The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page despises the current leadership of the Democratic party as only a group of people with an iconic link to free-market capitalism can be, and said despising shines through every word of this piece sneering at the ‘accomplishments’ of the 111th Congress. Scare quotes deliberate: the WSJ opines (and I agree) that the Democrats are guessing and gambling that they can get their hideously unpopular agenda functional for long enough that people will simply start treating it as part of the landscape. I think that that is wishful thinking on the Democrats’ part, and so does the WSJ:
The difference between the work of the 111th Congress and that of either the Great Society or New Deal is that the latter were bipartisan and in the main popular. This Congress’s handiwork is profoundly unpopular and should become more so as its effects become manifest. In 2010, Americans saw liberalism in the raw and rejected it. The challenge for Republicans is to repair the damage before it becomes permanent.
So get your game faces on. 2011 is going to make 2009 look like the first Woodstock.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
PS: This is rapidly becoming the point where people start producing comments of their own about how it’s all useless because the Republicans won’t fight / the two parties are just the same / we’re all doomed. If you truly believe the first: get off of the computer and hie yourself down to your local Republican party group and fix it*. If you truly believe the second: I’m sorry, but you’re not even wrong. And if you truly believe the third… well, I’m a blogger, not a trained mental health professional / member of any organized clergy. Casting off this shroud of despair that you’ve saddled yourself with is something that you’ll simply have to handle on your own.
*I didn’t ask you what your excuse for not doing that was.
“2011 is going to make 2009 look like the first Woodstock.” That was the real quote of the day. Also, already a member of my local Republican Party.
Moe:
“This is rapidly becoming the point where people start producing comments of their own about how it’s all useless because the Republicans won’t fight / the two parties are just the same / we’re all doomed.”
Actually, yes, but actually, for a whole bunch of different reasons than you or the WSJ imply.
First of all, it’s false that the earlier liberal reforms were popular, second of all, it’s misleading to say those reforms were bipartisan since at the time both parties had liberal, moderate and liberal wings, and third of all popularity doesn’t matter because what the 111th Congress did was impose a new status quo (on HCR, FinReg and social policy in the military) and once you set a status quo in American politics it’s damn near impossible, or anyway a downright bitch, to change it.
By the time you right-wingers have both the political capital AND the institutional control to “repeal Obamacare” it’ll be easier for you to just make a few cosmetic changes and change what you call it. Maybe “Jennacare” since Jenna Bush will be President by then.
But she’ll probably win as a Democrat.
Should be: “liberal moderate and conservative wings.”
I’m drunk.
jfxgillis, nah, it won’t be Jenna Bush, it’ll be Bristol Palin.