Wishful thinking by Alter a lobotomized lefty. A recent study out of MIT demonstrates without doubt that obama's election was not the product of some transformational shift in the electorate. In fact , with one key exception, there was no difference in the 2008 election from the elections in prior years. For example, the much hyped youth vote did not turnout, as was the case in past, recent elections and voted in the same percentages. Indeed, the only m,aterial change, which was the difference in the election, was that the black vote, was far greater than in prior elections and voted democrat in even higher percentages than previously. Much of it wasnt even fraudulent, nws the best efforts of urban pols and acorn. Just an understandable racial affinity vote, not a quantum shift to the left.
We’re Heading Left Once Again
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History does not repeat itself, but it can have a familiar ring. In the 1920s, Americans essentially believed that the private sector could solve any problem. After the Depression began, Congress was still deeply unpopular, as it is today. But once Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected in 1932 and proved in his first 100 days that he could dent the problem, the center moved left. While the Depression didn't actually end for another eight years, the American people felt that at least the government was on their side.
Reagan's revolution in 1980 was so striking that it conditioned a whole generation to believe it was permanent. Many scholars even believed the GOP had an "electoral lock" on the presidency—an insurmountable geographical advantage in the Electoral College. Bill Clinton's victories in 1992 and 1996 didn't do much to change the map; he won both times with less than 50 percent of the vote, thanks to the presence of independent Ross Perot in those races.
Perot's agenda—reducing the deficit—became Clinton's. James Carville joked bitterly that he wanted to be reincarnated as the bond market because Wall Street was getting all the loving attention of the Clinton administration. The strategy paid off: the budget was balanced (in part through tax increases begun under President George H.W. Bush) and the economy surged. But Clinton ended up a bit like the character in the poem "Miniver Cheevy" by Edwin Arlington Robinson. Miniver felt he was born too late for King Arthur's Camelot; Clinton felt the same way about the ambitious Camelot of the 1960s.
Now we're confronting a big deficit again—seemingly a recipe for a Democratic president to pull his liberal punches once more. But the political context has changed in ways that would give a President Obama more running room. Instead of a Democratic Congress that's out of gas after 40 years in power, as Clinton faced, Obama would have allies on Capitol Hill determined to prove that they can address problems in a practical way. Instead of an almost religious devotion to the libertarian ideas of Alan Greenspan, we're moving back toward what might be called neo-Keynesian economics. And instead of the unobstructed opposition of a new media powerhouse (talk radio), Obama would have the help of more than 2.5 million small contributors, eager to use the Web to mobilize on behalf of his program.
If he wins, Obama could run aground in a thousand ways next year. He will have to possess all the dexterity he's shown during the campaign, and then some. If he fails to deliver, the country will go back to the center-right. But if he gets a few big things enacted in his first year, Barack Obama would have a fighting chance to move the country to a new place, or at least one we haven't seen for a while. Leftward ho!
© 2008
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