One Year Later, Democrats' Dream Deferred

One Year Later, Democrats' Dream Deferred

By David Paul Kuhn

Edward Kennedy's most iconic moment was in defeat. It was at the 1980 Democratic convention that Kennedy said: "For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end. For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."

Once more, that dream is now deferred.

On the one-year anniversary of Barack Obama's presidency, the Kennedy seat is lost to a Republican. Democrats' Senate super majority falls with it. And the most shocking congressional victory of our time is now a metaphor for Obama's presidency. This Democratic nightmare, only one year after liberals believed their dream had arrived.

Obama’s inauguration was said to usher in a new Democratic era. And like Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton before him, those predictions have quickly met with stark political realities.

Before Tuesday's upset, 2010 already looked bad for the political left. Purple and red state Democrats were skittish about risky votes. Even if Democrats held their majority in November, it would be a significantly weaker majority.

Progressives soon realized their time was short. If they were going to pass big liberal measures, they had months.

After Tuesday's upset, time has run out. The filibuster-proof majority is over. And even Democrats in blue states are afraid.

An unknown conservative candidate, Scott Brown, won the Massachusetts liberal's seat. If any place was to sustain this year's political storm, even with a poor Democratic candidate playing defense, it surely was blue Massachusetts. Then, in a flash of political time, the seat held by a Kennedy since 1952 was gone. And if this Massachusetts seat is not safe, what seat is?

Brown ran as the outsider insurgent. He was to offer change from Obama's change. He signed his name sometimes with the number 41. Brown campaigned as the man who could sunder Democrats' super majority, and with it, the liberal dream.

Not so long ago, a bevy of political analysts spoke of the fated new era. By September 2008, USA Today's Susan Page captured the expectations with a story headlined: "Stage set for 'pivotal' realignment in '08."

It was to be the culmination of Ruy Teixeira and John Judis' 2002 book "Emerging Democratic Majority." Judis wrote an essay following Obama's victory headlined, "The Democratic majority: It emerged!" By March 2009, Teixeira authored a 47-page report titled, "New Progressive America."

But polling painted an American political landscape that had not changed as quickly as its president. Rather, in those months of great hype, it was clear that the "Public Stands Between Reagan and Obama." The enduring American tension with activist government went largely ignored. Obama pressed forward to reverse the Reagan era without the humility of a president who knew that it was not yet his era either.

Unlike FDR, the first year big government measures were not focused on the economy. The stimulus measure was primarily a big social services bill. The health care bill became the boondoggle of Obama's political capital. The big jobs bill did not come, even as Americans experienced the worst unemployment rate in more than a quarter century.

Yet Obama won on the economy, above all else. The pretense of realignment always depended on the opposite read. Republicans' implosion, demographic trends and rising progressive values were to have built this new Democratic majority. But we knew from tracking polls that Obama only garnered majority support after the market crashed.

Obama's mandate was not consumed with the very issue that sealed his coalition. Obama had campaigned on the health care bill. But the economic crisis was the central reason his campaign had won more of the electorate than any Democrat in four decades.

And Obama did it with the middle. In 2008, Obama's margin with moderates was three times larger than the two previous Democratic nominees. Now that middle is not only moving away from Democrats. It's moving against Democrats.

Any hope of realignment, however scant, always relied on this broad middle. Enduring majorities depend on courting and marrying the least ideological voters. Yet these same voters care more about spending and are more skeptical of activist government than the public at large. They also despise partisanship.

The health care debate became a magnet for all these anxieties. Meanwhile, Washington had saved Wall Street. But absent the new New Deal, Main Street was put on hold. Obama appeared on the wrong side of the issue of his time.

The worst stereotypes of liberalism, as spendthrifts, were affirmed with the stimulus. The best stereotypes, fighting for the middle class, were undercut with the focus on health care over jobs.

The middle class was fixated on fears of extending joblessness and decimated retirement savings. Most of them had health insurance. The working class was losing the bulk of the jobs. That's all they feared.

This is no Democratic dream. And the cost is a blue reality. It was not that the dream was impossible. But the dream was only possible with the right actions. And the right moves depended on the right read of the political environment.

Now the liberal dream will have to be set aside for Obama to have a second chance in a second term. The next three years will not see the sweeping change of Obama's promise, but the incremental change more common to Washington. Gone is climate change legislation. Gone is a major jobs bill. Gone is a more progressive health care bill. And the bill itself is now at great risk.

Looking ahead, all presidents can recover. Bill Clinton did. A populist economic fight might be Obama's best bet. There are hints he will try. But even popular financial reform faces a different arena. The game is now small ball. Republicans are again players. And an electoral wave is growing from the right. This is not the change Democrats' imagined one year ago.

David Paul Kuhn is the Chief Political Correspondent for RealClearPolitics and the author of The Neglected Voter. He can be reached at david@realclearpolitics.com and his writing followed via RSS