The evidence has become overwhelming: Democrats are headed
for a colossal disaster in 2010. The enthusiasm gap between
Republicans and Democrats is enormous. Turnout in Republican
primaries is exceeding that of Democrat primaries for the first
time since 1930. A roundup of political scientists at the
Huffington Post projected that Republicans would
pick up anywhere from 22 to 52 House seats. And those dreaded
words, “The Senate is in play,” have been echoing across the
blogosphere for the past two weeks.
Initially, leftists responded to the bad poll numbers by
ignoring them or claiming the public would swoon for Democrats once
their legislation took fuller effect. The stimulus would be seen as
a success story after the economy rebounded this summer. ObamaCare
would become beloved once the subsidy checks were in the
mail.
None of that happened. Now that Black Tuesday looms less
than two months away, the sledgehammer of bad news is finally
starting to hit Democrats on the head. And it’s everyone else’s
fault.
Washington Post columnist and Keith
Olbermann sounding board Eugene Robinson is blaming the voters,
whom he accuses of having a “temper tantrum.” He writes, “The
nation demands the impossible: quick, painless solutions to
long-term, structural problems.” Robinson claims this observation
is nonpartisan and that he could have made it at any point during
the last two decades. But by some stars-aligned coincidence, he
decided to bring it up this year.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution writer
Cynthia Tucker sees a nation in the throes of rage against
minorities. “While some prognosticators were naïve enough to
believe that Obama’s election signaled the beginning of a
post-racial era, it prompted something altogether different: a
backlash against the browning of America,” she declares.
Here’s how her theory works: America was doing just fine
for much of 2008 and 2009, having elected and supported its first
black president. Then late last year — around the time that health
care reform was being debated — white Americans suddenly woke up
and realized they didn’t have jobs and that there were more black
people living in their neighborhoods. This led to the ascendancy of
noted Tea Party white supremacists like Allen West and Marco Rubio.
It also catalyzed Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor rally where Dr.
Martin Luther King’s niece was applauded wildly.
The liberal blogosphere is fretting that Republicans will
clean up this year because progressives will stay home. If only
President Obama had fired up a health care public option and spent
more time groveling to unions, they reason, the country’s mammoth
progressive majority would be more jazzed. That’s a tough sell
considering the progressive left couldn’t win a primary race in
Arkansas that it poured millions of dollars into. Only 20% of
Americans identify as liberal or progressive, according to a Gallup
poll from a few months ago, compared with 42% who call themselves
conservative. For all the talk about keeping the Democratic base
happy, progressives actually compose a very measly
group.
I’m no psychologist, but I’d like to ask this question: Is
this massive rationalization mentally healthy? I’d always thought
the first step to solving a problem is admitting that you have a
problem. When searching for the key to their unpopularity,
shouldn’t the Democrats spend more time looking in a
mirror?
It’s not likely to happen. Perhaps the biggest problem is
that the Democrats’ most convincing rationalization is being
promoted by almost every media outlet. We hear it over and over
again: Democrats are going to lose because they haven’t mended the
economy. Thus can the lamentations begin. If only the Democrats
had focused on jobs! If only the stimulus had been larger! If only
we’d socked it to the rich harder!
Paul Krugman doesn’t even write columns anymore. He just
rearranges those three sentences and mails them to his
editor.
Of course the economy is forefront on everyone’s mind,
with GDP growth sluggish and unemployment close to 10%. But voting
trends are complex and usually driven by multiple causes. Is the
economy really the sharpest nail in the Democrats’
coffin?
Jay Cost of Real Clear Politics doesn’t think so. Cost
graphed the numbers and found that support for Democrats began to
tank during the third and fourth quarters of 2009 — right as GDP
growth was picking up and unemployment was decreasing. That’s when
independents, who supported Obama by 8 points in 2008, began
jumping ship.
So why on earth would voters start tarring Democrats over
the economy right as it was picking up? That was the same time that
the ObamaCare debate was dominating the news and the Tea Parties
were taking shape. It was the beginning of a tidal wave of voter
discontent over the president’s swell-the-state
progressivism.
The truth is that Barack Obama’s agenda, with health care
at its centerpiece, seen as both too radical and completely
ineffective by the American people, did Democrats in.
The poll numbers have borne this out for most of 2010.
Rasmussen found that 57% of likely voters think the Democrats’
agenda is too extreme, compared to only 40% for the Republicans’
agenda. Gallup found that a record plurality thought Democrats were
too liberal.
I’ve written that progressivism as an ideology has trouble
admitting that the majority oppose their ideas on principle.
Progressives have dreamed up a fantasy where they are “the people”
and conservatives are “the rich” and “the powerful” and “the top
2%.” An informed middle class rejecting the left’s economic ideas
on substance is anathema to them. It causes their whole worldview
to implode.
Thus there must be some other explanation. The voters must
have fallen for “misinformation by the right-wing media.” Maybe
they’ve let themselves get distracted by social issues on which the
left hasn’t made enough progress. Perhaps they’ve become petulant
and can’t understand what’s in their own best interest. It’s also
possible Obama wasn’t as great a communicator as they initially
thought. Or perhaps the Koch brothers are secretly running the
country from an underwater lair. Or Glenn Beck is bribing everyone
with gold.
The devastating reality is that 2010 will represent the
most definitive rejection of progressivism in recent American
history. But all we’ll hear from the progressives is a continuing
stream of unhealthy denial.
