Obama Dems Back Away From Big Government
In a recent Washington Post piece Sally Kohn suggested that the liberal emphasis on tolerance as a social good has hampered the ability for liberals to be politically successful. Leaving aside whether or not that is even remotely true, she used an example that got my attention, one which may show she is working on a false assumption regarding many Democratic voters. Kohn wrote:
Now, Obama has proposed reducing the federal debt by $4 trillion over the next 12 years, making “the tough cuts necessary to achieve these savings, including in programs that I care deeply about.” But the reason he’s even having this conversation is because the tea party handed him the scissors. Had liberals more fiercely fought for the role of government as the spender of last resort in a recession — and for the role of government in general for the past three decades — Congress would instead be debating how to invest public money in the new American economy. Instead, tolerant Democrats are not only capitulating to negotiations over how much to starve our economy of public capital but in some cases are bragging about how much they’re giving in.
The problem with this example is that it assumes Democrats in general consider large-scale domestic spending to be the centerpiece of their political views and any compromise on this point is a compromise on fundamental principles. That may be the case for many or even most Democrats. I'd suggest it is not the case, however, for a large portion of Democratic voters, particularly many upper-middle class voters who describe themselves as economically conservative but socially liberal and who voted for Obama.
Many Democratic voters support the Party because they see it as the party of social liberalism. While they may also support more government intervention in the economy than most Republican voters, that support isn't as central to their world-view and they are more likely to see such issues as negotiable. One can describe that as a good or bad thing, but that is part of the political landscape that President Obama must consider. If fact, many of the hot-button issues President Obama has acted on are socially liberal issues, such as support for funding of Planned Parenthood in the federal budget and repeal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" military policy. Such issues are more important to many Democratic voters than how Medicaid is funded, and that is reflected in public policy.
Make no mistake, I’m not claiming that there are millions of Democrats who support Rep. Paul Ryan's budget plan or who secretly support Austrian School economics. I'd tend to agree with Paul Krugman's general observation (perhaps not the details) that the main division between the two parties is that the Democratic Party is much more comfortable with modern welfare state capitalism than the GOP. That doesn't mean that all Democrats consider protection of the welfare state to be the most important issue, and while many economic liberals may react negatively and viscerally when conservatives suggest private-sector approaches to social problems or cuts in government spending, not all Democrats do. Politics is all about priorities, and economic liberals shouldn't assume that their political allies agree with all of their priorities. I suspect many Democratic politicians have figured out that there are some differences of issue emphasis among their voters and are acting accordingly. That may bother more social-democratic members of the Democratic coalition, but it isn't a betrayal of general principles or an example of self-defeating liberal tolerance.
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