What the liberals got wrong the last two years
David Paul Kuhn:
The media establishment that hyped this Democratic president but refused to be humbled with him. Pundits' premises so fundamentally disproved. The conservative collapse that was not. The so-told emerging liberal era that was not. The Democratic leaders who bought the hype, acting on the masochistic premise that if big liberal things were done, the American mind's apprehension to big liberal things could be undone. The hapless Republican generals saved by conservative foot soldiers. A liberal opposition that, all over again, undid itself in Pyrrhic victory. It was a year of conventional irony.Liberals often practice the politics of fraud to get elected then seem surprised when they are rejected after the truth emerges. That is what happened with Obama, and he has not hit bottom yet despite the DC love fest over Christmas. He is doing the opposite of what people want on energy and in the process pushing up gas prices to levels that will quickly anger people and further alienate voters from liberals like Obama.
But there was a particular irony to the chasm between the excessive rhetoric that greeted this president and the electoral rebuke that closed the year. These were, nearly, the best of liberal times. The most progressive legislation passed since at least the Beatles broke up. But it was also the worst of liberal times. Liberalism's most historic midterm defeat since the radio broadcast of Orson Welles' adaptation of "War of the Worlds."
This year in politics witnessed the center-right nation righting itself. And with it came the left's recurring reality check: American liberalism's success is often its undoing.
So we relived the narrative arc of the New Deal and the Great Society, only more rapidly, with a lower apex and a swifter fall. One more liberal foundation sundered.
We can best understand this collapse in the context of 2008, and the humility it should have brought to our political class. Recall those heady liberal days. Politico's post-election analysis: "The Obama Revolution." Time magazine headlined an article soon after, "The New Liberal Order," declaring "Obama's majority is at least as cohesive as Reagan's or F.D.R.'s." The New Republic headline one week later: "America the Liberal. The Democratic majority: It emerged!" By March 2009, liberals' premiere demographer--premiere because his analysis is so pleasing to liberals--authored a lengthy report on the "New Progressive America." The liberal affirmations continued into September. The New York Times book review editor published his own title, "The Death of Conservatism."
How quickly conservatism rose from its rumored demise. It was entirely foreseeable. The president was said to have changed the electoral map, though it was clear even then that he visibly had not. Demographic math was said to sum to Democratic destiny, despite history's warnings. It was forgotten that political coalitions are held together by more than the sum of their parts.
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