WITH ENEMIES LIKE THIS, WHO NEEDS FRIENDS?

8/1/09

There is much discussion lately of liberal Democratic frustration and/or disenchantment with either or both the inability of the Obama administration to achieve the type of “change” envisioned in the halcyon days of the immediate aftermath of the 2008 election and/or the ability of a relative handful of “conservative” Democrats to stall the more febrile enthusiasms of the Democratic left. There has been insufficient action, the base of the Party seems to be saying, on health care, the environment, financial regulation, and a whole host of other things near and dear to the hearts of believers in uber-government.

One interesting theory regarding the origins of the snail’s pace of the left’s aggressive agenda is that Rahm Emanuel’s 2006 strategy of recruiting “conservative” Democrats to run for Congress and thus achieve a solid Democratic majority in both houses of Congress has backfired. Now, the theory goes, those “blue dog” (or whatever label is now being used for them; doubtless the monikers being employed in the salons of, say, the tonier districts of San Francisco or Boston, are far less charitable) Democrats are delaying, depending on whom one talks to, the president’s or the “real” congressional Democrats’, agenda.

There is doubtless something to that theory; those who insist on sobriety and clear thinking often spoil otherwise riotous drinking debauches. However, what the “core” Democrats fail to see, or to admit to themselves, is that their great congressional victory of 2006, and Barack Obama’s ascendance to the presidency in 2008, was the result of the average American’s thorough disgust at the idiotic, bumbling, smirking, and generally smarmy and increasingly creepy George Bush, not some sudden desire for the full Democratic government knows best agenda.

The Democrats have George Bush to thank for their control of two branches of the federal government. They don’t realize that yet, but I would be willing to bet that they will see the light long before the Republicans, or at least the leaders of the Republican Party, do.