Tom and Norm betray their goo-goo heritage rather grossly by coming out for, you guessed it, campaign finance reform, something I regard as a total non-starter. Attempting to control all the myriad ways people think up to spend money to influence the electorate requires an army of thought police that I find entirely incompatible with a free society. I’m a “full disclosure and party on” guy, myself, which is also a total non-starter, I’m afraid, since the liberals still dream of getting money out of politics and the conservatives, well, whatever rules there are, they want to break them. The liberals are unreasonable, and the conservatives, unscrupulous.
Tom and Norm also want to boost voter turnout, even to the point of punishing those who do not vote, which I also regard as a bad idea, and one that surely will not pass. Of course, we should fight Republican efforts to reduce voter turnout, but that’s not the same thing. So what is to be done?
My own opinion is that procedural reforms are trivial. You can’t beat something with nothing. What the Democrats need is not procedural reform, but something. Reluctantly, reluctantly, they have to learn how to connect with the middle class, instead of whoring after false gods, namely health care reform for the poor and environmental legislation pandering to the moral and aesthetic scruples of the upper middle class (although real estate values are a primary concern as well). Since taking office, President Obama has encountered a steep learning curve on both these issues.
One can say that Obama was hit by a perfect storm of right-wing reaction after taking office. Just as half the vitriol poured on Richard Nixon’s head for his Vietnam policy should have gone to Lyndon Johnson, half of the outrage over the various “bailouts” of Wall Street and Detroit should have descended on George Bush, who in fact is not a popular guy.
But the Administration compounded matters by failing to recognize the seriousness of the recession and predicting a quick recovery and by moving to enact two of the biggest items on the Democratic Party’s agenda, health care reform and massive environmental controls intended to reverse global warming. Hey, we won, didn’t we?
Yeah, we did, but only by taking power and enacting health care refeorm did the Democrats learn that 1) most Americans have health insurance and are basically satisfied with it; 2) for most Americans, “health care reform” means “more health care for me at a lower cost”; 3) for most Americans, “health care reform” does not mean “I pay for someone else’s health insurance.” For fifty years, liberals have been saying that it’s a disgrace that the U.S. doesn’t have national health insurance, and for fifty years America hasn’t been listening.
As for global warming, well, fortunately, the Administration’s fantasies for a comprehensive package fell to pieces prior to enactment, and the bits and pieces that were pushed through, either by legislation or executive action, are slowly being eroded. Many liberals are still convinced that we are on the way to a dead planet (obviously, I think they’re wrong) but they’re learning, in the most painful manner possible, that “meaningful” legislation to reverse global warming is politically unfeasible—not just unfeasible, but disastrous. (The recent UN conference on the environment held in Rio de Janeiro, a massive disappointment to anyone actually expecting action, is only the latest indication that governments around the world simply have no interest in sacrificing a dollar off their budgets to save the planet. Get used to it, enviros!)
A chastened Democratic Party would abandon the liberal compulsion to find some justification, somewhere, for the government to run society, and largely let society run itself. The Republican charge of elitism sticks because it’s often true. The Democrats still have strong cards to play—reproductive rights for women, social acceptance of gays, a liberal immigration policy, for example—which, in fact, the Administration is now playing. That, coupled with a shamefully repressive record on civil liberties, an abysmal policy of remote control murder abroad, plus with a slow withdrawal of American combat troops, so as not to embarrass the military too much—“You did a great job, guys! Fantastic! Now let’s just forget that the whole thing happened, OK?”—well, it might just get Obama re-elected. And, sadly, he’d probably be better than Mitt.
