×
It's been fascinating to watch The Corner's obsession with the idea that Obama will prioritize "structural things like unions, open borders cum amnesty, and fairness doctrine/talk radio, etc. that would all be seen as investments in ensuring more liberal voters in the next elections." Obama opposes two of those three policies, and my hunch is he won't really fight for the Employee Free Choice Act even as he nominally supports it. So maybe it's just that conservatives don't know that much about Obama's governing agenda. But as insight into the conservative approach to governance, this panicked belief that Obama will single-mindedly harness the power of the government to expand his coalition is interesting, if only because it is so rarely attempted by Democrats. In 1992, of course, Clinton comes into office and immediately enrages labor by pushing NAFTA. In 1994, William Kristol counsels total opposition to Clinton's health care plan because its passaged could reknit the bond between Democrats and the middle class for a generation. In 2000, Bush comes into office, and his chief strategist gives interviews like this one:
In our last interview, I tried out on Rove a scenario I called “the death of the Democratic Party.” The Party has three key funding sources: trial lawyers, Jews, and labor unions. One could systematically disable all three, by passing tort-reform legislation that would cut off the trial lawyers’ incomes, by tilting pro-Israel in Middle East policy and thus changing the loyalties of big Jewish contributors, and by trying to shrink the part of the labor force which belongs to the newer, and more Democratic, public-employee unions. And then there are three fundamental services that the Democratic Party is offering to voters: Social Security, Medicare, and public education. Each of these could be peeled away, too: Social Security and Medicare by giving people benefits in the form of individual accounts that they invested in the stock market, and public education by trumping the Democrats on the issue of standards. The Bush Administration has pursued every item on that list. Rove didn’t offer any specific objection but, rather, a general caveat that the project might be too ambitious. “Well, I think it’s a plausible explanation,” he said. “I don’t think you ever kill any political party. Political parties kill themselves, or are killed, not by the other political party but by their failure to adapt to new circumstances. But do you weaken a political party, either by turning what they see as assets into liabilities, and/or by taking issues they consider to be theirs, and raiding them?” The thought brought to his round, unlined, guileless face a boyish look of pure delight. “Absolutely!”Using public policy in a coordinated fashion to grow your majority and weaken your opposition has, at least in recent years, been more a feature of Republican strategic thinking than Democratic efforts. Which is why, I think, the Corner-types are so sure that Obama will toss political capital in that direction, while just about all liberals I know figure he'll try to do things like a cap-and-trade bill that will hurt the Democratic coalition but possibly do some good on global warming. Which is not to say that Obama shouldn't think more about constructing a more durable progressive majority. Indeed, I think Democrats should put at least some energy towards good policies that are also good politics. I seem to remember someone writing an article about what such an agenda would look like...
