The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza, reporting from Colorado, foresees the Democrats trending away from the New Deal coalition. This bit is fascinating:
There is an irony in the party of the downtrodden becoming the party of America's economic winners, but in fact Democrats are doing better among voters in places that are prospering, like Colorado and New Mexico, and losing ground among voters in regions that are experiencing hard times, such as West Virginia or parts of Pennsylvania and Ohio. A Democratic turn toward the West would accelerate this trend. A party of the Western megapolitans and resort communities would be a party less and less like the party of F.D.R., Truman, and Lyndon Johnson. It would be more oriented to the haves than to the have-nots. It would rely more on educated voters. Its approach to social issues would be more matter-of-fact, and candidates would be less fearful of alienating the most reactionary evangelicals. It would be more oriented toward small businesses and thus more skeptical of workplace regulations. It might become a party that puts more emphasis on achieving energy independence and combatting global warming than on providing universal health care and social justice. "It's a party that becomes more Hispanic, and less African-American," Kenneth Baer, the co-founder of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, said. "More oriented toward high-tech workers and less towards labor. It's the end of the New Deal coalition."
What does this foretell for the Republicans? That tomorrow's GOP is going to become more the party of Mike Huckabee: socially conservative and economically populist. It's the natural counterpoint to this Democratic trend. We live in interesting times.
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"The Democrats, however, sure won't do it either."
Bill Clinton--a Democrat--left office with a budget surplus.
quote: "Bill Clinton--a Democrat--left office with a budget surplus."
Bill Clinton had a Republican Congress who under Newt Gingrich was willing to go toe to toe with him on the budget, even shutting down the government at one point. Sometimes gridlock is good.
rr
Daniel,
What rr said.
Also ...
Look how little Bill's successes seem to count for with the net-roots of the Democratic base.
Look how much good they did for Hillary last spring.
Both she and Bill were used for toilet tissue by the vast left-wing conspiracy.
And every one who had the good sense to vote for Hillary instead of Barack -- for reasons like the one that you cite -- was accused of being racist ... by people like *you!*
Danny Boy, you never cease to amaze.
Daniel,
One more thing: just the other day in *The Wall Street Journal* one of Obama's economic advisers was so brazen as to say on record that one lesson Obama has learned from George W. Bush -- as if he needed to be taught -- is that there need be no political price for deficit spending, in which he plans to indulge with great gusto and verve, as is clear from his slate of proposals for additional spending. Even if Obama introduced no new spending at all -- and there's fat chance of that -- his revocation of the Bush tax cuts and the inordinate tax hikes he plans to impose, would only cut the deficit by 20%.
Time to look at a few Actual Facts, gang.
BOTH "parties" (really two wings of the same party, but let that go for now) base their power on their ability to buy votes and support. Democrats are more or less straight vote-buyers. Their ability to get support depends on their ability to maintain spending on entitlement programs and special privileges for a wide variety of "victim" or pro-State interest groups. ("Civil Rights" for black and Hispanic commoners, favorable regulations for environmentalist or homosexual-privilege groups, etc.) This, if done outside the governmental sphere, would be called "bribery".
Republicans are a little more circumspect about it; they tend to do their buying second- or third-hand. Corporate welfare (including tax breaks for corporate activities of one sort or another), for example, gives them clout with the senior executives (the Corporate Lords) who actually control the money that becomes campaign contributions. Military spending, particularly on pensions and after-service benefits (the GI Bill, CHAMPUS, etc.) buys them support from veterans and their families. Most Republicans have also supported maintaining and/or expanding elderly entitlements. The process is still the same: bribery.
One of the problems with this Welfare-Warfare State structure is that, over time, the interest groups develop an unbreakable hold over central-government spending. It then becomes impossible to arrange any sort of serious restraint on such spending; the groups ally with each other to pressure the political elite to keep the money flowing.
They also tend to expand the circle of direct beneficiaries into the formerly-independent citizenry until there are more beneficiaries of public largesse than there are actual productive taxpayers to provide said largesse. To borrow from the immortal John Calhoun, this allows a concurrent majority to form whose interests lie in maintaining a permanent budgetary imbalance.
From there on in, the regime is locked onto a destructive course, and the country is taken along with it.
America is well past this point; even before the rapid expansion of entitlement spending projected after 2010, there are no serious plans on the table to restrain central-government or provincial spending. The only major arguments are over the degree of increase. Meanwhile, the burdens on capital, particularly at the small- and medium-sized business level, are making America increasingly less attractive for investment. Consider, as a simple example, the deterrent effect Sarbanes-Oxley disclosure requirements have had on Initial Public Offerings--important in allowing companies to raise capital. Also consider that Mr. Obama has made a serious proposal to raise the income limit on the FICA (Social Security) tax, the better to "save" Social Security.
Neither faction sees much interest in--or political profit in--real restraint on State spending; they simply represent different collections of interest groups who derive their resources from State-sponsored robbery at gunpoint. There is a name for this sort of thing among those who study the natural world: Parasitism. And, as any good Bio 101 student knows, an inept parasite winds up killing its host and itself.
The second major problem is the changes such a state of affairs make in the population as a whole. People become accustomed to, if not actually coming to prefer, being in a state of dependency on the State or similar large organization. They become less concerned with their responsibilities and more with what they think they have coming. This, in turn, spills over into the cultural and personal arenas; such devolutions have been frequently commented on on this site, and very accurately. The healthy parts of the body politic wind up, in effect, surrendering to the sickness.
The current American society is suffering from an acute case of Parasitic Ineptitude. The prognosis may well be terminal. I don't see either would-be Chief Physicker having much to offer in the way of a cure. It wouldn't pay them to actually have one; they work for the parasites.
Your servant,
Lord Karth
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