Between Barack and A Hard Place – The Lesson of ’68 Looms for Democrats

by Thomas Del Beccaro

These may well be the times that try the souls of Democrat politicians.

In the year since Obama took the oath of office, the fortunes of the Democrat Party have changed substantially. Voters, especially Independent voters, now favor Republicans on many issues and in Rasmussen’s Generic Congressional Ballot by 9%. Entrenched Senate Democrats like Christopher Dodd and Byron Dorgan are retiring and now – in no small irony – in the election heard ‘round the world, Scott Brown, campaigning against ObamaCare was elected to “Kennedy’s seat.”

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It has been a remarkable turnaround – yet the worse is yet to come for Democrats in office.

Keep in mind that voters turned out the Republicans in 2006 and 2008 in large part because they spent too much, reformed too little and ran up the deficit into the $400 billion range. By the end of the Bush Presidency, economic troubles were mounting and the Republicans had no clear plan for a national recovery.

Today, the incidence of buyer’s remorse for voters over Barack is mounting for all the same reasons and more. Unemployment is at double digits, government reform has been abandoned in favor of unprecedented government spending and the deficit is in the $1.5 trillion range. All of that, with no meaningful recovery in site.

Beyond that, the President has his Party in the stickiest of wickets known to you as the Health Care debate. By allowing Pelosi and Company to write the bill, Obama lost control of the process and now public opposition to the bill is at an all time high.  Even so, the Democrat leadership still promises to push it – whether we like it or not.

That is, at least until Scott Brown came around – which begs the questions:

So what’s a Coercive Utopian to do? And what is a sensible Democrat to do? And of the two, who will prevail?

In the months ahead, the coercive utopian Democrats, who control government, i.e. Pelosi & Reid et. al., now know they may be out of power in 10 months – but not because of the Scott Brown election or The Lessons of ’66 and ’94 that Loom Over the Democrats.  They have been repeatedly told, by Bill Clinton and others, that the failure to pass HillaryCare in the ‘90s was the reason they lost in ‘90s, because their base became discouraged.  Beyond that, they will have to provide an answer to the country for solving the deficit.  Given their reflexive answer to that enduring question, i.e. raising tax rates, the Obama, Reid and Pelosi may well force their Democrats supporters in Congress to vote for higher taxes.  If anyone thinks that’s a good idea, (besides the coercive utopians), ask the 54 House seats that went from Democrat to Republican in ’94 how that worked for them.

So what’s a sensible Democrat in Congress to do? As a Shakespearean politician may have said: To Be Re-Elected or not to Be Re-elected, that is the question. Of course, that would require them to break company with Barack and the hard place in which he is forcing them – thereby splitting the Democrat Party.

Who will win that battle?  Perhaps the Lessons of ’68 are relevant here.  During that election year, the Vietnam War badly split the Democrats between the pro-war Johnson/Humphrey faction and the anti-war faction led by Senator McCarthy.  A split of that magnitude simply could not be mended within a single election year.  Their political civil war was  so bad that even the Republican Presidential nominee, who once declared that we would no longer have him to kick around just 8 years before, Richard Nixon, was able to make the ultimate comeback and win the Presidency.

In other words, for the Democrats, there probably will be no victor in this inter-party war – all of which amounts to one gigantic opportunity for the Republicans – if they would just do these 4 things . . . The Top 4 Things Congressional Republicans Must Do In 2010.


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Posted Jan 21st 2010 at 5:55 am in Congress, Featured Story, Obama, Politics | 68 Comments