If I find time, I'll do more post-election links tomorrow, but I thought I'd preface them with one from Kevin Drum, We Should Probably All Calm Down a Bit, since I want to quote virtually all of it. He addresses two bullet items, one to liberals and one to conservatives, and he basically gets them right, although I have a few more points to add. First:
Liberals, you should rein in the triumphalism. Obama won a narrow 51-49 percent victory and the composition of Congress changed only slightly. This was not a historic vindication of liberalism, and it doesn't mean that we can suddenly decide that demography will sweep us to victory for the next couple of decades. The plain truth is that although an increasing number of voters are turned off by what Republicans represent, that doesn't mean they've become lefty converts. A lot of them are still pretty nervous about a big part of our agenda, and we have a lot of work ahead to get them more solidly on our side. Also: No matter how much you hate to hear it, long-term deficit reduction and entitlement reform really are pretty important. Just because conservatives abuse the point doesn't mean there isn't something to it.
First part is true. Political power is still pretty evenly divided, with the Republican House, a Democratic majority in the Senate hung up for abuse by its own rules (the filibuster, of course, but also the evident right of Richard Shelby and Tom Coburn to block any appointment they take exception to, which is pretty much all of them), and Obama in the White House, at least until recently thinking he has the touch to compromise meaningfully with terrorists. Republicans also control most of the governorships and state houses, most of the judiciary, and they have a working majority on the Supreme Court. Right-wingers also have a huge preponderance in the media, and they continue to draw on their think tanks and propaganda arms, on industry lobbyists, and above all on lots of money.
In most respects, the Democrats didn't win so much as dodge a bullet. This was the billionaires' election, and didn't prevail, although the fact that it was so close when the interest breakdown had never been more clearly drawn between the 1% and the 99% is telling. Similarly, Republicans spent much of the last four years erecting roadblocks on the path to the polls. Given that Obama won, you might be tempted to say that they failed, even that there was a backlash against the right's assault on democracy, but the fact is that the number of people who voted this time dropped by over 9 million (122,146,119 vs. 131,393,990 in 2012). How much of that can be attributed to voter suppression as opposed to general cynicism and indifference -- both of which are conservative goals -- isn't clear, but it can't be dismissed.
It should also be noted that while the Republicans enjoy a 49 seat margin in the House, the actual vote for Representatives gave a plurality to the Democrats (54,301,095 to 53,822,442). Nate Silver has estimated that the Democrats have to get 3% more votes than the Republicans to break even in the House -- some of this is due to gerrymandering following the Republicans' 2010 state house wins, and some of it is due to the concentration of Democrats in compact urban districts (i.e., cities). What I think all of this means is that the Democrats could have done significantly better than they did with a more level playing field: with more people voting, with less money distorting the races, with a Democratic Party that was better organized (especially at the House and state levels).
The great thing about election day is that it's the one day in the year where the people count. Leading up to it politicians of all stripes try to appeal the the people, and afterwards they slide back into the real corridors of power, which is mostly the province of money but also of institutional interests. I think it would be a mistake to read Drum's line that a "lot of them are still pretty nervous about a big part of our agenda" as meaning that the people (Democrats anyway) are nervous about their leaders taking them far to the left. Nervousness may be called for, but it's more likely that they (well, we) fear that Democrats we elected to represent us will wind up compromising our interests to the moneyed powers, the corporations, the warmongers, and so forth. I wouldn't go so far as to argue that the median voter is well to the left of the politicians, but you get a whiff of that in, e.g., the referenda legalizing recreational marijuana use.
Still, the left has lots of work to do to overcome myriad obstacles -- the right, the middling center, the professional ranks of Democratic politics -- and much of that is done by correcting bad ideas. Drum gives us an example in his assertion,"long-term deficit reduction and entitlement reform really are pretty important." In theory, I could go either way on deficit reduction, but it's worth noting that throughout US history the only way it's ever actually worked is through growth and/or inflation -- neither party actually has the political will to soak the people with taxes to pay down the debts, especially in a protracted slump. (Clinton at least had a huge tech boom for cover, and all his "success" netted was irresponsibility from his successor.) I'd like to see some more progressive taxes not so much to balance the budget as to start to nudge incomes, society, and democracy toward more equality. But it also turns out that taxing the rich results in less drag on the economy -- forget all that "job creator" garbage and all their "uncertainty" and "confidence" confabulations -- than taxing anyone else, and I'd combine that with more spending, especially on public works that help reduce inequality and boost opportunity -- education, infrastructure, small business support, and, yes, income transfers. The "fiscal cliff" moment, despite such misleading terminology, is a teachable moment, something we should take advantage of.
