Steve Moore says despite a better than expected October employment report, the economy is still very weak, making it essential to forge a deal to extend all the Bush tax cuts.
Posted on 11/06/2010 2:49:48 PM PDT by dr_who
A popular and charismatic president in a time of great economic distress has large majorities in both the House and Senate. He tries to push through Congress a highly unpopular measure that, in the opinion of many, would have fundamentally altered the nature of the country. Meanwhile the economy was failing to recover. At the midterm elections, despite strenuous efforts on his part, he gets clobbered.
Barack Obama in 2010? No, Franklin Roosevelt in 1938. Roosevelt had carried 46 states in 1936. But his attempt to "pack" the Supreme Court had run into ferocious opposition and was defeated. Meanwhile the economy, which had been slowly recovering from the depths of the Great Depression, turned south again. Unemployment, which had fallen to 14.3% from its Depression high, shot back up to 19%.
Steve Moore says despite a better than expected October employment report, the economy is still very weak, making it essential to forge a deal to extend all the Bush tax cuts.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
But, the Dems still held the House and Senate after that. Same during 1982. And, there has never been a divided Congress that ended well for a POTUS at election time.
I’m getting rather tired of folks talking about the numbers without talking about the substance.
In 1946, the Republicans swept Congress. In 1948 the Democrats swept back. Two massive swings, in successive elections.
What happened, in 1947? The Democratic Party ejected the Stalinists from its ranks. The Dems lost in 1946 because of who they were, and won in 1948 because they changed. It wasn’t just a natural swing, and it wasn’t just that voters were fickle.
Will the current GOP dominance last? Probably not. But why will it fail? Two possibilities: either the GOP will abandon its dedication to individual freedom, as they’ve done all too often, or the Dems will reject transnational progressivism.
I think the latter very unlikely, the Dems will cry havoc even louder with their progressive ideas. They may well have reached a tipping point and will never be able to come back since we succeeded in driving so many of the Old Style Dems out. As for the former, the GOP is not dedicated to indivdual freedom and won't be until conservatives take over the party.
I admit it seems unlikely, but they have done it before.
The largest faction within the Democratic Party is made up of political opportunists. The Dems spent 90 years as the party of Jim Crow, and then dropped racist principles like a hot rock, when they thought it was politically expedient. They were the party of progressivism for 40 years, then dropped progressive principles, when they began losing them elections.
The progressives within the Democratic Party believe the purpose of the Party is to push progressive principles. The larger faction within the Party has no principles, and will be quick to abandon progressivism, as soon as they think it is costing them votes.
Your assessment is right on the mark, in my view. The hard core progressives have, however, seized control of the purse strings and without money its going to be hard to flip and flop as they have done in the past. They may certainly stage some feint and say that they are abandoning their leftist leanings, but they will be lying.
That could do a great deal in keeping the Democrats from regaining the House for quite a while.
Facts are facts. You can interpret them any way you wish, but angrily denying them is a very counterproductive thing to do.
Go to news.google.com and search for “A Short History of Midterm Elections”.
I don’t think this is a two-front war between Republicans and leftist Dems to begin with. It’s between small-government conservatives and Republicrats.
The Democrats abandoned progressivism?
In 1944, the Democratic Party leaders forced FDR to drop Henry Wallace as VP, in favor of Harry Truman. Wallace ended up running for President in 1948 as the Progressive Party candidate. His campaign organized and orchestrated by the CPUSA.
Wallace was not the only openly pro-Stalinist figure thrown out of the Democratic Party in those years, but he was the highest ranking.
Hubert Humphrey, oddly enough, was one of the leaders of the fight to eject the communists. In Minnesota, the Farmer Labor Party had been uniquely successful as a third party - electing three governors, four senators, eight members of Congress, In 1944 he led an effort to merge Farmer Labor with the Minnesota Democratic Party. In 1945, the Communists within the Farmer Labor made an effort to take control of the new merged party, and Humphrey led the effort to have them ejected.
There were a good many open communists and more not-so-open in the Democratic Party up through WWII. And there were a great many anti-communist liberals like Humphrey. Their shellacking in 1946 forced the Democratic Party to make a split - to end their toleration of openly pro-Soviet candidates like Henry Wallace. And the result was that the collectivist left sat outside the “big tent” until McGovern brought them back in, in 1972.
My point was that regardless of what goes on in public, they will always be a heavily “progressive” movement. Sure people don’t go on MTP and other network tv talk shows and proclaim their love of Marxism etc., but that is merely because it wouldn’t be politically wise not because they aren’t Marxists.
They use vehicles like “environmentalism” and “consumer protection”.
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