Recently in Democrats Category

Remember all the advice over the years the left has given the GOP about how to become a big tent, namely, by opening the door to social liberals (a move that suits the relatively wealthy, who tend to be mre liberal)? Well, according to Peter Beinart, Pelosi's Democrats have taken the same advice on the flip side: expanding their franchise by making economics more important than social-issue litmus tests. Here's Peter Beinart:

The House's passage of health-care reform is the clearest sign yet that the Democratic Party is, once again, for better and for worse, a big tent. By essentially sacrificing abortion and immigrant rights to get conservative Democrats to vote for expanded health-care coverage, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi restored the old hierarchy that between the 1930s and the 1960s helped Democrats establish dominance on Capitol Hill. Today, to a degree we haven't seen since then, the Democratic Party is about economic protection first, and cultural freedom second.

More:

Without this top-down and bottom-up shift, the House would not have passed health-care reform last Saturday night. It passed because the House contains dozens of culturally conservative Democrats, many of whom voted yes on reform. Had Democrats nominated cultural liberals for those seats, those seats would now be held by Republicans, who would certainly have voted no. And had Democrats tried to force those conservative Democrats to vote for a bill that permitted government funding of abortion, the Democrats themselves would have voted no.

For cultural liberals, it was ugly. They had better get used to it: Big parties are ugly. But if you want to rebuild the American welfare state, there is no alternative. A profound shift is under way, one that will likely endure even if Democrats lose seats in the midterm elections next year. The Republican Party is growing smaller and more ideologically pristine; the Democratic Party has grown larger and more untidy. Conservative activists seem positively thrilled by their party's newfound purity. I hope they enjoy it. Meanwhile, in the messy real world, the party of FDR and LBJ is back.

While I would not describe myself as wanting to rebuild the American welfare state, that the Democrats make serious room for social and cultural conservatives makes it much more likely they'll pick up votes from time to time from people like me: voters who are culturally conservative but economically moderate. As a general matter, I'll vote for a pro-life Democrat over a pro-choice Republican -- and the 2005 Pew political typology, while somewhat out of date by now, showed growth opportunity for the Dems from among the surprisingly large number of socially conservative/economically moderate demographic.

One interesting thing to me: the Venn diagram of People Who Swing Right on Cultural Issues, People Who Swing Left(ish) on Economic Issues, and People In the Media, creates a tiny space at the intersection. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting either a conventional liberal or a libertarian ("fiscal conservative, social moderate/liberal") in newsrooms or online -- same with conventional conservatives. Which may explain why the large number of social conservatives/economic moderates-to-liberals who show up in the Pew survey are largely invisible to writers on the left and the right.

NYT reports that Wall Street bigs have decided to be stingy to the Democratic Party, staying away from a big fundraiser scheduled for tonight in Manhattan. This, after all Team Obama has done for them? Tsk, tsk. From the Times:

Part of the reason, several Democratic fund-raisers and executives said, is a fear of getting caught in the public rage over the perception that Wall Street titans profiting from their government bailout may use their winnings to give back to Washington in return. And the timing of the event, as the industry lobbies against proposals for tighter regulations to address the underlying causes of last year's meltdown on Wall Street, has only added to the worry over public appearances.

"There are sensitivities there," said Scott Talbot, a lobbyist for the industry's Financial Services Roundtable. Political contributions "can make a donor a target," Mr. Talbot said. Many involved, though, say the low attendance from those Wall Street giants also reflected a broader disenchantment with Mr. Obama over the angry language emanating from the White House over the million-dollar bonuses and anti-regulatory lobbying.

"There is some failure in the finance industry to appreciate the level of public antagonism toward whatever Wall Street symbolizes," said Orin Kramer, a partner in an investment firm who is a Democratic fund-raiser and one of the event's chairmen. "But in order to save the capitalist system, the administration has to be responsive to the public mood, and that is a nuance which can get lost on Wall Street."

Dr. Daniel E. Fass, another chairman of the event who lives surrounded by financiers in Greenwich, Conn., said: "The investment community feels very put-upon. They feel there is no reason why they shouldn't earn $1 million to $200 million a year, and they don't want to be held responsible for the global financial meltdown." Dr. Fass added, "How much that will be reflected in their support for the president remains to be seen."

It would be nice if Obama weren't flying to Manhattan to receive whorish tribute from the same people he ought to be fighting and disciplining on behalf of the common good and the future of our capitalist system. It would also be nice if I won the lottery, lost 20 pounds and could speak fluent French without really trying. They're making a fool of Obama, and he's willing to be made a fool of. Will he ever wake up and realize that these people are not on his side, and indeed not on anybody's side but their own?

I am on record, multiple times, complaining about Glenn Beck trying to make people think the Obama administration is peopled with crazypants commies. And then something like this turns up. Watch this address from earlier this year in which Interim White House Communications Director Anita Dunn, with no apparent irony, approvingly quotes one of her self-described "favorite" political philosophers, Mao Zedong:

Mao Zedong, as you know, was a communist tyrant who killed between 20 million and 40 million of his own people. Do I think that Dunn is a Maoist? Of course not. But it is morally insane for her to give a speech praising this monster, and citing his determination as an inspiration. What the hell? Who in their right mind thinks this way? If Tony Snow had given a talk approvingly quoting Adolf Hitler, you know perfectly well what would have happened, and what should have happened. Honestly, this is indefensible. This Dunn idiot now makes Beck look responsible. As Nick Gillespie over on Reason's blog writes, "I admit it. I want my reality back. I don't know when it went missing. But I want it back."

