought. You’re admitting you misrepresented the Dems’ tax package throughout the entire campaign! I doubt it even occurred to this guy that, before changing their tax policy, the GOP ought to change its policy on lying to the public.
So they can talk about “overreach” all they want, but until they actually invent some Will Smith/Tommy Lee Jones “flashy-thing” that erases the public’s memory, nobody’s really going to care what they say.
I won’t comment (much) about supposed overreach, except to say that there simply are broad cycles of history that color individual administrations. The period from FDR through Carter was the rein of liberalism – both the Nixon and Eisenhower administrations would be seen as suspiciously liberal by today’s GOP. The period from Reagan to last Tuesday night was conservativism’s rein.
Unlike joanr16, I would like to see a long stretch of liberal rule. I’m mostly fine with liberal “excess”. I would like to see the GOP rendered impotent for a long period of time. Not forever, as corrections are necessary, but I hope they take a few decades to find themselves. I view the position Republicans represent as pathology and a step backwards in human evolution.
As to the comment by the young rightie who said the Dems won because of taxes – conservatives have a fixation about taxes. Recall that Bush’s response to every crisis was “tax cut”. Authoritarians in particular think that everyone sees the world as they do – they project their narrow beliefs onto Democrats, for example. This chilling posting – with lots of graphs – by bonddad shows the fiscal mess Obama is going to inherit.
“overreach” they will say anything to take the attention away from the current ressession. The republicans have no ideas…nothing…they do not want to talk about the economy.
I’m watching Obama’s press conference…all 3 major cable news networks have an insert with the stock market ticker in the lower right corner….WTF. Besides that…the reporters are actually asking him questions they would have never asked bush…policy questions.
Is wanting accountabilty considered overreach?..Scooter’s counting the days till his pardon comes through, and there are hundreds who will get away clean unless the democrats insist that our nations laws be upheld.. I’m not talking about be vindictive and petty..I’m talking about reestablishing the impartiality and equality that our laws are supposed uphold. Over the last 8 years I’ve seen a divided standard of justice applied to those in power that isn’t consistent with what America claims to be.
moonbat, I’m in favor of a “long stretch” where liberals are in ascendancy; I don’t see that as the same thing as “permanent.” We won’t be able to accomplish much with just two Obama terms, especially not with all of Bush’s messes to clean up. But I think there is a natural point, variable in length, after which corruption begins to creep in. Liberals are, after all, human beings. And power does corrupt every type of human, sooner or later.
http://www.ericmargolis.com/political_commentaries/the-world-applauds-obamas-victory.aspx
Mr. Margolis is dead on IMHO, and so is joanr16.
I still think the Republican party should be ended, but third parties given more participation in elections. An alternative to the Democratic party must emerge, but it does not have to be the Republican party.
In that party’s defense, or apology, it has achieved its original objective begun by Abraham Lincoln by the election of Barack Obama to the presidency, and may retire with that distinction.
The Terry Schiavo episode was a little more than overreach..it was complete running amok. By far the most blatant example of the degradation of democracy and a government for the people that I have ever witnessed. It was the Terry Schiavo circus that made me realize that America was way, way out of control under the Bush administration.
When Congress passes a law to benefit one individual it becomes apparent that something is wrong with our government.
Yeah, the Terry Schiavo three ring circus.Right in Swami’s back yard, courtesy of the Bush brothers.
One of the things I find most offensive about the Bushies is their complete disrespect and contempt for the law and legal processes, except where they could manipulate both for short term political gain. That being said, I think officials in this administration could learn from the mistakes Democrats made in the 1960s and 1970s by reading Rick Perlstein’s books “Before the Storm” and “Nixonland.”
A permanent shift has happened before and could happen again? That’s wildly funny. Thanks for the Buddhist perspective.
“Overreach” changed definition in a single day. To conservatives it will be a euphemism for reversing the effects of their own overreaching during the last 8 years.
“Overreach” changed definition in a single day. To conservatives it will be a euphemism for anything resembling reversal of the effects of their own overreaching during the last 8 years.
A permanent shift to the left happened before? But it didn’t last, did it? That means it wasn’t permanent.
IMO inappropriate snark. By most measures we’re way more left wing than we were in 1850, and the lurch to the right was insufficient to unravel either the New Deal or the Civil Rights Act in their entirety. The whole thing didn’t last, no. But enough of it lasted that you can’t yet say it wasn’t a permanent shift to the left.