You can read the rest here.Barack Obama and the Democrats want you to know they had a good week. Last Tuesday Republicans threw away a New York congressional seat they had held for a century, preferring to fight each other than win an easy contest. Excellent, say Democrats. Civil war in the Republican party augurs well for next year's mid-term elections.
What's that, you say? Oh, yes, Democrats did lose the governorships of New Jersey and Virginia, with huge swings to the other side, but this was to be expected with the economy in such bad shape. Read nothing into that, say Democratic strategists.
Still joyous over this electoral affirmation, Democrats in the House of Representatives then made history over the weekend, with passage of their health-reform bill. The margin was narrow, admittedly, in a chamber they dominate. So what? A win is a win (except in New Jersey or Virginia). Everything is going to plan.
Here is the disturbing part: watching administration officials shovel this nonsense, one begins to wonder if they believe it. If they do, and keep it up, they are asking for a drubbing in 2010 that will do for Mr Obama's agenda what the wipe-out of 1994 did for Bill Clinton's.
« Why Democrats are...smiling? | Main | Something else for Democrats to smile about » Obama has lost sight of the center09 Nov 2009 04:56 pm
My column for Monday's FT argues that the Democrats are asking for trouble in 2010.
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This would be an interesting article if Clive Crook's center was actually a "center" and not a "right wing". Given the concessions made by liberal/progressive Democrats in passing the House bill, how is it not "centrist"? I mean, one *could* define the "moderate" Republicans who say nothing while their leadership demagogues about "death panels", "cuts" to Medicare, and who would do nothing at all to reform health insurance at all (based on their bill) as the political "center", but how is that in any way meaningful?
I find it fascinating that this guy in his blog always seems to want to call himself "centrist", when he is in fact moderately right-wing (and in any Western democracy outside the U.S., a fundamentalist conservative). I suppose that makes himself feel like an important intellectual rather than a hack? I'm sure glad I get to read stuff like this for free, since it would be tragic to actually pay for it.
This is like reading Halperin a year+ back, where everything that happened was good news for John McCain.
In a scattering of offyear elections you can't actually determine a massive voter rebuke to one party, most especially if you feel that voters sending a message about Washington vote for the outparty on the gubernatorial ballot but the inparty on the House ballot, which seems to be your reasoning. (Keep in mind that the 2 House members are likely to help Pelosi and the president pass legislation far more than 2 moderate Republican governors.)
Civil war in the Republican party augurs well for next year's mid-term elections...Oh, yes, Democrats did lose the governorships of New Jersey and Virginia...
If the newly elected governors had marched up and down their states in a tight embrace with Sarah Palin and ran on a platform of "I am not Obama, and you can send him a big thumbs down if only you agree that I can live in the governor's mansion" it would be one thing. They ran as centrists who tried to avoid mentioning their party affiliation and focused laser-like on local issues. (And they had pretty poor opponents, not that those will be impossible for Republicans to find in '10 or '12. But not all Democrats are going to be Corzine or Jefferson easy.)
So long as the base is ho hum on those bland moderate guys who actually won and thrilled about NY23, I'd say the Republicans have every reason to worry.
And the title is both generally nonsensical and unrelated to the excerpt you print. The far left is fussing that Obama's a centrist, as has been evident since before the election to the non-teabag-blinded. Barring a fabulous economic turnaround or truly epic Republican mismanagement (certainly possible) the Dems will probably give up some seats in the House in '10. It's what happens. It doesn't mean the president now, a year early, is focussed on the left or the right or the center.
Daft, abstract garbage. Obama must not pursue any of the policies he ran on because it might jeopardize his ability to enact the policies he ran on. When you try to do hard things, you take political risks. It's funny that in this discussion of politics, there's not a single suggestion that maybe we should enact good policy for the sake of the country even if there's a political price to pay. Does that matter to you at all? In any event, whatever price will be paid by Blue Dog Democrats in 2010, not your hated leftists.
For the 100th time, so-called centrists were next to irrelevant in Obama's election. He won by flipping Hispanics and inspiring massive turnout among them, blacks, and young people, none of whom give rat's rear end about your precious, lazy conception of centrism, which is anything but. If he turns them out again, he wins. White men hated him in 2008, they hate him now, they'll hate him in 2012.
God this is a lazy column. Somebody like you has been writing the same thing for 100 years. It was always something not of the center that was going derail those silly liberals -- it was women's suffrage, social security, civil right, medicare, gay marriage, health reform. Yadayayda. If it were up to you, none of these things would exist because oh they're just so hard and the center that never existed won't like it.
Lazy, lazy, lazy. The quality of your thought and work is embarrassing when compared to the rest of the people who write for this magazine - even McArdle.
Mr. Crook, the location of the center depends on one’s perspective. With your comment: “He has let nearly every agenda be set by the Democrats’ left-leaning congressional leadership,” one might think that President Obama just tried to jam a single-payer health care plan down the country’s throat, called for the immediate end of the Bush tax cuts, nationalized the banks, advocated a second stimulus (and not one with 1/3rd consisting of tax cuts), overturned Gramm-Leach-Bliley, sought the repeal of NAFTA, and named a carrier group after William Jennings Bryant.
Sure, the over-assuredness of the Democrats in the face of last week’s losses is off-putting (but the main driver of the governorship losses was weak candidates—something they were loathe to highlight), and it seems this smugness created a surge of pique that distorted your perspective. Will President Obama’s centrist agenda help at-risk Democrats in 2010? Maybe not, but if 1994-Redeaux hits theaters in 2010, I’m not convinced it will be due to the President’s deaf ear to the center.
Hmm...I guess I will just crib the guys at Ballon Juice and say, "Good news for Conservatives!"
Mr. Crook, you have almost completely glossed over the counter-cyclical nature of both the states in question (or any sort of historical context). Also no mention of the individual races themselves. To consider this some sort of national referendum is a wild over-generalization that is not supported by the numbers .
The contests themselves could not have been anymore different. In NJ you had a wildly unpopular incumbent who barely lost and in VA you had a good republican candidate (who ran a 'parochial' moderate campaign) versus a mediocre to bad democratic one.
Neither of the republican candidates who ran and won closely associated themselves with their parties national agenda. Moreover they both did an admirable job of running locally driven races.
Now I will not say that VA did not have some harsh lessons for democrats, the lower Obama-surge voters turnout, for example. There is definitely an enthusiasm gap. But, well it would be hard to top '08s story-line. Also that there is a strong anti-incumbency movement building in the country.
Basically since the democrats took back both houses and the White House, the conventional wisdom is always an impending revolt/collapse/whatever from the voters.
And finally I would note that you did not mention the other special election in California, the mayoral races in New York and Charlotte, or that democrats went 5 for 5 in special elections for congressional seats since 08. But guess those do not fit into the "impending doom for democrats" meme.