Legal Commentary

Post Mortems On The Theory Of Change

By Big Tent Democrat

Back in December 2007, I wrote about this E.J. Dionne column, where he wrote:

Obama is running as the candidate who can transcend these fights.[. . .] "There's no shortage of anger and bluster and bitter partisanship out there," he said. "We can change the electoral math that's been all about division and make it about addition."

Today, E.J. Dionne writes:

[T]he truth that liberals and Obama must grapple with is that they have failed so far to dent the right's narrative, especially among those moderates and independents with no strong commitments to either side in this fight.

The president's supporters comfort themselves that Obama's numbers will improve as the economy gets better. This is a form of intellectual complacency. Ronald Reagan's numbers went down during a slump, too. But even when he was in the doldrums, Reagan was laying the groundwork for a critique of liberalism that held sway in American politics long after he left office.

Progressives will never reach their own Morning in America unless they use the Gipper's method to offer their own critique of the conservatism he helped make dominant. It is still more powerful in our politics, as we are learning in Massachusetts, than it ought to be.

This was perfectly predictable when Mark Schmitt and other Village Dems were hailing Obama's Theory of Change. Indeed, it was predicted by a lot of us - that if Obama believed the Schtick, political trouble was sure to follow. And it has come.

Robert Kuttner writes:

[T]he Massachusetts surprise should be a wake-up call of the most fundamental kind. Obama needs to stop playing inside games with bankers and insurance lobbyists, and start being a fighter for regular Americans. Otherwise, he can kiss it all goodbye.

Was this not the case at the beginning of last year? What was hard to understand about that?

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on January 18, 2010 (boomark / email).