As for "entitlement reform," any so-called progressive who utters such a term should be pummeled with a whiffle bat. The truth is that retirement incomes are earned, and that welfare for those unable to provide adequately for themselves is a sign of civilization, one that we should take pride in, not demean. And the only way those sums should be "reformed" is upward, not least because we've let our selfishness (or rather the greed of the rich and powerful) and a false sense of impoverishment cut too deep already. That people live longer may mean that working people will have to pay more to support those who cannot work, and therefore overall taxes will have to rise. But to cheap out and deny your fellow citizens the right to live in decency and out of poverty would morally bankrupt us.
Drum's second point:
Conservatives, you should rein in the apocalyptic despair. Increasing top marginal rates to 39.6 percent is not a harbinger of torches and pitchforks in the streets, it's a limited corrective to decades of skyrocketing incomes at the high end. Obamacare is not a sign of incipient tyranny, it's a modest attempt to provide broad access to healthcare that's based on a Republican plan and operates largely through the private sector. Universal access to contraceptives doesn't represent the end of religious liberty, it represents a fairly narrow disagreement over the responsibilities of organizations that occupy a gray area between secular and religious. Fifty million people on food stamps doesn't mean the final triumph of takers over makers, it means that we're still recovering from the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression. (Outside of healthcare, spending on low-income programs is actually pretty low.) America is still America, and it's still the best place in the world to be if you're an entrepreneur. More generally: You really do need to update your attitudes on a raft of social issues, but honestly, if you can manage to do something about your crackpot wing and your blood oath to Grover Norquist, you'd be in reasonably good shape.
This is all straightforward and true, but then why did Republicans not do the smart and gracious thing and accept Obamacare, "cap and trade," Obama's "middle class" tax deal, and so forth as concessions to the power of their ideology? It's certainly not because they have any sort of enlightened comprehension of the long-term interests of the superrich. (They're not even that sharp on short-term interests: the rich plunged furthest in the recession, although they've bounced back healthily, the stock market more than doubling during Obama's term even though unemployment persisted and we're still a long ways from regaining the lost output.) Anyone rational will tell you that health care costs are eroding the entire economy, handicapping every business that doesn't directly profit from them. Same thing is true with the banks. And global warming is ultimately a much greater threat to property owners than it is to migrant workers. And you can keep going down the list: starving education may mean more people will be dumb enough to vote Republican, but it doesn't help American businesses needing competent and innovative workers to compete in the global market. And wars, pollution, the dumbest approach imaginable to crime.
I think what's happened is that the Republicans have fallen victim to their rank and file, a group that basically has nothing going for it other than their rage against everyone else. It must have seemed like a clever idea: getting the whites against the blacks (and everyone else), getting men (and the Catholic church) against liberated women, getting the hawks against the doves, getting the born against against the humanists, getting the gun nuts against their own paranoia, wrapping it all up in paeans about family values and responsibility, God and flags, prayer and the pledge of allegiance, success and prosperity, with a bunch of guys who inherited many millions to bankroll it all. Moreover, the ideology was sold on the simplest level possible: no more taxes, shrink the government so it can be drowned in a bathtub, but carte blanche for the military, and no amnesty (put more people in jail than any other country) and make no excuses (plunge the nation into debilitating foreign wars at the slightest provocation).
It worked for a while, not least because rather than fight it Democrats fell all over themselves to burnish their patriotic and militarist and religious and free enterprise credentials, all the while chasing the same moneyed interests, sometimes even outbidding the Republicans to service them. But the spell is fading, and not just because other demographics are outpacing angry white males (as Lindsey Graham recently lamented). Part of the problem is that more and more people are being pushed outside the Republican tent. But it's also because while thirty years of conservative ascendancy has done much to make the rich richer, it has treated everyone else so shabbily. Believers still have little clue, but the proof is how desperately they hold on to nostrums that no longer work.
Sure, in theory the Republican establishment can seek out a more moderate and more defensible ground, but how can they sell ideas that violate the moral certainties of their rank and file. A good example of this was how a series of Republicans, starting with VP candidate Paul Ryan, decided they were more profoundly against abortion than rape, so wound up in effect arguing that the law should enforce a rapist's right to force his victim to bear his child. Conservatives always insist that their truth is timeless, eternal, unchangeable, so indeed how can they change? Indeed, throughout history they don't. They can only be resisted, stopped, defeated: often, as in America's Revolution and Civil War through violence; sometimes, if we're lucky, democratically, as in the 1930s New Deal and the 1960s civil rights movement. Of course, conservatism keeps bouncing back -- as long as there is a privileged order to defend -- but at least in defeat they drop some of their worst habits.
One lesson we should take away from the 2012 election is that they've been set back, but they haven't been defeated soundly enough yet.