Don't Count Obama Out
After 8 years of patient efforts to roll back Republican gains, eventually retaking Congress, and finally electing a Democratic President, is the left really going to give up that easily? Manic progressives have moved from the euphoria of incipient healthcare reform into outright cynicism and despair.
Yesterday, Ezra Klein, whose Democrats still have four more members in the Senate than Republicans were able to achieve in their high watermark year of 2006, essentially threw in the towel on all medium-term liberal achievements.
But the likely outcome of the 2010 election -- a narrowed Democratic majority with an enlarged, energized Republican minority -- won't allow for much in the way of legislative accomplishments.
As Keith Hennessey noted in his blog Tuesday, this does not have to be the case. President Bush was able to promote substantial legislative achievements (the 2001 tax cuts, No Child Left Behind, Trade Promotion Authority, Medicare Part D, Energy, Pension Reform, the 2008 Stimulus, and TARP) on a bipartisan basis. (I would also add Class Action and Bankruptcy reforms, and the Patriot Act.) And he was able to do so working with liberals and conservatives alike, under Republican and Democratic majorities.
Bush's predecessor was also able to promote a serious legislative agenda, securing trade agreements, welfare reform, and a balanced budget. Even assuming that Klein and the progressive left reject these accomplishments as insufficiently liberal, they are foolish to slight Clinton's work on healthcare after the debacle of Hillarycare. He made it increasingly difficult for Republicans to oppose Medicare prescription drug coverage, and he set the stage for this year's near miss on healthcare by pursuing CHIP and the Patients' Bill of Rights.
Even after 2010, it is almost certain that Democrats will maintain control of the Senate. And yet despairing Democrats are ready to pack it in.
I am not normally in the business of giving Democrats strategic advice, but somebody needs to tell them to get a grip.
Obamacare might not happen. It was perhaps a bit ambitious to attempt a wholesale restructuring of the American economy in 12 months. And 2010 is shaping up to be a disastrous year electorally.
But the evidence of the Bush and Clinton administrations is that the President, even absent a supermajority in Congress, is quite capable of enacting serious legislation that promotes his party's long-term agenda.