UPDATE: You know what the problem is? Anita Dunn probably moves in circles where saying and believing something like that is by no means out of the ordinary. Of course they don't really believe that mass murder, Cultural Revolution, laogai and all the other horrors wrought by Mao's revolution is, you know, okay, but many left-liberals downplay the evils of communism, and in fact are far more sensitive to the supposed dangers of anti-communism. Do I think Dunn is a Maoist? No. But I think she is typical of a certain kind of liberal nitwit who is blind as a bat to evil that comes from any direction but the right.

UPDATE.2: Look, I agree that Beck is a histrionic nut, and I don't think the Obama administration is a nest of Marxist revolutionaries. But I'm having a tough time finding any justification for brushing off Dunn's offensive remarks. Again, if a top White House official in a Republican administration had made similar remarks in praise of Hitler, is there any context in which that would be any less than outrageous? Seriously.

I've just read two scathing attacks from the left on Obama, the Democrats and their pretensions to reform. First, here's a bit of Frank Rich from yesterday's Times:

Obama's promise to make Americans trust the government again was not just another campaign bullet point; it's the foundation of his brand of governance and essential to his success in office. At the first anniversary of the TARP bailout of the banks, we can see how far he has to go. Americans' continued suspicion that Washington is in cahoots with powerful interests in joints like Tosca is contributing to their confusion and skepticism about what's happening out of view in the battle over health care reform.

The public is not wrong. The administration's legislative deals with the pharmaceutical companies were made in back rooms. Business Week reported in early August that the UnitedHealth Group and its fellow insurance giants had already quietly rounded up moderate Democrats in the House to block any public health care option that would compete with them for business. UnitedHealth's hired Beltway gunslingers include both Elmendorf Strategies and Daschle, a public supporter of the public option who nonetheless does some of his "wink, wink" counseling for UnitedHealth. The company's in-house lobbyist is a former chief of staff to Steny Hoyer, the House majority leader. Gephardt consults there too.

Here's Thomas Frank -- again, a liberal -- in the Wall Street Journal, attacking the culture of Democratic lobbying in DC, and the Washington Post's celebration of it :

But it's not just prudery or populist distaste for fancy risottos that turns the public against lobbying: It's the deep venality that makes possible jokes about senators being bought like lunches. It's the debasement of politics from a matter of persuasion to one of money and connections. And it's because the capital's main journalistic watchdog seems perfectly content to see politics made into a kind of financial transaction--so content, in fact, that the paper's publisher planned dinner salons that would apparently have put the Post itself on a partial pay-to-play footing.

These are uncomfortable times in Washington. The laissez-faire shibboleths of the last 30 years are in pieces on the ground; the Republican Party is a shadow of its former self; and energy, finance, and health care are all targeted for reform by a president elected last fall with a powerful mandate. And so it falls to our lobbyists to keep reality at bay--to step forward in this awful moment, when history itself is daily giving us such stark lessons, and make sure we do nothing to upset the order that keeps them so well fed.

We know that the Republicans, in their current form, are pretty much good for nothing. Now it's becoming clear even to smart partisan liberals like Rich and Frank that the Democrats aren't much better. Ross Douthat points out in his column today that income inequality is actually continuing to worsen, but that the Democrats aren't likely to do anything about it, in part because they're too beholden to corporate and wealthy interests, but also because they represent constituencies (pro-immigration Hispanics, teacher's unions, those who reject the normative nuclear family) who have a stake in continuing policies that increase income inequality. Excerpt:

Inequality is also driven by the collapse of the two-parent household, which disproportionately affects the poor and working class, depriving them of the social capital they need to rise.

But today's Democratic Party increasingly represents "unmarried America" -- the single, the childless, the divorced. This makes it an unlikely vehicle for policies that discriminate, whether through tax code or the welfare state, in favor of the traditional nuclear family.

And so we drift. I like to quote on this site a definition of "decadent" I read somewhere: when an institution knows what needs to be done to rescue itself, but is incapable of doing it. Our politicians know, and so do we all, that we cannot continue to live this way, spending far beyond our means. We know that special interests -- corporations, financiers, interest groups, favored demographics -- own the government, and paralyze politicians. We know that sooner or later, there's going to be a crash, that this cannot go on forever. What then? What happens when people lose faith in the Democrats, as they've lost faith in the Republicans? Serious question.

Politico has an irresistible story today about the insufferably toadyish John Edwards aide Andrew Young, his nauseating master, the creepy St. Elizabeth (who allegedly leaned on this Southern-fried Smithers to reassert his false claim of paternity to protect her sleazy husband's political prospects), and how it all came crashing down. Hell hath no fury like a political butt boy scorned, it would seem. The human drama here is fairly remarkable. Thank goodness these people are not in the White House.